Airborne Ranger

The Good
A "stealth" shooter, where emphasis is on avoiding enemy detection (even if it's just 2D sprites), this game is very different from your typical game. Distract enemies by using timed explosives or rockets, manage your supplies carefully to last through the entire map. The "career" is very nicely done, as the missions tie together. If one of your rangers were captured (ran out of ammo and surrounded), another ranger may get a POW rescue mission which can recover that ranger!

The Bad
The missions are a bit repetitive, some of the missions are really hard as you run into robot tanks, flame throwers, etc. where one shot and you're dead, no mid-game saves, etc.

The Bottom Line
Airborne Ranger is the earliest tactical shooter, long before Rainbow Six reinvented the genre in 3D. As a ranger, your job is to infiltrate enemy territory in parachute, glide to a landing without alerting enemies, then sneak through the many defenses (pill boxes, patrols, concertina wires, etc.), killing the enemy if necesary, accomplish your mission (which could be steal documents, demolition, take pictures of new enemy jet, capture, rescue POW, and more), and be extracted. The graphics are rather plain 2D, as this game is long before the advent of 3D graphics. Yet the action holds up quite well, as you tensely wait for the enemy patrol to walk by before you continue on your way, staying out of site, only use your weapons when absolutely necesary. You have your trusty Ka-bar knife, CAR-15, demolition charges, and even LAW rockets. You also have first aid kits to heal wounds. While not quite "one shot and you're dead", you can only take three hits, which means death CAN come swiftly when they do. As you sneak through the enemy territory you may run into some supplies dropped by earlier flights, which adds to the fun factor, as you had to choose where to drop those supplies. The game is a lot of fun then, and it's still a lot of fun now, and nothing has really came close (except Rainbow Six, but in a different way).

The Good
Airborne Ranger is an interesting game with varied gameplay. It's an early attempt at creating a military-themed action game that incorporates elements of stealth (don't worry action fans; in some missions you can still live out your Rambo fantasies). Compared with popular arcade shooters of that era like Commando, 1942 and Ikari Warriors Airborne Ranger offers infinitely more gameplay options & variation. For example, a typical mission in Airborne Ranger consists of 3 phases:

1. Outfitting your supply pods. In this section you select which weapons you put in your 3 supply pods depending on the mission briefing you've read earlier. For example if a mission is very tough you can decide to include extra first aid packets that heal you. Each type of weapon has it's own amount of weight. A LAW rocket has a weight of 6, which is six times as much as the weight of a carbine mag. A supply pod can contain up to 21 weight units so you need to make some trade-offs.
2. Dropping your supply pods & parachuting into enemy territory. You pilot a V-22 Osprey plane over the mission map and decide where to drop your pods. For instance if you decide to avoid combat in the early stages and want to complete your objectives as fast as possible you may want to drop your pods in the top part of the map (this is the area where you actually have to complete your objectives). This means you don't carry a lot of ammo (= weight) with you in the early stages and you can run for long periods of time. On the other hand, if you want to engage in combat early you must spread out your supply pods. Note that there's also a maximum to the amount of weight you can carry so it's useless to pick up all the supply pods immediately, you would only waste ammo. The V-22 Osprey flies over the map only once and you don't get to see the map in advance so you'll have to improvise. Be sure not to drop your pods on a structure, a minefield or into a lake or it is lost. Finally you need to jump out yourself at the bottom part of the level.
3. The actual mission. The missions have all kinds of objectives like: photographing an experimental aircraft, freeing hostages, knocking out enemy enemy radar, capturing an enemy officer etc. In some missions you need to keep a low profile; you run from trench to trench using the time you spend in a trench to regain your breath. In other missions you must create a lot of damage by blowing up bunkers & special structures and killing soldiers. After your mission you'll need to go to the pick-up point. You can decide your own route through the level but be sure to be at the pick-up point before the timer reaches zero or the plane leaves without you and you'll be M.I.A. (another ranger can later liberate you by performing a "Free the P.O.W.'s" mission). The missions take place in 3 different settings: the desert, an arctic setting and a temperate setting. In the temperate setting you can hide underwater, in the arctic setting you can lure enemy soldiers onto unstable patches of ice; so the terrain is somewhat interactive. Moreover there are multiple maps for each mission (or they are randomly generated). You don't have to play the missions in a particular order unless you select the campaign mode.

Other noteworthy gameplay elements:

• If you’re wounded (or carry a lot of ammo), you can't run very far before running out of stamina.
• In some missions you can kill an enemy soldier and wear his uniform.
• Use time bombs for delayed destruction.
• You can decide how far you want to throw a grenade by holding down the fire button for varying periods of time.
• You can dodge enemy bullets by crawling through trenches.

I wouldn't call the graphics spectacular, but they do the job. Supposedly the game supports the MCGA graphics mode, but I could only get the EGA mode to work. Airborne Ranger doesn't have Soundblaster support, so I'm glad there isn't any music.The amount of sound effects is minimal but every one of them is functional. For instance, you can stop and listen for footsteps to know whether an enemy soldier is near.

**The Bad**
It is of course unfair to compare this game with recent entries in the stealth genre like Splinter Cell or Thief 2, but when you do this you'll see that the whole stealth element isn't implemented very well in Airborne Ranger. Because of the amount of (infinitely spawning ) soldiers in each level, it's virtually impossible to remain unnoticed. Even when I used my knife, which is of course the weapon that creates the least amount of noise, to kill them it seemed I ran into one every fifteen seconds. I don't think I ever completed a mission in which I killed less than 35 soldiers.

• The campaign mode lacks a decent ending. You just play the twelve available missions one after another without any reward. You do get another promotion but nothing special happens.
• On the two (out of four) difficulty settings the game is impossibly to beat.
• It's rather silly, but a small desert bush can block an incoming LAW rocket.

**The Bottom Line**
Join the U.S. special forces and perform all kinds of missions behind enemy lines. I may not be the first stealth game (that honor probably goes to the original Castle Wolfenstein), but nonetheless Airborne Ranger is one of the pioneers of the genre. Because of it's diversity it's still damn fun to play too, even though it's over fifteen years old.

The Good
This was such a great game. You begin by dropping supplies over enemy territory and then parachuting out. From there you have limited supplies and often limited time to complete mission objectives.

One of the great features was the diversity of missions, stealing information, sabotage, diversion. Although the map changed very little, different objectives required different playing methods. In some levels you had to avoid enemies and in others you could be Rambo.

The Bad
If this game had been designed today, the different levels would have been tied together by some narrative link. There was no story in the game, but back then it didn't matter.

The Bottom Line
A thoughtful war game with emphasis on stealth and concealment.