High seas arcade adventure
Before I start I should say I haven't played this game online and as such this is just a review of the single player side.
The campaign mode takes you through some of the major battles of the Pacific campaign on both the Allied (the British, Dutch and Australians do make an appearance) and Japanese side with 'the chance to change the outcome of the war'. Complete with cutscenes featuring annoying voiceovers, cliched phrases etc this became very boring very quickly to me.
I expected more of a simulator feel to this and was quite disappointed for the off, the aircraft models were very simple in flight and dogfighting seems far too easy.
The system of controlling all your forces is awkward and I found myself quite often ordering flights of bombers and torpedo bombers to make simultaneous attacks upon enemy ships from multiple angles only for none of the aircraft to release weapons, that is providing they got through the flak which brings me to another pet peeve.
When deploying aircraft you get a set of 3 of whichever type and can deploy a maximum of 4 sets of 3 at once until these are destroyed/return to base. maintaining a combat air patrol of fighters to ward off incoming air attack knocks your available strike power down to 2 squadrons/6 planes with which to attack your target and with the aforementioned problem of the AI pilots not deploying their weapons before being shot down I found this incredibly irritating.
As well as the campaign there is also a skirmish mode where you can play a variety of games that I believe to be available online also. I played one type of this in which you deploy a fleet, capture some islands and whoever accumulates a set amount of points by a time limit won.
While this game was ongoing the enemy fleet attempts to wrest control of the sectors you hold. The game I played the enemy sailed a heavy cruiser and battleship straight at me which I sunk with a submarine. They then sent a heavy cruiser and a battleship straight at me which I...you get the picture!
Most of the ship-ship combat takes place at ranges of about 2km which seems very odd given the battleships involved but I suppose they have to balance the gameplay or something along those lines. I found this to be a very dull experience also, select your main guns, turn broadside on, point the crosshairs at the engine of the enemy ship...fire...ship crippled...fire at magazines...ship harmless...fire at fuel...ship ablaze...fire at will. Simples!
I found this game uninspiring, repetitive and a big disappointment, finishing on a positive note, it looks nice graphically so it's not all doom and gloom!