I’ve often wondered how much easier my daily trek into work would be if I had the option of parachuting in from a passing aeroplane rather than having to stroll along the usually overcrowded streets. Let’s completely ignore the fact that I’d have to make an even longer trek to a nearby airport and then have to take my chances on not falling foul of a nasty crosswind and impaling myself on the nearest church steeple – it would be great fun, wouldn’t it? Jay happily sitting in front of his PC tapping away as I arrive through the window and land perfectly in my chair. That’s what I call commuting in style, folks.

For the extraordinarily brave folks in the airborne division during World War 2, arriving in time for morning coffee was the least of their worries. To me there’s nothing more likely to get you shot than drifting down slowly from the sky attached to an oversized plastic bag, but those who chose to do so were crucial in turning the tide against the Nazis in numerous battles. EA, noticing that there was an area of World War 2 that hadn’t been plumbed for video game treatment, have chosen the latest Medal of Honour to put us in their rapidly descending shoes.

The premise of Airborne is initially rather exciting: instead of leading us through a corridor of happenings as the majority of shooters do, the game allows you to drop into each of the six levels (yes, just six, but more of that later) at pretty much any location before choosing from a number of tasks and tackling them in any order. Each level has a selection of flare-marked ‘green’ areas where you can land without the annoying presence of the enemy in close quarters, but those in the Rambo mould can take a more direct route and parachute in behind enemy lines should they so wish.

Alas, all the promise begins to crumble the moment you plunge out of the aircraft and set foot inside enemy territory. You soon realise that landing anywhere other than in a green area often leaves you dead by the time you’ve managed two or three steps on terra firma, meaning that you’re pretty much railroaded into going for the safer spots and playing it relatively safe. Having then landed, the tasks you are given are somewhat similar in nature to the myriad of World War 2 games already out, and although you could argue that the setting limits what could be done in terms of objectives, blowing up another ammo dump and protecting towns from a Nazi assault do nothing to separate Airborne from the plethora of titles that came before it.

Thus, fairly quickly you begin to realise that, whilst being a nice new idea, the parachuting element of Airborne is merely different dressing on a pretty normal salad. Once down at ground level you’ll still find yourself progressing from one part of the map to the other, shooting soldiers and capturing or destroying vital pieces of land or equipment. This may not necessarily have been such a bad thing in itself, but the action at ground level is chocked full of annoyances that continue to spoil the experience the further you progress.

The most prevalent of these is the checkpointing system the game employs, leaving the player no other option than to complete an objective to save their progress. On paper or in pixels it sounds fine and no different to the system other games, notably Call of Duty 2 and 3, used, but whereas the aforementioned managed to balance out each task to alleviate frustration, Airborne lurches between offering short, easy objectives and prolonged, tricky efforts that require a reasonable bit of stealth and care to complete.

A classic example of the problem this presents – as well as a number of others - is the game’s second level, during which you are asked to destroy some fuel reserves, take out an ammo dump and then destroy a couple of motor pools. The fuel reserves are easy enough – not particularly well defended and consisting of two large tanks, they can be polished off in a number of minutes. The ammo dump is more of a challenge, and requires more than a little use of cover and some pretty nifty attack tactics. No problems so far, then, but when it gets to the motor pools things temporarily grind to a halt.

Parachuting in, the most immediate thing that became apparent to me was the there was very little, if any, allied assistance going on nearby. Steeling myself for the task of soldiering on alone, I landed and immediately needed to take cover from a group of pesky enemies who were shooting at me. Peeking out from around a column, I lined up the crosshair carefully, squeezed the trigger to take advantage of Medal of Honour’s sniper shot feature which rewards smooth shooting and fired off a shot, only to watch in amazement as the soldier in my sights continued legging it around to his destination.

In fact, I will jut into this piece briefly to expand on that. You see, the hit detection in Airborne is somewhat off, meaning that the actual shooting part of the game feels frustratingly haphazard. There’s many a time when what seemed a perfect sniping shot will inexplicably miss, and even more frustratingly there are occasions when unloading a machine gun at an enemy from a distance of about five feet seems to do very little if anything. As with previous Medal of Honour games you can upgrade your weaponry if you become proficient enough with a certain piece, and winning awards for good marksmanship is indeed a good way of rewarding a player, but giving them weapons seemingly about as effective as a spud gun to begin with isn’t really too much fun.

