Heroes of the Pacific – Review

Sometimes you get a title handed to you with a sad little face saying ‘please review this for me’, so you do it and you’re pleasantly surprised, because most of the time when this happens it’s for a game you’d never look at yourself. This is how Heroes of the Pacific found it’s way to me, a title I would NEVER have bought because I just think there are way … did I say way? WAY too many War sims on the market, I find them all a little boring really.

What you’re looking at here is an arcade flight sim set in World War II that enables you to upgrade your plane or get new ones dependent on your actions and what game setting you play it on. You play as a male pilot (of course) and there’s the usual boo hoo war story that attempts to draw you into the story, perhaps it will. The main section of the game is the campaign mode and sees you flying in various settings including Pearl Harbour and Iwo Jima. Before getting into the campaign however it’s time for the training and I have to say that despite being a fairly skilful gamer overall I truly had major problems even making it through the training section of this title, to the point where it actually became very frustrating as I flew out of range, not high enough or stalled time and again. For me this section edged away from the arcade experience and into the ‘annoying sim’ category. My advice? Jump straight into the game and don’t bother training, you’ll have far more fun and far less frustration because this is where the fun is to be found. There’s a difficulty setting also, so if you like it a little easier you can have it that way, or difficult obviously. A negative aspect of gameplay, the fact it isn’t as free roaming as it should be, fly out of bounds of ‘the action’, even if you’re happily strafing an enemy at the time and you’ll be sternly told to return to the action and a cut scene pops up to show you that’s just what you’re doing, you lose what you were doing and restart facing the direction the game thinks you should be.

Sound is good, it’s all very in feeling with the era and I half expected the Andrews Sisters to blurt out a song at any moment. The plane noises, rat-a-tat of the mounted machine guns and general ambiance of the title is all fairly well done, although some of the voiceovers edged over from well done to absolute annoyance. For the deaf or hard of hearing gamer there’s no subtitle option which could be a problem in the game, although overall it should be fairly playable.

Visuals are all expected to be top chop on a full budget release such as this and for the most part the flying visuals of Heroes of the Pacific are well done, I particularly liked the speed blur when using the boost control. The planes are nicely modeled and the clouds are really well done, but it still doesn’t quite do it, although there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this visually, it’s missing the OMG factor of some other titles. The graphics are good enough for the job though.

Gender doesn’t come into it, of course you are a male pilot, this is the war and you’re in the forces, as with all titles in this Era, they can dramatize stories, add absolute rubbish to make the story better but they never put a cool female pilot in the cockpit or in the uniform, it’s a rather strange occurrence given this is a game and therefore ‘not real’, I understand the need for a little historic realism but for Christmas sake this isn’t reality so don’t play that card and say ‘their were no female pilots’, we all did history at school and we all know their WERE some great female war heroes, we also know that this is a game and giving the player the choice is nice, we know it’s a game, if we didn’t all those right wing numpties who scream holy blue murder about our pastime might actually have some argument.

Overall I found Heroes of the Pacific to be an above average title that could have been superb but missed the plane ever so slightly. I truly think if only the developers had made parts of this simpler it would have been pick up and play joy for all. It’s not that it’s overtly difficult, more that certain aspects for this particular player were fraught with frustration at the way the game worked, spending an age on training that really did little to aid me in the actual game for example. If you’re a fan of this sort of thing you will enjoy this title, being able to control the planes with differing difficulty levels is also an added bonus because it means the hard nuts who like things more sim than simple will also find something here. Overall it wasn’t for me but that doesn’t mean it won’t be for you. A highly respectable and barnstorming 3.5 out of 5.

Review by Kent

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