As Shallow As Pearl Harbor
Well you can just not in a realistic fashion.
I bought Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers on a bargain bin deal, I'd wanted to buy it last year but knowing my budget didn't call for a $50 game I'm glad I waited heres why:
While the graphics are pretty and the reflective shading is wonderful against deep waters and white skys it doesn't make up for the poor AI design and weird physics.
The difficulty level is misleading, I was no better from Rookie then I was on Ace difficulty.
When switching to another plane in your flotilla you'll notice one or two immediate things, One) half the time if you switch into another cockpit the aircraft will be stalled and you have to hold down shift before you switch otherwise you're on the ground or underwater.
The other, the aircraft will already be crashed.
Again the AI makes no effort to make torpedo runs, dive bombs, dogfights, its a shallow AI about as Shallow as Pearl Harbor.
All of these, random plane crashes are annoying as hell and almost makes it worthless to play this game unless you really want to lose some hair.
The music, is redundantly obvious and lacks any relation to the era, at some point I got tired of the same drumroll loop that I shut off the music and played Glenn Miller in Media Player.
The game also doesn't jive well with Steam and hitting shift+tab will take you to your "Steam Friends" window.
(I needed to do this to speed up the aircraft and spot my target which I now can't do)
But It isn't impossible to finish all the missions, infact they only seem to get easier by every chapter.
The game must have been intended for arcade as it says Arcade in almost every menu. What they should have done was port it to an arcade, not consoles or PCs.
I would say for the WWII enthusiast, and the grognards out there, yeah it does an okay job of authenticity but you will get that feeling, "This game just sucks!" and there are better ways to spend your free time.
Like building a Zero Model.
I gave it a 9 for graphics but everything else crashes right underwater.