Heroes of the Pacific Review (no fat)

Game Description

Heroes of the Pacific launches you into story based flight action, with enough upgrades and extras to keep you busy for hours. Help out William Crowe in his anger driven quest to avenge his brother, a victim of the Pearl Harbor attack. Lush graphics with an empowering WWII storyline makes this an adventure for every gamer to enjoy.

Heroes of the Pacific Gameplay

With a slew of cinematic's, Heroes of the Pacific plays like your average flight simulation with arcade controls. Avoiding the usually confusing real life controls of flying a plane, it instead goes with a more right-from-the-box feel.

The control scheme is completely remap-able, and players can easily use a flight stick if they desire.

Jumping into the straightforward modes, players will find only a campaign and multiplayer mode available in the beginning. The in-game tutorial will suffice for the game’s lack of complexity, compared to other flight sims in the genre.

A single mission option becomes available after completing certain tasks in the campaign, and is a good way to test out the new upgrades or planes you acquire.

Heroes of the Pacific Story

WWII is the focal point of the story, and the main character is on the usual crusade to avenge his blood. Most of the major Pacific theater battles are covered through the campaigns, and without giving too much away, there are some interesting twists in William’s story.

He will befriend other pilots, who also have the same passion to fight in the war with him. The camaraderie isn’t exactly up to par with teaming with a buddy, but Heroes of the Pacific does a great job of creating a feel that you’re not in this alone.

Heroes of the Pacific Missions

A nice arrangement of missions leads you from being the fledging pilot to an all out war hero. Because of the variety of plans, the missions can be as simple as dropping a bomb on a ship to all out dogfights in the air.

Learning the types of planes is key, as well as how they control and rank up to others. While some may have obvious limitations, the learning curve it takes to fly them will give gamers a solid appreciation for the realism that went into it.

On some levels there may be a boss, (well not really) but the health meter by a ship or aircraft kind of gives it away.

Because of the solid graphics and the way they move, the landscape almost seems endless sometimes-especially over open waters.

On some islands where battles take place the landscape especially looks good while you are fighting, in fact it probably wouldn’t be a lie to think that the background was made to look its best when in full flight.

Heroes of the Pacific Graphics

If the proper hardware is installed on your rig, you are in for some beautiful backgrounds and that too with minimal frame rate drops. Even with over a hundred planes onscreen at once, the battles are wonderfully smooth. A tweaker for online play would have probably been helpful to lower the lag, but is not a big issue.

Planes are also represented in a realistic, non-blocky polygonal way. This is very much appreciated, without denying the gamer gorgeous graphics.

Heroes of the Pacific Sound

The voice acting is of above average quality, to move along the story at a nice pace. Sound effects play an important role, and in the heat of battle it is easy to tell when you are getting shot. The music could have used a better selection, but is nominal enough to where it wouldn’t have made a difference if it was there, or not.

Heroes of the Pacific - Summing up

A solid title all around, Heroes of the Pacific puts a nice new spin on a genre that lacks good sim hybrids. The online multiplayer is truly fantastic to play through, and includes old (capture the flag) and new (Scratch the Flattop) modes of play.

A nice story helps to round out the action, and with a completely customizable setup that even includes an ‘arcade’ and more advanced ‘professional’ setup, button mashers and rudder tweakers will be more than satisfied.

Heroes of the Pacific is a title that is enjoyable for both arcade, and simulation fans.

Heroes of the Pacific Cost

Heroes of the Pacific retails for $19.99US at the time of writing.