I recently played through Medal of Honor: Airborne on my PC, and it was a pretty decent game. In fact, it has been the best MOH in quite a while. Pacific Assault was pretty good, but that came out quite a while a go. As for consoles, Airborne was the first major release since European Assault. While "open environment" combat is interesting, you still feel that you have to go to certain locations in order to complete the job. I wish EA would go back and do a game similar to MOH: Frontline. That was the WWII game that got the ball rolling, and turned the WWII genre into the powerhouse genre that it is today.

What was so great about Frontline? Well, the action was basically non-stop, but the kind of action and the surroundings varied. Whether it was sneaking around in the Manor House or fighting on a bridge, the combat never seemed to get stale. Also, the storyline in each mission varied as well, and the main story helped to move things along. Looking back, "timed events" were what made the game so good. Developers are now focusing on spontaneus events that the player controls and making everything open world. While that works and is fun, there is something about timed events and a storyline that can add to the fun of the game. In Frontline, you were able to infiltrate a bar and start a fight. While this was scripted, it was no less entertaining. With controlled events, developers are more able to depict what works and what does not.

MOH: Frontline, in my opinion, was the height of the MOH series as well as WWII games in general. It may not have been totally realistic seeing one man do everything, but it was still fun. Games that focus on realism are also fun, but games that take realism to the edge are even better. One man going through an entire German base and then stealing a plane? Not too realistic, but a whole lot of fun to play. If EA can capture the Frontline experience and add next gen graphics to it, it could add a breath of fresh air in series as well as the genre as a whole.