Michael Lum…with one’s own fingers and patience, that is.
The box art for Battlestations: Pacific. Seriously, who would put a girl’s picture on their aircraft nowadays?
We had high hopes for Battlestations: Pacific. Really, we did: the box art looked impressive, the screenshots were breathtaking and the game description written on the back of the box promised some intensive gameplay.
And the fact that it is the sequel of the already well-known Battlestations: Midway only fueled our excitement to start on the game even more. After all, who can resist the premise of reliving “some of the grandest and most critical naval battles of recent history”, especially if it involves the famed World War II era Japanese Mitsubishi Zero fighters and the SBD-Dauntless fighter planes of the Americans?
And let’s face it, the game did, for the most part, perform as it claimed to. In fact, it more than delivered on its WWII era promise, and then some.
That being said, anyone who has played Battlestations: Midway prior to Pacific should be well and fully aware of the various changes and additions that Eidos made to this sequel. But if you, like us, have not had the chance to experience Midway, fret not, because we’ll tell you just what Battlestations: Pacific has to offer.
Relive history with the Americans! Or rewrite it with the Japanese Empire! …Whatever!
Ahh, if it isn’t the good ol’ ‘choose your own path’ feature which we’ve all come to love and expect in many of today’s games.
If the era and setting of the game weren’t already obvious enough, Battlestations: Pacific takes the player back into the historical battles fought between the United States of America and the Japanese Empire during WWII. Unlike its predecessor, in which only the US-led campaign was playable, Eidos apparently decided to add more depth into Pacific by featuring an additional Japanese campaign alongside the usual US campaign.
Been there, done that: the whole ‘choose-your-own-path’ gimmick has been a mainstay in many games, but we’d rather stay on history’s side on this one and gun us down some Zero Fighters.
Naturally, both campaigns will feature different scenarios: selecting to play the historically accurate US Campaign will put the player in charge of the Allied Fleet, which had just recently claimed total victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy after destroying all of their aircraft carriers and Zero Fighters and must now move to wrest control of the Pacific back from the Japanese.
On the other hand, choosing to play the newly included Japanese Campaign puts the player back into the surprise attack of Japanese forces on Pearl Habour, followed by a series of what-if missions and scenarios that might have happened if things had gone according to plans made by the Japanese Forces.
That being said, we preferred to play as the Americans, if only because of the the twisted pleasure we derived from giving the Japanese their well-deserved historical ass-whopping.
Naval battle takes on a totally new definition
When we first saw the box art we instantly thought that Battlestations: Pacific was some kind of an aerial dogfight game based on a WWII theme. After all, gracing the box’s front cover was an intense scene of both American and Japanese aircraft literally blasting the s*** out of each other with machine-gun fire, while destroyers and aircraft carriers sit in the vast ocean like…sitting ducks.
In fact, we even thought we were proven correct when the first mission we played on the US campaign started off with one helluva cinematic dogfight between the…what else…Dauntless and the Japanese Zero fighters. However, that was as far as being correct we went.
Davy Jones is going to have a hard time cleaning up his locker once we are done with sishkaboob-ing those destroyers.
The real fun of Pacific comes after clearing the mindless first mission: from this point onwards, the game starts introducing other playable units. For the second mission, we had the opportunity to control the USS San Francisco along with her 8″ artillery guns, which we made good use of by shelling down wave after wave of Japanese destroyers. This is also where the other aspects of game control come in: from time to time various instructions and orders may be issued, requiring the player to switch from being a trigger-happy mass murderer into that of a cool-headed commander’s role, deploying various aircraft squadrons and destroyers and even splitting one’s fleet in 2 different directions to ensure maximum carnage and minimal damage to one’s own naval forces. The best part of it all is that Eidos has taken pains to ensure that such frequent gameplay switching was made as non-intrusive as possible. Changing our gameplay style according to the situation certainly didn’t require any extra attention, meaning that the transition was mostly seamless.
