Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault Review

Have you ever wondered why there are so many WWII games out there and why gamers keep buying them? Well I have... sort of. Firstly, no other war in the human history has seen a greater loss of human life and secondly, there are still people who remember the horrors of the war, and its bitter aftermath. The war was bloody, visceral and all-consuming, and because of that fact, ironic as it may seem, it has become a very marketable brand. Humans have a very morbid fascination with the most tragic events in their history, and the entertainment industry is always quick to cash in on that fascination.

KABOOM!

Keep your head down, man!

You all know the drill, you take a good game engine, great sound effects, and a few scripted sequences consisting of offensive, defensive and missions where you man a jeep or a truck, or indeed a .50 cal machine gun and pepper the shit out of incoming enemy forces. The truth of the matter is that if you've played one of these games, starting with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, you've essentially played them all. They only vary in execution, but the game play remains almost identical for each one of them.

Such is the case with Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, the true sequel to Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, a game that was released to great critical acclaim back in 2002. During that time, between the releases of the two Medal of Honor games, a new franchise was born, the Call of Duty franchise, which follows the same principles as the MoH games, but has taken the shooter sub-genre to a whole new level of intensity and immersion.

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault does bring certain novelties to the genre, but you will only notice them if you played every other WWII shooter that was released in the past two years - which I have.

First of all, Pacific Assault is built on EA's proprietary game engine. The 3D code boasts some incredibly life-like and complex facial animations and some spectacular looking particle effects, but it also fails to deliver in terms of the quality of the background textures and the general animation of the characters. The animation is not bad, but the movement of the troops will often feel a little jerky. Coupled with some collision detection problems, this will sometimes lead to pretty hectic situations during close quarter fights in the heavy jungle thicket. Overall, however, there were scenes in the game when I would just let my lower jaw drop a little, as they truly looked spectacular. You know the drill: lots and lots of explosions and people flying about, but I must say that the attack on the Pearl Harbor simply blew me away - quite literally. I was speeding in a boat in between massive battle ships that were being torn apart by explosions and riddled with bullets from the Japanese Zero planes. I then ended up aboard one of the sinking ships where I carried some wounded sailors trapped in the lower decks topside amidst the total confusion and chaos that was the attack on the Pearl Harbor. And all the while, heavy explosions were rocking, there was smoke, fire and debris everywhere, and I couldn't help but marvel at the powerful technology that was bringing this mayhem to life.

Going hand in hand with the visuals are the sound effects. In contrast to the phenomenal sound engine in Call of Duty, Men of Valor had pretty shoddy sound effects and that played an important role in making the game less intense than it should've been. Not so with Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. The game sounds amazing, and that is not surprising considering that it has THX-certified sound. The musical score is perfectly complimentary to the frantic action and in that sense, PA delivers a very intense and powerful game experience. Just like in CoD, I was sucked into the action and was taken on that adrenaline-charged rollercoaster ride that any good WWII shooter is supposed to take the player.

"Here we see the Japanese exploding beaches..."

I said keep your head down, dumbass!

Although, as I said, the game play mostly comes down to what we've seen in Allied Assault and especially Call of Duty, Pacific Assault did feature some slight innovations that actually went a long way in helping to make it a somewhat unique shooter experience. The pace of the combat and the fact that there aren't really all that many health packs laying around and that when your health bar goes down to zero, you're supposed to rely on the help of your team's medic, added a great dose of realism to the combat. The aiming and the ammo consumption as well as the behavior of the enemy troops all added to a greater sense of realism. The battles felt less arcadish, but not any less intense. The idea here was to have you shoot fewer enemy soldiers, but make you work harder for your kills. The addition of team commands (you're able to issue basic commands to your squad mates) is sometimes helpful but it's not emphasized enough in the single-player campaign.

I guess the biggest downside to Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is that sometimes the enemy AI as well as that of your own soldiers would act a little erratic, or exhibit slight path finding issues. These AI glitches were luckily infrequent enough never to kill the suspension of disbelief, but it felt like this area of the game needed more polish. If we take into account that I would sometimes get stuck on doors (because of the aforementioned collision detection problems), this would make for some mildly frustrating situations during combat. Of course, no game is perfect, but Call of Duty came damn close to it, so in that sense it will take maybe a patch or two for PA to truly shine.

Even as it is, the game is hella fun to play. This is a quality title with some nicely designed missions that gradually increase in both difficulty and pace, making the single-player game well-balanced and engaging throughout. Of course, jaded WWII shooter fans won't find anything particularly new or overly exciting about this title. The missions are still very linear and some of them are more railed than others, showing perhaps signs of inconsistent level design. Overall, however, I would recommend Pacific Assault to any fan of the genre. The sequel to Allied Assault is not without its faults, and there is a heavy feeling of déjà vu about it, but I would still wholeheartedly suggest it to anyone looking to get onboard another thrilling virtual ride in the turbulent times of the Second World War.