Medal of Honor:Airborne demo now available on PC

[Smooth Groove]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/medalofhonorairborne/download_6177313.html?tag=topslot;title;1&om_act=convert&om_clk=dltopslot

I hope it recaptures the glory of the original MOH on PC which is still one of the best WW2 FPS games ever. 

[TVC15]

I want impressions, asap.  How big is it?

[bluemax]

1.27 GB zip file. I just installed it. Will post impressions when I'm done playing.

I've never played MOH before though.

[Smooth Groove]

It's going to take me 2 more hrs to finish downloading.  I'll post some impressions when I'm done. 

[bluemax]

Ok I played it, and it seems kind of fun. I didn't finish the demo cause my keyboard fucked up but I completed the first of three objectives on the map. I played on casual because I've never played MOH before and didn't want to die parachuting. Now that I know the controls I'll give it another go on normal.

Anywho, it feels a lot like other shooters set in the same time period, the whole pseudo immersion thing etc. I guess if you're into that for level intros and what not then its not bad. At the start of each level you pick 3 weapons, your primary (seemed to be 3 different SMGs) secondary (I didn't check the options but I have a rifle with a scope) and a hand gun. I found myself mostly switching between the rifle to take out guys at long range and the smg for when I did things like enter houses or go commando. Never used my hand gun. For the objective I completed there seemed to be a couple of different options as far as how I could go about things so that's pretty cool. Its not like a ton of emergent options, but maybe 2-3 options that you can take based on play style.

As you go along you get "experience" for your different weapons (show as outlines of the weapons that fill in blue) and when you reach a new level the game gives you bonuses. It was kind of annoying when I hit one because it played a sound effect and then put me in some short term bullet time shit so I could soak up my achievement I guess.

The health system seems to borrow a bit from Halo. You have four boxes for health, as long as you don't lose all the health in a box it will regenerate automatically after a few seconds. This lets you peek around corners, shoot at people and take maybe one or two hits without dieing, then you can drop down regenerate and do it over. I only saw like 2-3 health packs that had been placed on the path to the objective I went for, but enemies seem to drop them from time to time when you kill them.

I guess that's all for now, if you have questions feel free to ask.

Performance wise I got about 20FPS on my old ass work machine (P4 3.6ghz 1gb ram 6600GT 128). That's on 800x600 low everything except textures which I think are on medium.

[TVC15]

Does it looks like the game will be impressive looking when maxed out?  No multiplayer in the demo?

[Smooth Groove]

I'll check it out on Max at 1920x1200 and also 1680x1050.  Be patient. 

[Smooth Groove]

Download this, TVC.  I just tested at 1680x1050 w/max settings.  I couldn't turn on anti-aliasing even with the force option in the Nvidia control panel.  I played w/vsync on.  Fraps showed that the framerate stayed at 60fps the whole time.  Geometry is surprisingly high in this game, even moreso than something like Killzone 2.  The action is intense.  At 60FPS, everything is just moving so fast that I were shell shocked for a couple of secs when I landed on the ground.  There are lots of enemies everywhere.  It's definitely not like Gears of War where only a couple of enemies come at you once at a time.  Each enemy also looks detailed despite the fact that so many are on screen.  I've got to play it some more but so far it looks like the game is a must-buy.  This game is really FAST compared to weaksauce console FPS games.  I had to make an adjustment since my last couple of shooters have been Resistance and Gears.  Dudes w/ only shader 2.0 cards, you're out of luck because 3.0 is a minimum requirement. 

[Smooth Groove]

After playing this some more, the game does seem to suffer a little from consolitis.  Performance is great but the visuals would really benefit from some anti-aliasing.  The high geometry just make the jaggies much more noticeable.  Also, despite some nice shader effects, the textures are of lower quality than what you expect for a PC game.  In terms of gameplay, the combat is really exciting although it's less realistic than COD.  You basically run around like Rambo gunning down enemies at a rapid pace.  It's also a little hard sometimes to differentiate a enemy from a friend.  Level feels really huge and are pretty well designed in terms of enemy placement and making all the rooms look different. 

[Mupepe]

take some screenshots please

[bluemax]

After playing this some more, the game does seem to suffer a little from consolitis.  Performance is great but the visuals would really benefit from some anti-aliasing.  The high geometry just make the jaggies much more noticeable.  Also, despite some nice shader effects, the textures are of lower quality than what you expect for a PC game.  In terms of gameplay, the combat is really exciting although it's less realistic than COD.  You basically run around like Rambo gunning down enemies at a rapid pace.  It's also a little hard sometimes to differentiate a enemy from a friend.  Level feels really huge and are pretty well designed in terms of enemy placement and making all the rooms look different. 

Yeah I felt like the AI relies on you too much to make kills, and only kills the CPU if you're really bad. I have 3-4 teammates and yet I'm killing 4-5 Germans a pop. Also I agree that its hard to distinguish friend from foe, I got shot and shot at the wrong times a bit too much.

One thing that's fun is dropping on the roof and walking around sniping as many enemies as you can before your teammates get to them. If you're a good shot (and honestly this feels like a console game with PC controls, ie crappy shots like me can headshot regulalry) you can kill a lot of guys this way without being noticed. The AI does react decently well if you miss while doing this. Also the AI seems a bit stupid at times when taking cover. They'll run out and be sitting ducks, or they'll get to a barrier and set up on it facing the wrong way.

Oh, and I don't like how when you die it goes back to a load screen. WTF is that shit?