by Rick - November 30, 2004

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault throws your character into WW II as a private in the Marine Corps. You work your way through boot camp and various battles against the Japanese. Your mission? Well simply put; survive. Reminiscent of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, this first person shooter simulates the chaos of war with amazing results. Are you man enough to be a Marine?

Control Freak

The gameplay in Medal of Honor ran fairly smoothly. I found the controls a little difficult at first, but I soon found that I could jump and dodge and duck with the best of them after a few minutes of play.

I felt it was a little too difficult to switch your stance at your whim. I often found myself prone instead of crouching when I hit the 'Z' button on my way to the 'Ctrl' button. However, this was only mildly frustrating, and was a bit like worrying about plaque after Thanksgiving dinner.

One problem that wasn't insignificant was the lack of an easy to access mini map. I often found myself getting disoriented in the jungle after a particularly rough battle and, more than once, ended up walking for a few minutes in the wrong direction only to have to walk all the way back. Some sort of map for dummies like myself would have been very helpful.

Other than these two factors, the gameplay was well done.

Where's My Popcorn?

From the start, this game runs like a movie. You're point of view is exploited throughout the game, and you even find yourself being manipulated into looking a specific direction so you can see the shot up airplane crash into the PT boat right next to you.

The few pre-rendered movies I saw were pretty amazing. The first is a movie with a row of marines in dress uniforms in front of the Iwo Gima Memorial doing a little performance. They twirl their rifles around and throw them into the air in sync, yet the animations vary enough to make it look natural. I was pretty impressed with these scenes.

The environments you fight through are pretty full too. Be it either vegetation or buildings and boxes, I never found myself walking through a blank canvas of an area. This gave the game a sort of realistic feel, but forced the developers to make some concessions with the art. A lot of the vegetation scenery had low res textures and low polygon models, but it was all used optimally.

All in all, great looking game.

Did I Mention This Game Was Like a Movie?

All I can say is "Wow". No really it's a condition... Anyway, just like with the graphics, the sound is of movie quality. Good movie quality at that. The voice acting is superb. The monologues at the beginning/end of all the missions are interesting and give you a good feel of the situation your character is in.

The best part about the sound, is that it is thorough. From the ringing in your ears just after an explosion, to the pleas for help from your fellow soldiers, the game is constantly using your speakers as conduits of awesome. The game really tries to capitalize on the chaotic effect of war and battle, and the sound really acts as the blood and bones of that chaos.

In short, I can't think of anything bad to say about the sound.

War Sucks

This game was hard. I have to say I found myself taking break after break during this game to keep myself from getting too frustrated with it. I was playing on the medium difficulty, and I could barely get past the third mission. You have corpsman following you around that will patch you up, but he can only do it four times. There isn't a large amount of med packs waiting for you in enemy bunkers and other buildings, so it can be difficult to keep yourself alive. However, I think that was the point. It's not supposed to be a cake walk. War is tough.

Despite the difficulty, the game was fun enough to keep me coming back for more, and that's more than I can say for many games as difficult as this one.

Multiplayer Madness

I can't say the same thing about the mutiplayer function. If difficulty were measured in oranges, then the mutiplayer version of this game would... have a lot of oranges? I found myself being clobbered time and time again when I ventured into the fields of war with other players online. The servers were all pretty much clan based and many of them were empty. I got booted off servers a few times (I still don't know why it happened, something about my OS or something), and the game wasn't fun enough to keep me coming back for more. I got fed up with online play fairly quickly and headed back to the single player game.

This could have been avoided, however. If the developers had made it a little more easy to understand all the differences in the singler player game and the online one, then the transition would have been much more smooth. Also, the levels seemed to be designed for swarms of players, as they are quite big. I only played one game where the entire map was used. I found myself walking down the wrong path and going the wrong direction way too easy.

After it's all done and over with, Medal of Honor's mutiplayer function could use some work.

War! What is it Good For?

A simply beautiful game that has an immersion level off the charts, Pacific Assault has few faults and many shining points. Unless you're allergic to first person shooters, I'd strongly suggest picking up this game and giving it a try.