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Medal of Honor: Airborne
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 7th September 2007
Technical Mumbo-Jumbo I
It always depresses me a little to write this part of the review and it always hammers home how much of an aesthetically-motivated world we live in. You’d think hardcore gamers, many of whom may have grown up like me as bespectacled buffoons barely on the edge of being socially acceptable, would have learned to value gameplay experience over graphical ability.The simple fact though is that beauty matters in games and if a game doesn’t look like it is at least close to being on the cutting edge then the chances are that it won’t sell well. There are exceptions, sure, but that’s the rule.
So, how does Airborne hold up graphically? Well, the good news is that the game looks pretty damn good in some areas thanks to being based on the powerful Unreal Engine 3 – the same engine behind similarly gorgeous games such as office-favourite BioShock.
So, let’s break down the graphical options available in the game and have a look at just what you can expect to see from the game on your own PC. The graphical options are fairly limited for Airborne and, annoyingly, can only be altered from outside of the game – still, let’s look at what there is to fiddle with; model detail, texture detail, decals and post-processing effects.
Model Detail
So, let’s jump in at the top and have a look at the model detail option. Model detail can be broken down into three settings: High, Medium, Low. Ground breaking stuff already, eh?Enough with the idle chatter though, let’s look at the pictures...
Model detail high (left), medium (center) and low (right), click to enlarge
Ok, so let’s start on Low, shall we? Frankly, I think everything looks OK there, but bear in mind that we also have texture quality pushed to maximum which may have an effect. The actual model quality itself looks OK though, on both Low and Medium and there’s very little to tell them apart.
Jump up to the High setting however and the guy on the right of the picture suddenly starts to look a lot more Planet of the Apes, his entire model changing. The key here is to look at his hand, which in High Detail is now in a different shape – an indicator that his model is actually more complex and has a few more joints in it. The Low and Medium models both have identical hand positions, which would suggest that they have fewer joints in their model.
In actual gameplay, the High model is obviously most preferable no matter how mongoloid that soldier on the right may look – pushing the setting up a notch ensures better looking enemies and allies, which helps make the ragdoll deaths even more spectacular.
Texture Detail
Now we move on to the second most important graphical variable – Texture Detail. Again, there are three settings: High, Medium and Low, so let’s have a look at the screenshots shall we?
Texture Detail High (left), Medium (center) and Low (right), click to enlarge
This is more like it – a clear, definite and predictable difference between the three settings. On the High setting the textures look crisp, adding an awful lot of detail to the game when compared to the Medium and Low settings.
While the Medium setting, which is in the centre, is just about tolerable the High setting is obviously what you should be aiming for. As for the Low setting, well, that’s best left alone I think.