Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault for Windows

It's getting to the point where WWII shooters are becoming so overdone and cliche that it takes a lot to make one stand out. After all, there are only so many ways a game designer can repackage the Normandy invasion. It was the MOH franchise that really began the WWII-shooter blitzkrieg with its groundbreaking visuals and lovingly choreographed battle scenes, which makes its Pacific Assault expansion fill some pretty big shoes.

The twist in this game, if you can call it a twist, is that the action takes place in the oft-neglected Pacific theater where American marines and navy ships did battle with the proud, suicidal troops of the Japanese Empire. While making the most of this new scenery, the game designers also had to preserve the central features that made MOH so successful in the first place. Namely, a focus on cinematic battles with a near-Hollywood pacing.

Your character is named Tommy Conlin, and you join him just as he is entering boot-camp shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The inevitable training missions are done under the watchful eye of a drill-instructor modeled directly on R. Lee Ermy's character in Full Metal Jacket...without quite as sharp of an edge. His lines are well scripted and delivered, and it makes the boring act of learning how to shoot/plant explosives/jump/crawl a bit easier to to stomach. Soon, you are being posted in Pearl Harbor on a day when Japanese zeroes decide to stage a historic sneak-attack...

The scene in Pearl Harbor is one of the showpieces of the game, and it is very impressive. Although you do have some shooting to do, the focus in this scene is simply to enjoy the moment and watch all hell break loose as Japanese planes dive through clouds of smoke, strafing troops and blowing up ships. There is a nice little episode where you have to rescue trapped sailors in a crippled battleship before the game settles into more typical shooter territory.

You eventually find yourself working with a small squad of marines whom you first met in bootcamp, preparing to stage a diversionary attack on a small occupied island. Your companions have distinct personalities, and the game does a nice job of giving them believable voices. One of your companions is a medic who, unlike previous shooters, plays a vital role during the battles. There are very few "healing" packs to be found in this title...rather, you have to call for the medic when you get shot and hope he gets to you in time before the lights go out. You get four full-heals between automatic save points, and you have to guard these carefully. This system of healing is a nice touch, and it is chilling to find yourself lying on the ground, calling for a medic, only to have a Japanese soldier show up and put a pistol-round into your head first.

The combat in MOHPA is certainly different than what I have found in other titles. The fighting in the Pacific was up-close and personal, filled with bayonet charges and ambushes among the dense jungle foliage. The Japanese troops you fight against are much more likely to stage human-wave attacks than their german allies, and you truly feel a sense of panic as those screaming soldiers come running at you with their bayonets held high. In fact, I have never played a shooter where there is as much hand-to-hand fighting as in this game. I use my bayonet nearly as much as my bullets...it makes for an intense and brutal experience.

There are a lot of weapons to be used, and like many shooters you can only carry two at a time. Rifles are nearly all bolt-action, forcing you to make your shots count rather than spraying all over the place. Reload times are much more realistic here than in other titles, so you often find yourself frantically reloading as an enemy soldier prepares to open up your gut with his bayonet. Hit location is very important, as your enemies can recover from a shot to the extremities or even the gut...aiming for the head is vital in some places of the game. I also found that aiming was less forgiving in this game than in other titles...it is very easy to miss if you aren't careful.

The graphics in this game are excellent. The jungles are rendered in stunning detail, with nice lighting effects and well designed obstacles. Using the terrain and foliage for cover is a vital part of survival, though the computer soldiers often show a surprising abilty to see through tree-trunks and thick vegetation. The demands on your system, however, are steep. The game is designed to be run on a Pentium 4 chipset, which I do not have. This means that I have to turn off a lot of the bells and whistles just to make it run at all. The game runs decently most of the time, but there are some crowded battles where things get laggy. I've also noticed a problem with non-responsive controls which may also be due to my slow system.

The audio in the game is truly spectacular. Each gun has a distinctive sound and explosions have a good force behind them. Dialogue, while a bit repetitive during firefights, is well acted and contributes to the atmosphere.

The only major flaw in this game is with the issue of load times. Simply put, the load times between scenes are almost intolerably long. This not only happens when you first load an episode...even quickloading after you die can take several minutes. I would blame my slow system, but this has been reported by people with computers running more than twice as fast as my own. Evidently, it is an issue with the game on all computers and sucks quite a bit of the joy out of things. It is particularly frustrating when you hit a difficult bit of fighting where you may have to reload five or six times before you can get through to the next sequence of events. There is simply no excuse for it, and it takes a full star away from what should be a four star rating.