Let's face it, EA has milked its Medal of Honor franchise more than a freakin' dairy cow -- and with mixed success. While there have been phenomenal titles such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Medal of Honor: Frontline, there have also been less-than-stellar iterations including Medal of Honor: Vanguard and Medal of Honor: Rising Sun.

Medal of Honor: Airborne is the latest in the WWII 3-D shooter series, and it falls somewhere in the middle between the subpar and superb. It's a very good -- but not great -- game that should at least give players a few exhilarating hours of military action.

This time around you step into the combat boots of a U.S. paratrooper. 'Go! Go! Go!' are the first words you'll hear after booting up the game, as you follow fellow soldiers towards the open door of a C-47 aircraft and parachute down into hostile territory.

The first thing you'll notice about Airborne is that it's the most open-ended game in the franchise, so you can more or less land wherever you like -- be it on the ground within the safety zone marked by green smoke, or on a rooftop inside of an Axis stronghold -- and then combat the enemy troops by following one of a few paths to victory.

Compare this to past Medal of Honor games, where players are kept on a fairly tight leash with impassable obstacles or invisible walls preventing any deviation from the linear path. Along with this more open-ended environment, there is also no particular order in which objectives -- such as knocking out a Tiger Tank or a communications tower, locating POWs, or eliminating a German commander -- must be completed for each location.

The game begins with Operation Husky, where you'll drop into a Sicilian village, and ends with a climactic fight in and around a huge vertical concrete tower in Germany. In fact, the level design and mission objectives tend to get better the more you plow through the single-player campaign. As with other Medal of Honor games, most are based on real WWII locations and events, while EA says the final battle is a slight deviation, based on a little-known top-secret German weapon in production during the war.

'OK, but how about the gameplay?' you're asking. Once you're on the ground, Airborne will be familiar to previous Medal of Honor players: Skulk around from a first-person perspective; swap between guns, grenades and other found weapons; and analyze the environment to determine how to best handle the situation with help from an onscreen map that indicates where the allied (green) and enemy (red) troops are. Running into every situation with guns blazing, in plain view of the enemy troops, is not how to play this game; instead, it's key to use cover and height to your advantage, such as by crouching behind a wall or sandbags or firing off balconies and rooftops, respectively.

But you first need to make it onto the ground safely. You can steer the chute using the left analog stick and flare the chute to slow down a tad by pressing and holding the flare ('X') button. You can botch your landing if you fail to flare your chute in time, which means it takes longer for you to get up and fight. A 'greased' landing is when you approach the drop zone at a steep angle, hitting the ground running, so to speak.

Be forewarned that landing outside of the green area means you might get smoked by axis troops within a matter of seconds, so be sure to find hiding spots and use stealth when working towards completing your objectives. If you've finished the single-player story, though, and want to give it another spin, attempting to land outside of safe zones will certainly add a challenge for seasoned gamers.

When it comes to customization options, players can choose the weapon load-out to suit their objectives (or personal preferences), and even unlock weapon upgrades over time by performing impressive moves like taking down four or five enemies at a time, executing a skilled headshot from afar, and so on. This adds an interesting role-playing game element to the action. Upgrades include an unlockable alternate fire, faster reloads and bigger clips. You can only carry two weapons at the same time in this game, in addition to your pistol, which isn't that effective in a shoot-out but doesn't require reloading.

Keep in mind, however, that some weapons have some serious recoil, so after a shot or two from, say, your machine-gun, the weapon will tilt upwards, thus making it harder to aim until you readjust. Sure, this might be realistic, but it takes away from the fun factor, and seems to be worse than in past Medal of Honor games and other WWII shooters, including the Call of Duty franchise.

Along with the eight- to 10-hour single-player campaign, Medal of Honor: Airborne offers a handful of multiplayer modes for up to 12 players over the Internet, such as Team Deathmatch (choose Axis or Allied team; the team with the highest score at the end of the time limit, wins) and Objective Airborne (choose your team, then fight the enemy to capture and hold three flags on the map). Surprisingly, given how popular the Medal of Honor franchise is, it was difficult to find Airborne players willing to join a team game over the PlayStation 3's online network.

Many gamers have complained about Airborne's serious recoil -- which might be accurate -- but adds frustration when your weapon is facing the sky after a couple of hits. This problem exists on all three versions of the game: Xbox 360, PC and PS3.

But the PS3 has another issue not found on the other platforms: frequently horrible frame rates that can drag the action to a standstill when there's a lot happening on the screen at once -- and in this game, that's often. The poor frame rate can be detected minutes into the first mission, when you approach three or more enemies on city streets.

If you can get past these shortcomings, Medal of Honor: Airborne is an engrossing military action experience -- especially in the second half of the story and online modes. Sure, the WWII action genre is oversaturated, in part because EA continues to crank out a few of these shooters a year, but this proves to be one of the more interesting and non-linear versions in recent memory. Fans of the series shouldn't hesitate to buy this for their collection, while those unsure if it's for them should at least rent it for the weekend and 'jump' in.

This review was based on a retail copy provided by the publisher.