Having thus taken slightly longer to polish off the first enemy troop than expected, peering round the corner for a little longer let me discover another issue the game has – the AI. Instead of realising that they were getting massacred in that one spot, enemy troops took turns in running around the corner to the very point their army buddies lay prone on the ground, only to be immediately finished off by another bullet from my gun. Eventually it became something like Duck Hunt with Nazi soldiers running one-by-one in front of my crosshair to take up the now vacated cover point, which contributed to their defence being obliterated pretty quickly.

All the while I was doing this, I was still aware that none of my fellow American soldiers were helping me in any way. Imagine my surprise, then, when a well-timed bullet of mine felled the last piece of Nazi resistance, upon which a whole group of my troops suddenly appeared from behind a nearby bush where I could only presume they’d been having a picnic or a quick game of Jacks. For a game that tries to put you in a realistic war setting, having such an obvious AI trigger (one that repeated tries showed to act in exactly the same manner) is somewhat of a letdown to say the least.

Still, bolstered by my sudden influx of buddies I pressed on, having now been in the field of battle for approaching five minutes. Running down into somewhat of a network of trenches I caught a fleeting glance of some of my mates getting killed by some enemies and, slightly confusingly, some just running straight past their targets rather than engaging them. Running through this mini network of rooms took another five minutes of battling and hiding, meaning that it had now been ten minutes since I parachuted in.

Exiting this section, I came across some sort of large scaffolding which I proceeded to start to climb, noticing on my way that the majority of my support crew were now notable by their absence once again having seemingly fed themselves to the Nazis like lemmings feed themselves to cliff edges. Only, at this point cover was pretty hard to come by, and enemy troops were suddenly very frequent. Pretty soon I was tumbling to the floor in a puddle of my own virtual blood, having wasted nearly fifteen minutes of play getting to that point. I was not amused to find that the loading screen took me back to being parachuted in, with the situation exactly as I had found it a quarter of an hour earlier.

Having tried – and failed – a couple of times following this, I decided to test out the old run ‘n’ gun method to see if it got me any further. Legging it through the fire fight and down into the trench saw me take minimal damage, confirming my suspicions that the enemy have a rather difficult time shooting you if you’re on the move. Arriving at the first room of the underground network I was taken by surprise and melee attacked by a Nazi soldier, and having just-and-just fought him off I was then finished off by a second who spawned right in front of me. Now, I fully accept that the Nazis had some very advanced technologies during World War 2, but as far as I know the ability to materialise from thin air wasn’t one of them.

It does get better throughout the six levels, thankfully, and it does become more of an enjoyable challenge even accounting for a part of a subsequent level that involves a bridge, rocket launchers and plenty of Nazis that will again get the teeth gnashing. The problem that Airborne has, as far as the single player mode is concerned at least, is that at no point is it ever significantly better, or even as good, as some of the previous WW2 titles that we’ve been given. You can’t fault it graphically, either, as it looks detailed and piles on the atmosphere at all opportunities. By now most of us will have found ourselves running through stone-built towns and along narrow trenches dug out of the cliff side a number of times across a whole range of WW2 shooters, but that doesn’t detract from Airborne’s sense of detail. The only complaint you could level is that enemy soldiers seem to fly about in all directions when shot and often end up zooming a few dozen feet straight upwards, which detracts quite a bit from the realism of things.

The thing that really tops Airborne off, though, is that just as you begin to really enjoy some parts of it the whole thing comes to an end. There’s just the six levels to battle your way through in the Campaign mode, and with each taking on average between thirty and forty-five minutes to complete you aren’t going to get much bang for your buck. Thus, it’s to the multiplayer side of the game that most will turn, which offers some decent – if limited – fun. A particularly good mode is the Objective Airborne mode in which the Allied soldiers, who spawn in the sky and parachute down, have to take and hold three control points whilst the Axis, who spawn on the ground, leg it around the level like lunatics trying to shoot the enemy out of the sky. If there’s anything likely to get you screaming into your Xbox Live headset like a madman, this mode is it folks.

After a good bit of time with the multiplayer modes it’s often difficult to remember the disappointment of the single player offering, but remember it we must. For all the excitement over the new twist that the parachuting angle would throw in the works, Medal of Honour: Airborne is a pretty standard WW2 shooter, with some pretty disappointing faults that spoil something that could have been really rather enjoyable. With some seriously dodgy AI, poor hit detection, a frustrating checkpoint system and lack of single player longevity battling against some beautiful scenery, occasionally great level design and enjoyable multiplayer offering, it’s hard to recommend the latest in EA’s WW2 series to anyone other than genre aficionados. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Airborne is the bitter aftertaste you get as you come to think of what it could have been.