Amazing that this was actually released as a full game for a wide number of platforms.
Yes, the single player campaign is shorter than two hours. I was on a level, and they kept making it sound like the last level, and I kept thinking, "This CAN'T be the last level."
BUT IT FRIGGIN' WAS!
I didn't even bother to try the multiplayer before I finished the single player campaign, for some reason. When I did try it, nobody at all was playing online. That might be just because it's brand-new, but in a few weeks it'll be because it's a big piece of crap. There's nothing special about the multiplayer. It supports a couple of standard gametypes with a maximum of twelve players.
The single player campaign is loaded with blatant problems. TWICE, the player charges a beach with no other Americans on it, and the boats the American("s") run out of to charge the beach are the same boats the Japanese use on the first level. These boats also never move at any point, they just sit still with the door closed and then open suddenly to make it seem like they were actually ever moving.
The AI are just awful. Not only are they awful, but they have pre-defined targets. Sometimes, allies will refuse to shoot a huge group of certain enemies, and vice versa. Most often, enemies will just completely ignore the player's teammates and instead just gun for the player, even though the player's teammates are shooting them up just fine. I'm not sure why they decided that sometimes enemies would shoot allies and sometimes they wouldn't, but they did. It's even worse when allies won't shoot enemies, because then they just stand still like idiots while a battle rages around them.
Weapons are poorly deployed. The player first always starts with the Thompson, the M1 Garand and the 1911 Colt. Then he always starts with the BAR, the Thompson and the 1911 Colt. There's never any ammo to pick up for American weapons because, though the player always gets allies, they never die and there's never any ammo lying around. The Japanese are strictly limited to using the Type 100 submachine gun and the Type 38 rifle. They'll have these big machine guns lying around, but they never actually use them. Only the player gets to use them. Mounted machine guns are also placed about levels, and are extremely underused, especially by the player who rarely gets an opportunity to use them at all.
Every, EVERY level requires the player to follow an ally around the entire time. I love having teammates, but this game REQUIRES the player to follow the ally or he instantly loses. Any time I stopped to pick up a gun, the ally- who always runs extremely fast nonstop- would be way ahead of me and I'd get a game over. Any idiot who knows anything about video games knows people don't enjoy the kind of gameplay where AI boss them around for no reason. Rather than think of imaginative ways to block off alternate routes, the game just makes the player follow a guy on some extremely linear path and if the player strays from the path, he loses. I'd have to defend an airfield, but apparently not standing right next to the designated ally counts as not defending the airfield.
The only thing the game has going for it is the graphics. Every level looks great, even though they're really linear and rarely open at all. Sounds range from all right to crappy, with the music being so annoyingly repetitive that the game sounds ten times better without it.
The game does have scripted sequences throughout levels, which are sometimes well animated and include decent voice acting, though often the lines and/or voice acting will make the dialogue really stupid, in a pleasant way.
Bodies animate pretty well, and some animations look pretty cool like Japs doing an extremely slow and weak melee attack (even though bayonets are nowhere to be seen in the game, their swing is still neat), and there was this one animation where my teammate ducked down, grapped the front of his machine gun in one hand and used the other to help him run away, and even though it looked like a random occurence, I only saw it once. It'd be nice if more games would include such deliberate "LET'S F***ING RUN AWAY!" animations instead of the standard fare of people who don't look concerned enough about the situation around them as they trot along care-free. Seriously, it was neat to see such a running animation.
Everyone looks the same. There's gotta' be like three or four different American bodies with probably just one American face since I can't tell the difference between any of them. ALL of the Japanese look the same, with the same cloth things to protect their necks from sunburn, even though the multiplayer game included a Japanese officer with a helmet who I don't remember seeing at all in the single player campaign.
Aiming down the sight is cheap. They bothered to make the weapon move into an aiming-down-sight position but they didn't bother to actually line the screen up with the sight, so the screen just zooms in on the crosshair like most older games do. The game contains the ability to do a melee attack (for some reason not on the right thumbstick button), but it feels like it might as well not be hitting anything since there's no sound of any sort, the Japanese that gets hit will just fall over dead.
I'm glad they decided to include automatically regenerating health, which is all the rage these days (much like melee attacks), and that's a good thing since trying to find health pickups sucks big time and it's much nicer when the player just heals automatically.
