Medal of Honor: Airborne

what could've been an excellent late ww2 fps is but an okay one due to poor enemy design

This is a really short game. I mean damn its short. Its basically just like any other MoH game except significantly worse, atleast compared to Allied Assault which is an absolute classic.
Theres only 6 levels, each one you start off by parachuting and you can fly anywhere you desire. You have a bunch of objectives to complete in any order you want. So you drop down, follow an arrow, complete objective, checkpoint, moveon.

Theres a small progression system where your guns arbitrarily level up, it seemed really underdeveloped and frankly pretty badly done. Kinda pointless. The AI is standard, not too awful, but there seems areas where they never stop respawning until X gets completed and that is always frustrating. The graphics are nice for the time, not great, but theyre okay. Lighting and shadows look fine, textures are average. Weapon models and reload animations are kind of good. It does kind of seem that rifles suck ass compared to automatic weapons, its just much easier to rush the AI and exploit their weaknessess with a machine gun like an Mp40. It has regen health, one bar at a time, kind of like a shield mechanic like Halo 1.
Pretty much every objective in the game is GO HERE, PLANT EXPLOSIVE, DO IT AGAIN and it gets really annoying and not fun actually.

It really is a generic ww2 FPS. not really a bad thing, theres just nothing too exciting to play through. An easy game to finish, some small frustrating parts but nothing too bad. The shooting mechanics are satisfying enough, but really the game just isn't that exciting overall. 6 short levels and its over and you're left thinking "That's it?

6/10

For me this one is the best Medal of Honor, and by quite a margin. You play as the paratroopers, and you drop in the missions, which makes them much more open in the way you tackle objectives. The level design is really well done, even if the later objectives of the missions follow a more linear route.

The weapons feel powerful and accurate, but there is a short amount of them. That said they are upgraded as you kill enemies with them, so you can feel a good progression throughout. That may mean that they feel a bit weak at the start of the game though.

I think the main issue is how short it is, only featuring 6 missions. I beat it in a single afternoon, and with a lack of multiplaye there are little reasons to come back for more. The story is also completly unremarkable, and visually the game is just average.

Its the best medal of honor when it comes to level design and gunplay, which is really all that matters. Its not a brilliant game, but its definitly solid, and good fun for the few hours it lasts.