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13. Medal of Honor – 2010

Reboots are usually good for a game franchise as it allows new ideas and advance the series to new heights, but sometimes it’s not successful. Medal of Honor was a hyped-up generic military shooter where you play as Tier 1 specialists in the Afghani war, and it was a bug-ridden mess. The game was also ugly, stale, and just felt like a total Call of Duty rip-off. This was easily the worst game in the entire series.

Best Version: PC

12. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun – 2003

Rising Sun was riding on the success of Frontline and its newfound glory with console gamers, but what we got was an ugly rushed mess of a game. Rising Sun tried to show us the frontline in Japan, but what we had was just some dated gameplay and some of the worst level design the series has ever seen. I don’t know what happened within a year, but the development rush is obvious here.

Best Version: Xbox

11. Medal of Honor: Airborne – 2007

The first game in the series to try and reboot it with little success. Using next-generation hardware, the game looked impressive but used a weird multiplayer map style layout and open-ended objectives that just led to the generic level design and frustrating gameplay. The guns were highly inaccurate, and it was ridiculously difficult and plain boring. It’s clear that this series just can’t hit the reboot stride correctly.

Best Version: PC

10. Medal of Honor: Warfighter – 2012

Warfighter was a slightly more successful game with the new modern warfare formula with a much more entertaining campaign and better visuals, but overall it still felt generic and pointless in a bloated military shooter scene.

Best Version: PC

9. Medal of Honor: Vanguard – 2007

Vanguard is a much-forgotten game in the series as by the time this came around Modern Warfare was already out and the next generation of consoles was in full swing and no one cared. Using an old engine and gameplay, Vanguard was the last in the series to use the typical Medal of Honor WWII formula. The game wasn’t awful just super generic, boring, and just standard affair that we have seen before.

Best Version: Wii

8. Medal of Honor: Frontline – 2002

Frontline was the first game in the series on consoles, and this game is one I have fond memories of. I remember the opening scene just blew my mind and was incredibly cinematic for the time. Sadly, there was no multiplayer, but at the time I didn’t care. It still wasn’t the best game in the series, and it was clear the less powerful consoles held the series back some, but it was a good start.

Best Version: Xbox

7. Medal of Honor: Heroes – 2006

A strange game stuck in a weird time. The next-generation consoles were already here and Heroes stuck to a gameplay style designed for handhelds and the Wii. It was a decent game and felt good on each console it was on, but this was as generic as WWII shooters come. Even the production values were lacking on a dated engine and gameplay.

Best Version: Wii

6. Medal of Honor: European Assault – 2005

European Assault was not so much overlooked but overstepped. Everyone was starting to wane with the WWII shooters and European Assault was a mildly generic form of the genre that played well but didn’t add anything terribly new to wow anyone.

Best Version: Xbox

5. Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 – 2007

Heroes 2 was a rushed sequel, but somehow improved upon the first game and continued to use the dated engine and gameplay style of its predecessor. This and Vanguard were the last of their kind and were washed away with the new generation of consoles and graphics that just made everyone forget about these games.

Best Version: Wii

4. Medal of Honor – 1999

The original isn’t always the best, but it was really impressive on the PS1 back in the day and helped pave the way for modern FPS games to this day. It was a little clunky and basic, but did its job well and is still fun to play to this day.

3. Medal of Honor: Underground – 2000

It was a much-improved game over the first one, but was released right when the next generation of consoles was out and was kind of overlooked by the PS2, Dreamcast, and GameCube. It looked amazing on the PS1 and added a totally new campaign, but everyone was mostly over this generation of consoles by now.

Best Version: PS1

2. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault – 2002

The game that made Medal of Honor was it was released just before its console debut. It looked fantastic on the PC and was followed by two expansion packs. AA remains many players’ favorite game in the series for its PC-specific greatness such as solid controls, visuals, and scope.

1. Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault – 2004

My personal favorite game in the series due to the sheer cinematic quality and visual flair of the game. It was the last PC exclusive game in the series but felt and played amazingly well with a fantastic campaign and fun multiplayer. Medal of Honor, sadly, reached its peak early on, but it did it well and with a bang.

Publisher: EA

Developer: EA

Release Date: 09/04/2007

Also Available On

Medal of Honor started the first-person shooter World War II experience back on the original PlayStation. As time went on they redefined the genre on PC with Allied Assault. It helped put WWII shooters’ feet on the cinematic ground. Frontline was the series’ last good game, and slowly after that, the series fell flat on its face with mediocrity, with EA only caring about money. Airborne continues this trend and it’s dead obvious how little effort they put into the game.

You play as a soldier named Travers (like we care at this point) and you go through various WWII scenarios that you have probably gone through dozens of times before. The first thing you will notice about Airborne is how repetitive it feels in comparison to other WWII shooters. It doesn’t do anything new and re-treads the same ground that we are sick and tired of. EA tried to make us feel different about this with a new approach to level design. You play as paratroopers that jump out of planes at the start of every level onto green flares. These are safe zones and contain crates of health, ammo, and grenades. Once you hit the ground you will notice that your minimap is pointing to various objectives. No longer do you follow a linear routine and take it one at a time. Pick a direction and run, but that’s when things start going bad.

Every map plays out the same, shoot some enemies, push forward, rinse and repeat ad nauseam. The enemies will keep coming in different pockets of the maps until you advance and take them out. This isn’t a new trick and just gets old quick because that is all you do. Place a charge on this AA gun, blow up this equipment, blow up these thanks. No thanks. I have done this countless times already so why do I want to do it here? The whole “nonlinear” map idea doesn’t really work because it makes the game ridiculously difficult and you will die dozens of times every level. Every time you die you jump back out of the plane losing not objective progress, but advancement progress. If you just pushed back a huge group of enemies and die you have to do it again. Your objectives are just checkpoints, and this gets frustrating beyond anything you can imagine. The game throws way too many enemies at you, but there are even problems with weapons.

The game has a nice upgrade system for doing so many kills. For example, the MP40 will upgrade with a double clip, reduced recoil, and a knife melee attack. This is the most interesting thing in the entire game, but EA for some reason made the guns inaccurate to accommodate for upgrades. Guns jump around more than you are used to and no matter how well your aim is you always miss about 60% of the time. Once you hit the less recoil upgrade it isn’t so bad. All the same WWII era weapons are here (except the Sten) and it is yawn-worthy.

Thankfully the game is short with only 6 levels so you can beat the game in about 6 hours. No matter how you slice it the game is just extremely hard, repetitive, boring, and unoriginal on every level. They even went back to the health pack system which is just archaic in design. You would think at least jumping out of planes is fun? Not really because if you don’t grease or flare your landing you botch it and it involves a nauseating and disorienting animation of your character wobbling around while getting up and pulling the weapon out in a weird way. While this is happening guys are shooting you and you will recover with one health bar left. Nice job EA for screwing every single thing in a game up that you possibly could. Even the graphics are pretty bland and aren’t anything special.

Overall, Airborne is probably the worst Medal of Honor game I have ever played. Monotonous shooting, ridiculous difficulty, screwed up para trooping mechanic, failed level design, and a retread of a genre everyone is tired of. Do yourself a favor and skip this unless you really need a WWII shooter fix. Forget about multiplayer as well because there are only 6 maps and no one is playing online anyway.