The controls feel all right in the department of running around quickly and shooting people to hell, if you can excuse the really crappy melee attack system. Rifles are completely useless because the automatic weapons do way more damage and have the same range effectiveness. Enemies never throw grenades. Neither do allies, actually. Shooting down planes is extremely unsatisfying because they never actually get shot down (or even hit, really), they just start smoking and eventually planes will stop coming without any explanation, even if the player didn't shoot any of them at all. I mean, it's realistic that a few shots from an anti-air gun won't instantly bring down a plane in most cases, but it'd be nice to see a plane crash for all my troubles. I mean, damn.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. The game is pretty awful all around, and anyone who plays it will know just how awful it is. Most problems were just lazy cheapness, which is almost excuseable, but other problems- such as pre-defined AI targets- were extremely bad design choices that could've been avoided.
The game does have its moments, barely. I actually enjoyed it enough to want to play it all the way through, probably just because it was so easy that I NEVER died from weapons, I only "die" because I'd stop to pick up a weapon and my ally would run way ahead of me and I'd lose.
The only actual fun levels in the game were the last level and the cave level. Yeah, the cave level! Even games that are usually extremely fun absolutely fail at making fun take place in caves or sewers or any other dark, uninteresting locales. This is the only game I've ever played that made something like a cave fun. What makes it fun is that, to my IMMENSE surprise, the game gives the player teammates in the cave (probably because they needed the player to follow them around). Also, the cave looks great, like every other level, but for some reason it looks even better than any other level, or any other cave in any other game. The lighting is really dramatic. I don't know what it is. It'd be really fun to come upon a group of enemies in the dark, with the only thing revealing their position being muzzle flashes as weapons fire wildly. I actually enjoyed the caves and wanted more of them. I mean, even games like Call of Duty make caves, sewers and such suck hard and long, but this, the worst game I've played in a while, made it enjoyable.
The last level was fun probably just because it was fast-paced non-stop shooting enemies in every direction as allies blew up constantly and bombs landed everywhere. It was pretty sweet, and I was hoping there would be more levels to follow it up, but the plot twist is it was the last level.
Overly loud History Channel clips seperate levels and try to set the scene, but all they do is piss me off because they feature weapons and vehicles unused in the actual game. The M1 Carbine, which is as plain as day in one of the video clips, is nowhere to be found in the actual game. American tanks make a couple of appearances- only one that I can actually remember- and they never actually move, they just sit around and pretend to be broken. No Japanese tanks whatsoever.
I'm just not sure what to say. I can't believe that this crappy game made me look forward to more levels. The reason the game was fun at all was because they put all of their efforts into two hours of gameplay, then they just stopped and said "Done!" Obviously, if the game was longer, it would've been far less enjoyable because they'd have to separate their will to work amongst many more hours.
I'm not sure why The History Channel bothers endorsing games like Civil War and Battle for the Pacific. Battle for the Pacific has no historical accuracy whatsoever- besides the vague imagination the video clips try to stir up- and it's obviously reflective of how little effort was put into the game. I mean, the graphics are totally sweet, but once the game actually starts everything is just terrible.
The three-year-old Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is insanely better than this game in a thousand different ways, even though I find Pacific Assault to be really frustrating thanks to their hit point system (rather than health regeneration). If you really want to fight Japs in an authentic environment, Pacific Assault is definitely the way to go, which is nice since it's really the ONLY way to go. I've only seen one other World War 2 FPS with Americans versus Japs, and it was made by those guys who made "World War 2 Combat Road to Berlin", which was hardcore suckage, and the Pacific Theater game followed suite.
If you ever find this game lying around outside in your front lawn, play the entire single player campaign. Once you're done and are better for the experience as you're better able to percieve what's good and what isn't, throw it in someone else's lawn so they can share in this experience. Otherwise, don't bother spending the money it would cost to rent it because, if they had it on display in a store, you could just as easily beat it there.
I was really hoping this game would take big risks, go against the norm and really make something of itself by letting the player play as the Axis in a World War 2 single player FPS, but alas, this game is just too damn mediocre. I was hoping SOMEONE would show those Call of Duty jerks what-for.
Y'know, The History Channel's Kuma Games client is way better for crap like this, because it's free AND uses the Source engine (and whatever engine Deadly Dozen uses), so even though everything's relatively poorly made, it's not only free so you can't complain but it's also built from well-made retail engines so the AI are already smart and the physics are already top-notch.