This is going to hurt come morning.

The Charge
One war, two epic sagas.

Opening Statement
A History Chanel fan’s electronic wet dream, Eidos Interactive’s Battlestations: Pacific, the sequel to Battlestations: Midway continues the tradition laid out by the previous installment of offering a unique twist on WWII-themed shooters, downplaying the “action” segments of WWII games and emphasizing the “strategic” and “simulation” aspects. Fancy yourself a general of the five-star variety? Think you can command a fleet of planes, boats and submarines to victory n the South Pacific?

Facts of the Case:
Pearl Harbor, 1941. The Japanese have attacked American soil, and the US now finds itself embattled into a conflict spanning the entire Pacific against a feisty and daring foe. Battlestations: Pacific puts you in command of entire fleets of naval vessels and airplanes as you march (uh, swim and fly) your way to victory. Experience one war from two perspectives—the American and the Japanese—and possibly even change the outcome of history. Well, for the Japanese at least.

The Evidence:
WWII games are a dime a dozen, literally. Go into any used game store, and with the exception of last year’s sports games, no other title will pocket the walls in such large quantities. Battlestations: Pacific, following the tradition of Battlestations: Midway chooses to rise from the pack by offering a more strategic and real-time-strategy twist on the franchise. There’s still plenty of action to be had, but now you have to micromanage! Hooray! The individual game elements struggle to assert themselves, but when taken all as a whole, Battlestations: Pacific is a unique and challenging game experience, rewarding those with patience and devilish ability to plot strategy.

Two campaign modes are immediately accessible, allowing gamers to take command of either the American or the Japanese fleet. The Japanese campaign is first up from a menu selection point of view, starting with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and here is where things get a bit funny. Historical accuracy, having had a few too many, goes to lay down for a few, and the campaign quickly diverts from the actual historical course of events in short order, no doubt to balance the amount of missions the Japanese have compared to the Americans. Purists may sneer, but hey, it’s a video game. What good WWII game doesn’t re-write history these days?

Um... did you feel something?

The game comes at you immediate with what appears to be an insurmountable learning curve of control schemes, unit management and placement of over 100 unique craft, strategic commands and various strategic mumbo-jumbo, when all you want to do is get in a plane and bomb Pearl Harbor. Early campaigns are simple “find the flashing object on your radar and blow ‘er up”, letting users get comfortable with the mechanics and controls of planes, boats and submarines before combining all three into a gigantic tour-de-force of military confusion and disorientation. It gets easier the more you play it, but the free-wheeling and all-encompassing style of Battlestations: Pacific can be disorientating to those not quite used this level of oversight.

Depending on your style, “micromanagement” might get you excited, but it also might be a word that gives you hives. Battlestations: Pacific splits the difference, allowing players to spend as little or as much time as they’d like supervising their charges, switching between units in the battle. It certainly leads to more successful campaigns, jumping into the cockpit of a strategically-placed fighter, as the computer AI is just good enough not to hurl itself upside-down into the ocean, but not quite skilled enough to actually sink an enemy ship for you. The downside of the system is that for optimal success and mission perfection, a lot of babysitting is required. How fun you find this kind of supervision is entirely personal.

At its most thrilling and frenetic, gamers control rounds of Battlestations: Pacific like an orchestral conductor—a swish of the hand here to dispatch a few more fighter planes, a press of the finger there to launch some torpedoes, a quick refuel and re-supply . It can be quite entertaining and open-ended, giving you the freedom to develop your own strategies of success and failure—for me, usually failure. I admit here that this kind of military strategy simulation is not my gaming bailiwick, but there are some truly epic moments of combat where you feel quite pleased with yourself at sending so many virtual men to their watery graves.

Improvements over the previous title in the series include a noticeable graphics upgrade, larger maps and environments, much more empasis on land-based objectives—capturing islands and re-purposing their resources for your own war efforts, etc. The addition of a cockpit-view adds an addition touch of realism (though no particular gaming advantage) to the flight segments, allowing you a first-eye perspective of that freighter you are about to kamikaze pilot right into. Oh yes, there are kamikaze units—actual units, not just lousy flying your plane into an enemy base—but only on the Japanese side of course.

