10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
A Difficult Game to Enjoy
Date of Review: Aug 5, 2005
The Bottom Line: A hard game to recommend, as the bad sides are more frequent than that of the positive ones.
The market is crowded with tons of WWII and Vietnam War games with only a few sticking out. EA s Medal of Honor series is one of them which have stood out for its amazing set pieces, gameplay, graphics and overall polish. The latest entry in the MoH series Pacific Assault is a solid game even though it does suffer from some serious problems.
Pacific Assault ditches the European theater covered in other games in the series (and the WWII subgenre) and places players in the Pacific as a Marine named Tommy Conlin. The game starts out with Tom heading out to Tarawa Atoll, where he is knocked out during a fight on the beachhead. This is where the actual game begins as his memories of boot camp kick in. You, the player, are then taken through a tutorial mission in a boot camp setting the stage for the rest of the game by using nice cut-scenes and a friendly atmosphere as you ll be shipped out with your friends (your squad) and start your first mission.
The very first mission is set at Pearl Harbor and will impress the heck out of anyone. As the infamous attack begins, you ll have to make your way down the pier and shoot down Japanese fighters from an attack boat. Scripted sequences kick in as you go through the mission, giving the game a truly cinematic feel...as if you were actually there. Unfortunately, this is where it ends and the game shifts it focus. From then on, you ll have to make your way through jungle-based combat at Makin Atoll and Guadalcanal, with the occasional camps and villages to freshen things up. But they really do not help much and gives the game a repetitive feel as the only thing you ll be doing is killing loads of Japanese soldiers over and over again. It does get better near the end but that s about it.
Missions in the game vary a lot they range from saving downed pilots, search and destroy, planting explosives and clearing a location, among other things. One of the missions will also let you fly a WWII fighter plane to take out a Japanese aircraft carrier. The only problem with this mission was that the control of the plane was a bit too tight and it felt extremely weird and disorienting. Even with these problems, the mission was fun and more vehicles should have been put into the game.
Pacific Assault brings squad-based combat to the series you ll be fighting alongside a squad to whom you can issue basic commands (advance, retreat, give covering fire). The squad members are pretty intelligent on their own, even though they leave most of the killing to you and will often compliment you on your kills. This can get a bit repetitive and odd at times because they might also compliment you even if you had not shot anyone (bug?). Their character developments are also handled quite well as they become your best friends over the course of the game.
The most important member in your squad is the corpsman, who performs the role of a Medic. Pacific Assault, unlike the previous entries in the series, does not require scavenging for health packs; instead it requires you to rely on the corpsman. This guy will heal you four times per level, when the H key is pressed, requiring proper strategizing ahead as it will disable you for quite a few seconds.
Over 30 weapons are available in the game, all of which are from that era. The weapons are relatively weak and reloading them can be a pain in the a$$. It s because they take up a lot of time for reloading, during which enemies can easily take you down. This is also where the frustration of the game kicks in the loading times. No matter how fast your PC is (mine is a 2.8 GHz system), it will take quite some time to load a game any game. This problem is elevated by the fact that the enemy AI is extremely aggressive and cheats.
Just imagine you are hiding behind foliage in the jungle and suddenly out of nowhere you are being shot. Seems like the AI can see through trees, grass and whatnot; adding to the frustration. Up front, they almost always attack in groups, overwhelming you in numbers. This certain aggressiveness is ruthless as it will take you out very frequently sending you to the main screen wasting your time away looking at the load screens. Sometimes they just stand in the open and get shot easily, without looking for any sort of cover or backtracking.
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault also features multiplayer, although it can be easily overlooked thanks to its frustrating but fun single-player campaign. Three modes are available free for all (deathmatch), team deathmatch and, a newcomer to the series, Invader. The first two are self-explanatory, while the third one pits the Japanese against Americans over eight huge maps with different objectives. One team will play the offense and will try to finish the objectives, while the other plays defense. Players can choose from four player classes such as corpsman or engines, with other features built into the game to promote teamwork. Unfortunately, I have not been able to play any multiplayer games and so cannot comment on the gameplay.
The graphics in Pacific Assault is simply breathtaking if your machine can run it that is. The world in Pacific Assault is brought alive by its excellent engine it has hi-resolution models, lighting effects, ragdoll physics, (so called) advanced AI and more but it s the art direction that really brings its world alive. The jungles, which get repetitive, have amazing detail and objects throughout the world have good detail as well. For example, bullets will fly through leaves, tear down branches and leave bullet marks in metal and whatnot. An excellent screen blurring feature has been applied to mounted guns (when firing) but running the game with all these details will take quite a heavy-duty computer to perform, as most of the special effects aren t available in the lower quality settings.
Sound is also done well as the first mission (Pearl Harbor) will showcase the sound effects in its full glory. Men screaming, bombs dropping, planes flying overhead, bullets going past your head all these are present in the game, giving you a sense of immersion in the world. Unlike other games where the foreign enemy soldiers talk in English , Pacific Assault features Japanese soldiers who talk and shout in their own language (if you were wondering it is Japanese) adding to the immersion. Just imagine yourself being attacked by a Japanese soldier with a bayonet while he s screaming something (obscene?) in Japanese. You ll find it very frequent, albeit frustrating, in this game. The musical score is also done well while the voices and sound effects are some of the best I ve heard in FPS games.
Overall, Pacific Assault is a hard game to recommend. On one hand the game has excellent graphics, high production values and superb set pieces. On the other hand the long loading times, coupled with the aggressive AI can be very frustrating alongside the repetitive jungle levels. In no way is Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault a bad game though, its good sides far outweigh its bad sides but the negative points are a lot more frequent and in your face, making it difficult to really enjoy this game.
