![]() ![]() This dynamic approach to battle works with varying degrees of success, although it will strongly appeal to console gamers who, by virtue of indoctrination in the legions of console military titles, FPS and otherwise, expect to do the moving and shooting by themselves. It's nice to play as the whole bunch, rather than playing in a squadron or convoy, so you may virtually hop out of a downed plane into a more serviceable one. Further, you have hands-on control of your varied units, with the ability to switch from the cockpit of a barrel-rolling, dive-bombing Zero to the tense gunner's seat in a nearby destroyer - albeit from a top-down view of the ship. There's great depth here, too, enabling gamers not only to move units about, but also initiate defensive stances, aggressive stances and the like. And if you're both, the game also favors master tacticians, allowing you to deploy and order around both unit types. Whether you're a flier or a sailor, your preferred armaments are here. To a great degree, Battlestations Pacific tries to be all things to all people, insofar as all those things are WWII military activities. But, then again, changing history, or retelling history, is standard fare in narrative video game design. ![]() Battlestations does indeed let you change history, win or lose. There's nothing new here in malleable chronology, but Battlestations certainly skirts the stock problem with many WWII-era games because you're either confined to one long historical operation with an ultimate no-fail clause, or you're fighting the same battles over and over again, winning and losing ad infinitum, with no particularly great consequences of those outcomes. ![]() There are battles and missions based on both historical and fictional scenarios sometimes your victory - or defeat - in an earlier mission influences the outcome of Pacific operations enough so you're cast as the defending or aggressing force in a completely hypothetical battle. The game is also stuffed with missions in two complete single-player campaigns.Īs the game's subtitle implies, the campaigns are the U.S. You expect a lot of military hardware, and you get it, though you'll have to put in the hours to unlock much of the more interesting material. It usually means that it's a pretty game with little depth, but that's not the case with Battlestations Pacific - and that's both its strongest and weakest point. Unfortunately, these days, lauding a game purely for its graphical prowess is as often as not damning with faint praise. After all, at this stage in console technology, you can only get so real before the illusion degrades, and a fair bit of intentional degradation goes a long way here. Since most of us gaming today grew up understanding WWII in a visual sense via archival film presentations, the style is notably more satisfying than any amount of blinding realism. It's a strong presentation point that's not to be overlooked. Playing the game with this visual effect turned on in all modes lets you feel like you're actually playing inside that aging newsreel. When you've just sunk a destroyer, the cut scenes in Battlestations Pacific are designed to give you the feeling you're relishing the day's accomplishments while viewing an old WWII-era newsreel or snooping in on secret combat film shot from a bomber's belly camera. It's a gimmick befitting consoles, not unlike the way Killzone 2 used depth of field and creative camera focus to produce a far more cinematic experience than would have been otherwise possible. Somewhat telling is that my favorite feature of Battlestations Pacific is the ability, within the game's presentation options, to turn on the graphics engine's antique color newsreel effect not only in the cut scenes but also throughout the in-game action. ![]()
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