Speaking of multiplayer, this area is well-realized and fun, if you can find somebody to play against that won’t embarrass and demoralize your invasion efforts. Five game modes are included: island capture, a points-based spending system where gamers purchase resource and send them into battle to capture control of an island. Duel is essentially a free-for-all mode, last one standing wins. Siege is a defense-based mode where one team holds and defends an island against invasion from the other team, who must capture it within a time limit to win. Escort is the same idea, but the key unit to protect is on the move. Finally, good old Competitive mode, which places all human players on the same time and battle to out-score each other with enemy kills. The few battles we participated in were gigantic debacles worthy of the history books in how quickly we got our @#$ handed to us—fun, but distressingly brief.

OH CRAP IS THAT A SMOKE MONSTER

Between the two campaigns and the multiplayer modes, there’s a reasonable amount of variety and replay value here, especially as the DLC packs continue to roll in, but even after a few harrowing and exciting rounds of Battlestations: Pacific, the innate repetitive nature of the format may turn off some people. The campaign missions really just recycle the same three game modes in different combinations, and unless you’re riveted by the historical placements of the troop movements across the Pacific, one round is often indistinguishable from the next. Multiplayer maps are often just wide tracks of endless ocean with a few islands tucked here and there—historically accurate no doubt, but not exactly awe-inspiring in its variety.

Graphically, the game hits the mark. Aerial sequences over endless stretches of shining, undulating sea, sunlight glistening are handsome, while pillars of smoke fly off your nautical vessels as you get pummeled by enemy artillery. Colors are vibrant and lush, and I do quite enjoy the little touches of chronological simulated authenticity, like aging film reel effects applied to news clip-style cut sequences, to really bring audiences into the historical action. Model designs are reasonably detailed and well-represented, but I noticed some screen tearing during some, uh, deliberate crazy flying when I lost control of my plane and drove it into the ocean. Yeah, deliberate!

Audio fares well with the constant cacophonic barrage of gunfire, explosions and radio chatter filling your environmental space. It gets challenging to decipher the constant dialogue sputtering from your radio, as some information is genuinely useful, but that’s part of the fun. An orchestral score brings gravitas and drama to an already packed presentation. Unfortunately, the dialogue is particularly tongue-gnashing; the Japanese voice actors sound straight out of a bad drive-in ninja movie, while the American actors sound even cornier. Bass response is satisfying—when you drop that torpedo into the water and hear it tear into an enemy submarine, your subwoofer will roar with approval.

How Battlestations: Pacific stacks up in your eyes will depend entirely on your level of appreciation for the genre and its numerous elements. You can almost break the simulatior into its “mini-game” elements, and when examined solely on their own merits, they all feel unimpressive. The flight potion is average at best; the control scheme is atypical and the physics feel sticky and sluggish. I’m sure someone will argue the “realism” of flying 1940s-era aircraft designs, but if you ask me, this argument is moot when you control a plane with dual analog sticks on a 360 controller. There is nothing realistic about that, full stop. Naval segments are slower-paced and often frustrating; maneuvering gigantic vessels that turn like cows to haplessly hurl artillery shots at distant specs in the horizon, which seem to be guided on a system of random chance. As for submarines? Forget about it. I’ve never been more bored in a video game in all my life. For people looking for a quick burst of action, this might not be the game for them.

Where Battlestations: Pacific succeeds is incorporating all of these lone, limited elements together, assembling them into a gigantic, living, breathing battle of Herculean proportion. On their own, the game elements are questionable and frustrating, but when you look at how all the elements incorporate into a fluid package, of players switching between them as the situation develops moving ships and planes and resources into key strategic positions? This is where Battlestations: Pacific earns its stripes. Think of the individual game modes like chess pieces; they are of little value in of themselves, but critical in the grand scheme of the battle.

Closing Comments:
If you can immerse yourself into the game and truly embrace all the nuances and high-level elements of controlling your armada, Battlestations: Pacific is a rewarding experience.

The Verdict:

Platform: Microsoft Xbox360 / Windows PC (Xbox360 version reviewed)
Developer: Eidos
Publisher: Eidos
Release Date: May 12, 2009
Rated: T for Teen