Medal Of Honor: Airborne

Release Date: Sept. 4 (PC and Xbox 360), November (PS3)
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3
Developer: EA Los Angeles (formerly DreamWorks Interactive)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Description: the 11th Medal of Honor game (boy, I’m getting old!) lands soon and takes the WWII FPS series in a new direction. Medal of Honor: Airborne focuses exclusively on paratrooper units in the European theater, from Italy and France to the Netherlands and Germany. The single player campaign puts players in the role of PFC Boyd Travers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division. The game features many historic battles from WWII and culminates with Operation Varsity in Germany, which was the largest airdrop in military history.

Each mission begins with the player inside a C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft; the actual paratrooper drop is a key element in the game since players will be able to target drop zones and control where they land. So you can choose to land in the comfortable confines of a pre-determined drop zone or you can break off from the rest of the division and sneak behind enemy lines. And the best part about MoH: Airborne is that it breaks away from non-linear gameplay; there are no start or end points to missions, leaving players to roam around mission areas in a sandbox-esque fashion.

The online multiplayer mode supports up to 12 players for Xbox Live and an undetermined number of players for the PC. Multiplayer mode allows players to selected either Axis or Allied forces, and there are six maps to choose from, including three that are not used in the single-player campaign. There are three different modes: "airborne teammatch," where Axis forces defend against Allied paratroopers; "regular teammatch," where Allied forces spawn on the ground and a third objective-based mode similar to capture the flag. Airborne should reinvigorate the MoH series and the WWII genre, which has gotten stale recently.

PC Requirements: minimum requires include 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 6600GT (some slower GPUs with higher model number’s also not recommended) or ATI Radeon X1300PRO, and 128MB of video RAM. For Vista, a 3.0-GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 3800+.

Medal of Honor: Airborne begins in the plane with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Heavenly Sword

Release Date: Sept. 12
Platforms: PlayStation 3
Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Description: Heavenly Sword was originally intended to be a PlayStation 3 launch title last November. Delayed for nearly a year, the game underwent a bit of a makeover - the recent demo doesn’t look much like the build from E3 2006, and that may be a good or bad thing depending on whom you ask. Whatever the case, Heavenly Sword is one of the more well-known PS3 exclusives and one of the few titles Sony can pin its hopes on to spur sales for the new console.

Nariko of Heavenly Sword.

The game follows Nariko, a red-haired heroine who belongs to a clan of warriors dedicated to protecting the Heavenly Sword, a magical weapon of immense power that slowly drains the life force of any mortal who uses it. When the power-hungry King Botan (played by Andy Serkis, who also played Gollum in "Lord of the Rings") destroys the clan and tries to steal the Heavenly Sword, Nariko takes the weapon and embarks on a mission to defeat Botan. The game has been compared, both favorably and unfavorably, to God of War and has even earned the nickname "Goddess of War." So besides the next-generation graphics of the PS3, what makes Heavenly Sword different from the God of War games? Not a whole lot, actually, but there are some key features.

The most notable difference is that the game’s combat controls incorporate the PS3 Sixaxis controller’s motion sensors. There is also the "aftertouch" feature that allows players to pick up a variety of items, including fallen enemies, and hurl them at attackers. Sadly, there is no multiplayer mode.

Ninja Theory plans to turn Heavenly Sword into a trilogy, and hopefully there will be enough fresh combat gameplay to justify that.