Still, as much as we liked this dynamic gameplay style, it smacks of nostalgia, especially since this concept is not new at all: Incoming, a game produced by RAGE almost a decade ago, had the exact same concept as Battlestations: Pacific, where the unit being played changes every scenario, and every one awhile, the game would forcibly trigger a scene where the player also takes the role of a commander, deploying units all over the field to take down certain objectives. The only difference is that Incoming had a futuristic ‘Alien vs Humans’ theme, while Pacific takes place during WWII.
Still, when you put that minor detail aside, the gameplay between both titles is just too similar for comfort.
Let’s all fly…straight into the waters.
If there’s one aspect of the game which we could not appreciate no matter how hard we tried to, it is the clunky controls which the game implements, especially when the game shifts into dogfight (aka aerial combat) mode.
While we understand that piloting a combat aircraft, a submarine, or even a destroyer-class vessel may not be the easiest thing in the real world, we were somewhat disappointed that this difficulty had been carried over into virtual reality. Granted, it’s all in the name of realism, but for most people who have never played a similar game, especially dogfight games, it’s nothing short of a challenge just to get the metallic bird staying up in the air, let alone gun down any enemy aircraft. In fact, we crashed 7 Wildcats by simply diving nose-first into the ocean after we somehow managed to stall them while in mid-air.
Only 8 seconds into the game and our Wildcat was already doomed for a watery end, no thanks to the less-than-friendly controls.
Suffice to say, the controls really ruined most of the experience for us, especially when the first mission is already that of an aerial dogfight. Experienced players may probably be able to take to the skies without much effort, but for newbies like us, the steep learning curve will probably negate most of the initial ‘wow’ factor, especially when we almost failed to clear the first mission on ‘rookie’ difficulty.
On a much lighter note, at least we now know that the whole lot of us were not meant to be pilots. (That’s probably why we ended up as writers.)
WWII never looked prettier
Graphics are another of the game’s strong points. While we did not mention anything about its visuals, suffice to say that this is one good looking game, where both metal and water look like the real thing, albeit with a little more spit and polish than their real-world counterparts: sparks fly when bullets collide with planes or ships, the resulting fireball from an explosion is a sight to behold, and when playing in missions where the player takes control of a submarine, you’ll actually be able to see marine plant life.
And considering that, for this level of detail and realism, it demands far lesser than what Crysis does (it will play fine on a GeForce 6800 or a Radeon 1800 and a Pentium 4 with 3GHz or equivalent), this means that gamers with less-powerful machines do not have to miss out on the fun as well.
Battlestations: Pacific – hit or miss?
Actually, we were almost unable to even install the game: for some unexplainable reason, the installer kept freezing on launch.
Fortunately, after a quick reboot, the installer proceeded without any further hiccups, and we soon had Battlefield: Pacific up and running as it should be. While it’s quite disconcerting that a game which we just opened would fail to initialize properly on its first launch, we figure that it’s probably an isolated incident that does not warrant any loss of sleep.
That aside, there are many things to like about Battlestations: Pacific, even though it feels like a modern day rendition of Incoming. The gameplay mode of switching between multiple playable units and taking on the role of a commander as and when needed is something which we all love, and it will only get better when it is implemented in a way that does not needlessly interfere with the gaming experience.
The fact that the game looks great also is a huge plus, considering that its minimum requirements are fairly low by today’s standards, even for this kind of detail. However, we really had a bone to pick with the control system, which we felt was needlessly complex for beginner players just looking for some fun and to blast some ships and airplanes down into the bottom of the ocean.
But if you are willing to look past the issue of the ‘not-for-beginners’ control system, then there is no reason why you should give this game a miss at all. Just like Yoda always said, “Patience, young padawan”, all it needs is just some getting used to the controls and the game suddenly starts to become that much more appealing. Now, thanks to Master Yoda’s advice, we can get past the first US mission by losing only 4 planes instead of 7 after a week’s worth of gaming.