War ain't pretty, but despite that, the graphics in Medal of Honor: Airborne look pretty darn good. As you parachute into your target area, landmarks are fairly easy to spot (once you know what to look for, anyway) and you can even see enemies scurrying about like little ants, indicating that this area would be a bad place to land. Trust me on that one.

Since you are smack dab in the middle of WWII, the areas that you will be landing in and fighting around will be torn, tattered and fairly dirty. As you enter buildings, you'll see overturned furniture, bottles and glasses laying on the ground and books scattered about. This gives it a bit of realism, almost as though people were disrupted in the middle of daily life and had to flee - as they truly must have been.

As you play, your cohorts in battle will shout various things such as "Nice shootin' Travers!" and you will get sick of hearing them berate you for taking so long to get to their locations. But, in general, the dialogue adds a bit of flavor and does not grate on one's nerves.

The soundtrack, as usual, is perfect for this type of game, blending sweeping, orchestral overtures with rousing battle tunes when things heat up. Medal of Honor soundtracks have always been excellent at drawing the player in and Medal of Honor: Airborne is certainly no exception.

You take on the role of Boyd Travers, Private First Class of the 82nd Airborne Division, as they parachute into the enemies' strongholds and literally turn the tide of the war. Each time you begin a level or die and come back, you will parachute in (well, almost every time). At first, this threw me because it felt like I wasn't making any progress, but in actuality I was ticking objectives off in the menu, I just hadn't noticed. RTFM, I say to my own self.

So you parachute in, using the plumes of green smoke as indicators of where to safely land. As I mentioned earlier, getting creative with landings can be hazardous to your health. Of course, there are also Skill Drops, key landing locations that get recorded in your stats if you pull them off. As far as landings in general, your goal is to have a flared landing by flaring your chute right before you hit the ground. Screw up and you have a botched landing, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attack, if you landed in a non-safe area, especially. A greased landing is basically hitting the ground running.

Once on the ground, you'll meet up with your squad and go kick some enemy ass in the typical MOH fashion. Depending on your weapons selection before the mission, you'll have various tools of destruction at your disposal. The more you use particular weapons, the better you get at them - yes, I know that's obvious, but what I really mean is that your weapons will be upgraded. Say you use your rifle to make an amazing headshot from long range. Then boom, in cinematic and blurred fashion, your weapon is upgraded and now loads faster or has an upgraded scope, etc. Of course, you'll have pistols, machine guns, various grenades and shotguns also at your disposal.

There are six missions to complete and each is rather long and arduous. Let's just say that there is a lot of gameplay here and more. I've played every Medal of Honor game to date and beaten almost every one of them, but this one is going to take some time. But more on that in difficulty.

Medal of Honor: Airborne also has a multiplayer component to it. Jump on Xbox Live and live out WWII from the comfort of your own living room. These people who play Airborne on Live pull no punches. Although I'll be the first to admit I don't play much online multiplayer at all, I got consistently owned in this game online and garnered no pleasure from multiplayer. And yes, I am really quite skilled in the single player experience. So join a multiplayer game if you like getting capped by campers on a regular basis.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Medal of Honor: Airborne is a tough game, even on the Normal difficulty, although Casual and Expert are also there for your tweaking pleasure. The A.I. is sharp, although not brilliant all the time, and you'll need to be on your toes. Since you almost always parachute in after dying, you'll need to be aware of where you make your landing, because landing smack dab in the middle of enemy soldiers will get you cut down quick!

Enemies are plentiful and will continue to spawn if you do not press forward in the mission, so standing there and picking them off one by one is not an option. It's best to stay with your group and work together to thin down the enemy troops, then make headway together, accomplishing your goals as you go.

Again, the game is tough, but war is hell! And besides, you'll definitely get your money's worth here as you won't be running through those six missions in an afternoon.

Parachute in, aim, shoot, kill, move on. That's the basic strategy for Medal of Honor: Airborne. Throughout your travels, you will get banged up, but instead of merely ducking for cover and recovering completely, they mix it up a bit by upping the challenge. Sure, you'll find random health kits here and there, but they aren't plentiful and you can't stock up on them. You have four health bars, full when you first hit the field. As you get injured, your bars will deplete. However, if you notice a bar depleting and can get out of harm's way for a few seconds, that bar will fill back up. However, if it starts flashing as you are being shot and you don't duck, then it will completely deplete and you'll need a health pack to regain that bar. While not especially realistic, it is definitely more real than hiding after being shot in the head five times and completely recovering.

Speaking of cover, if you do not use cover effectively and often, you will not survive for any length of time in this game. Remember the constant enemy spawning I mentioned? Without using cover, the masses will pick you off either by bullet or grenade. Keep this in mind and live.

If you are a real superstar, you can earn awards for accomplishing certains things during battle. Goals like using all weapons in a campaign or earning a five star rating in all missions will net you some sweet medals, along with war cred.

Overall, I liked Medal of Honor: Airborne less than past iterations, but I still had fun with it. I commend the developers for trying something different with the paratrooper aspect, it just wasn't my favorite.