If you're a die hard MOH:AA fan like me, you might have been scouring the internet for anything that vaguely resembled trustworthy information about the Multiplayer portion of MOH: Airborne. Come on, let's face it, of course you buy a game to play it and have a good time but for long term enjoyment, Multiplayer is a must these days. For months leading up to the
My introduction to MOH: Airborne wasn't the best to say the least. Aussie users of EA Link soon discovered that after paying for the game and expecting a 7.5Gb pre-load, all they got was 211Mb of Airborne Trailers. I won't go into how frustrating rectifying this was but it was eventually achieved through some EA forum rage and help from the resident EA representative in the MOH Airborne forum. Loading the game up, you're greeted with the same menu as the demo but this one has the all important Multiplayer option. Straight away you'll face glaring issue number one, you need an EA account to play online (ala BF2). There's nothing wrong with that, given it should support stats, rankings and other vaguely interesting titbits, however, it's all gone terribly wrong before it got off the ground. You can't change your name in-game, there is no support for clan tags and if you bought it off EA Link, you're stuck with whatever username you chose to sign up to EA Link with (given that most normal names are taken, it's not uncommon to see dave8934578934787349 running around in mulitplayer matches). To add to that frustrating issue, there's no option to have the game save your login details, so every time you load the game and want to have a bash online you need to manually enter your username and password.
Once logged onto the EA servers you progress to the next multiplayer menu and those with a keen enough eye will notice something missing. Yes, there is no LAN support, nothing, I guess they expect you to start a server online and have your LAN mates use your internet connection to join your server, who knows.. Straight off the bat this has made a huge number of die-hard MOH fans cranky. Going into the Matchmaking service doesn't make things look much better either. Yes, it's only early days and it hasn't even been released everywhere, that still doesn't explain the pathetically low number of players. This afternoon (2pm or so) there were a little over 100 players online. Load up the server list and all is revealed. If you've been keeping an eye on MOH Airborne news, you'll have heard it didn't ship with dedicated server software and that one fact has delivered a stunning blow to MOH: Airborne's Multiplayer goolies. At this stage there are only player hosted servers online and the official EA estimate of a patch release with dedicated server support is September 17, remembering that there will most certainly be no possibility of ISP hosted servers until then, MP is set to be just as dudded here in Australia as it has been in the US (I guess we can rest easy with the fact that as we get the game later, we don't have to wait as long for the dedicated server support).
With so few servers up a lot are 100% full before you know it and if you join an empty one you'll have enough buddies to start having a good go soon enough. Server capacity is a max of 12 for player hosted games (it has been stated that there should be a 24 or so player max capacity with the dedicated server) and though this sounds a low number, when it's 6 a side you're never short of a good firefight. That being said, if you want a good firefight you've got to be prepared for some angry time while you're trying to join a server. Lord knows who designed the listen server setup that the player hosted games run on, all I know is it's utterly crap. Half the time you try to join a server it'll tell you it cannot connect to the host. They were nice enough to add a retry button but mash that all you want, it's futile. Click around on random servers and you'll eventually find one that might let you join. This is such an odd problem, it's not because of high ping because I've tried hosting a server for other Aussies and they can't connect to me and when they host I can connect to them, yet our servers fill up with other randoms. The last oddity you'll notice before you finally join a game is that the ping column doesn't work, all servers show a 0 ping and this also holds true for the player ping in the score list.
There are three gametypes available to play: Team Deathmatch (TDM), Airborne Team Deathmatch (ADM - Allies parachute in every repsawn) and Airborne Objective (AO - aka Capture the Flag). Also you better be prepared to be impressed and mesmerised by the massive array of six, yes six, maps in total. They are: The Hunt (Old MOH:AA Map and VERY sexy now),
With TDM, it's always great fun to mow down and be mowed down. The only major issue is the fixed spawn points on maps like
ADM turns tips the scales in the Allies favour as they parachute in every time they respawn. The biggest advantage the Allies have is the fact that they have unprecedented access to the rooftops. Unfortunately for the hapless Germans, or at least the ones I have encountered, not many players on the Axis team seem to look up and let me tell you, there's nothing sweeter than booting a guy in the back of the head as you float down. Those that do look up can sometimes be lucky enough to pick off an Allied player as they're trapped in their parachute but I've only ever been taken to about half health as a parachuting Allied player. ADM can be pretty fun as long as the Allies don't decide to mass attack German spawn. Again, there are major issues with spawn points, there can be times when 5 or 6 Allies drop into German spawn and all the Germans can do are spawn and insta-die.
OA introduces a vague objective into the fray and thankfully reduces the spawn camping issue. While the Allies still parachute in, the Axis have a good chance to command all the flags as well. Capturing the flag is as simple as standing next to it and watching your colours slowly rise to the top. So far OA seems to be the most enjoyable game type mainly because of the added action of attacking and defending objectives and the lack of spawn camping.
Little things count for me and it was a delight to discover some classic taunts have made a return (I've seen French schoolgirls shoot better!), though less in number, they're still fun. A killcam feature has also been added so no more wondering where the hell that guy was, you'll get a quick peek at your killer's hiding place in the first few seconds after your death. With that feature comes an annoying one though, as you die, the colour changes to black and white and a taunt automatically plays, there's nothing worse than being sniped repeatedly and hearing "Is that all you've got!?". Once the set number of rounds is completed, you'd think the map would restart or rotate but no, the server ends, finished, voila, just another casualty of this weirdo player hosted server shambles.
The options when you create a server are pretty simpleton. You can choose time limit, game type, map, number of rounds and whether weapon upgrades are turned on.
As far as the weapons go, the following are available for use:
So, you're probably thinking this really is sounding as devastating as getting a Celine Dion CD for your birthday. To tell you the truth, it probably will be for the first week. I've been following Airborne for months now and I have high hopes for what it can achieve Multiplayer-wise. Scarily enough, EA seems to be listening to what the plebs have to say. A whole bunch of MOHAA junkies have been working with fansites such as Planet Medal of Honor to report the myriad of bugs and issues they're not happy with. If you join one of the rare servers that fills up with polite, good old fashioned MOH:AA'ers, you can have a FANTASTIC time but at the moment those servers are extremely rare. All we can really do is wait for the dedicated server patch and that's slated for release just 4 days after the game is released in
My tip, if you liked MOH:AA and have the system to run it, you might as well invest in MOH: Airborne as there's nothing like owning it up on The Hunt. I've only seen fit to give MOH: Airborne Multiplayer a C at this stage, purely because of the lack of dedicated server support, once that appears I'd assume the overall rating would go up to a B+ to A-.
PROS:
- Classic maps The Hunt, Remagen and Destroyed Village remodelled and remastered into new age sexiness
- Diverse playing area - Rooftops, ruins and partially destroyed buildings are all accessible via parachute and even by ground based forces
- Cookable grenades - Make flushing out camping snipers so fun
- Sniper scopes - Blurry/Unfocused sniper scope feature makes sniping whores less accurate
- Ability to Ninja in via parachute and get sweet revenge on camping sniper by booting him in the back of the cranium
- Classic taunts return (I've seen French school girls shoot better!)
CONS:
- No name change or clan tag support (big uproar about this and will hopefully change in a patch)
- Can't set EA account to auto-login or remember details
- Only player hosted servers until dedicated server released September 17
- Hit and miss as to what servers you can and cannot connect to, many servers just timeout when you try to join
- Spawn camping terrible in TDM, especially on Avalanche map
- Lack of MP Maps
