For what seems like an eternity, and in game years it just might be, I have been a fan of the original Battlefield 1942. Many similar products have since proliferated throughout the industry, including the successor product, Battlefield Vietnam. And while each of these products has been special or significant in their own way, none of them have been able to displace the original as the apple of my eye. Until now.
It might seem obvious, but I have not played any other version of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault than the Directors Edition that is the focus of this article. And I must say that this game is exceptional. Yes, the graphics are certainly of a high quality. The voice talent is very good. The score and technical sounds are very well done and appropriate to the mood and settings.
But the real value of is in the cinematic elements. Not cinematics, though those are also exceptional and an integral part of the game. No, this game feels more like playing a movie than it does like playing a game. Almost as though you are working from an improv script with a colorful cast of characters and a director pulling at your strings like a mad marionette in the play from hell.
Because hell is what it is. The Pacific theater of World War II saw some of the highest body counts from some of the bloodiest battles of modern history. The Japanese and American soldiers fought with every fiber of their being, holding to every conviction that gave their lives meaning, only to spill their blood on a tiny spit of land god himself had forgotten about.
But thankfully games like Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault will always remind us that the ?ar to End All Wars·wasn? just fought in the field of France, but across the islands of the Pacific.
Which is exactly where our story takes us, to the beaches of hell in the South Pacific. The game offers several difficulty levels from easy to insane, or what they term ?ealistic.· The initial scenes of this thematic masterpiece places you on board a landing craft as a United States Marine. The scene is short and punctuated with some brusque dialog that really sets the mood. When the door drops, the bullets fly and bodies begin to pile up. I?e run through this several times and I honestly do not think it is a scenario that can be won, merely a set up to the next act. A prelude, if you will.
Act one takes place in boot camp of course. After all, what? a good military movie without a boot camp sequence. Mainly this is a tutorial level that steps you though the use of the many key commands and how to control the different weapons you might be able to use throughout the rest of the game. By far the standout performance of this act, and possibly the entire film is that of the Marine Drill Sergeant who delivers a blistering monologue that would make even R. Lee. Ermy proud. What is most striking is that the entire dialog is completely rated G. In fact, aside from the gratuitous violence that is the nature of war, the entire game is mostly acceptable to young adults and older children.
From boot camp to paradise, our script now takes us to beautiful Pearl Harbor, yes, Pearl Harbor because no good movie about the war in the Pacific would be complete without the ?ay of Infamy· Personally this sequence exemplified the excellent, and annoyances, that the game has to offer. As a new boot you are being driven to your station when the Japanese attack. You can shoot the planes out of the air with your automatic, but it isn? easy with the jeep swerving and dodging like a bicycle messenger in New York. Once you hit the docks, and I mean docks, your objective is to try and save the U-Boats by laying down anti-aircraft fire while they push off. This entails a harrowing run down the dock while the enemy fighters strafe the area repeatedly. The action is dizzying, gyrating from running through gunfire, to manning high caliber machine guns, rescuing crewmen from a sinking battleship. The battleship sequence in particular displays the peculiarities of the interface that for me at least, took some getting used to. It was very difficult to manage the navigation of hatches, ladders and stairs. I kept getting hung up on the smallest obstacles, which was compounded by time limits and unclear objectives.
A pretty good example is an action scene that occurred while running down a fuel dump on the Makin Atol. First lesson, never outrun our cover. The squad you have with you includes a ?eader·with a heavy machine gun, a gunner and a corpsman, plus you. The leader type doesn? really lead. He just barks instructions. They all follow you. And they do so very slowly. Yes, they are trying to maintain cover and a light and noise discipline, but it can become very annoying. In several cases I found it easier to simply attack a vehicle, destroy the enemy and call for the corpsman to patch me up. One of the camps has several elevated platforms with roofs comprised of palm fronds and spindly sticks holding everything up. Each platform housed a heavy machine gun of course and one of these huts in particular can be captured and used with extreme effectiveness against the enemy. But here is the rub. I took this particular hut and manned the gun, mowing down the enemy as they tried to retake the camp. One particular soldier took shelter behind on of the spindly support columns of a hut. I literally emptied and entire belt into that wood column, and that soldier never fell. Never even took a hit that I could see. In the end I managed to hit him with a grenade. But if the rolls had been reversed, you can bet your buffalo nickel that my pasty pooper would have been going home in an ammo can. Cover only seems to apply to the enemy, not you.
Aside from the annoyances of learning the key commands and they fact that you don? seem to enjoy the benefits of cover that your opponents do, there is only one other issue of note. At random times the game slowed to an agonizing frame rate. I could never determine what circumstances facilitated the condition, but it was easily solved by simply saving the game and reloading from the saved game.
Those irregularities are the only things standing in the way of giving Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault a perfect score. This is a tremendous game and extremely fun. A special place on my hard drive has been reserved for its presence, a space formerly occupied by an old favorite that I will gladly put to pasture.
