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> Results: Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
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Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is the latest World War II-themed game in the acclaimed Medal of Honor series. Released just one week before Half-life 2, it never had much of a chance to shine before being overshadowed. Does it do justice to its pedigree, or continue the slide into mediocrity that marked the Breakthrough expansion to the original Medal of Honor Allied Assault?
The game's visuals are rendered with a brand new graphics engine for this series. They have done a wonderful job, making a game that is clearly better looking than Call of Duty's United Offensive expansion. But given that we also had Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 released this fall, how does Pacific Assault compare? It doesn't. Everything about it suggests an iterative improvement on the Quake III technology from Medal of Honor: Allied Assault rather than a revolutionary improvement in visuals matching those of Doom 3 or Half-Life 2. This is not a bad thing because it's still a fine looking game. It just shows how quickly the landscape of expectations has shifted.  The game also uses the Havok physics engine which has become popular in many leading games, including Half-Life 2. It uses it in a more standard fashion with examples like rag doll body motions and explosion effects. The rag doll effects can only be described as ﾑvery good for 2003', which means they are not very good by current standards. Awkward poses, things floating in the air, and other visuals we dealt with in Quake III-based games are found everywhere. In particular, corpses on the ground behave as if they are weightless. So when you walk ﾑover' them, you end up kicking them around. This is inexcusable and worse than the old ﾑdisappearing corpses'. One very good thing is the way corpses float downstream in the shallow swamp areas, giving a very eerie ambiance. The story of Pacific Assault is the WWII Pacific Theater, starting with Pearl Harbor, right? No, and that is one of the best things about the game. I never thought I'd say this about one of these games, but the non-combat areas were my favorites. You start out storming an island, without any tutorial or introduction, and die very quickly. It turns out that's your job at this point. You flash back to 'boot camp' and start training. There you begin earning medals and the first scripting issues arise. I generally quick-save after an 'objective complete' message, which is good, because during one late training exercise, I didn't do things exactly the way the game wanted (which wasn't explicitly stated) and the NPC's just got stuck standing around. Eventually I had to reload and figure out how the developers wanted me to do the task. Again, my favorite part in all of this is learning about my squad mates, and seeing them interact. From boot camp you get a sweet assignment at Pearl Harbor, which should have been this game's Omaha Beach or Stalingrad. In other words, instead of feeling 'pulled by the nose', you should have felt lost in the moment. I didn't. I played through it a couple of times, and it looked great, and was well scripted, but just felt like a series of little events. After that, you spend the rest of the game in over-long and contrived-feeling jungle settings broken up by a very frustrating and heavily scripted flying sequence where you go from passenger to the primary dogfight pilot in a seasoned squad to the one solely responsible for taking out a carrier and destroyer. That was my absolutely least favorite part of the game, and not just because I'm not very good at flying games. Through it all you learn about yourself (unlike Half-Life 2, you actually *have* a personality) and the guys who went through boot camp with you. The game's conclusion is a very intense island battle. The finale is much more satisfying than Allied Assault because that game ended when it seemed to have only just gotten going. In Pacific Assault you can empathize with the soldiers, because you feel that if you saw another jungle you'd shoot yourself, nerve-worn from endless 'ghost-spawning' enemies. The scripted cut scene conclusion is satisfying, and leaves you with a positive feeling of accomplishment. This game is considerably longer than Allied Assault or the Call of Duty games (which were each ~8 hours for me). This seemed to be more in the 12 hour range. So how does the game play? We've seen it before. There are tightly scripted sequences that pull you from set piece to set piece. Pacific Assault is worse than comparable games in virtually every respect related to scripting and enemy spawning. It is very difficult to judge the AI. While it seems good, there are enemies that seem to warp in at very unlikely spots at unlikely times, sometimes even when you're looking. It completely ruins immersion, and feels like contrived cheating. Speaking of contrived cheating, the 'sniper ally' clone section has enemies you can't hit until the game is ready for you to. I replayed this to test and it is one of those scripted sequences where until you cross a certain 'line in the sand', the sniper you see in your sights will not take any damage. Speaking of damage, this game is similar to an RPG in that you can use the same weapon and take the same shot several times against different enemies and get different results. In my opinion, the fact that I could even notice this in a high-action shooter with endless spawning enemies tells me that there is something wrong. Finally, the scripting and objective systems frequently collide, as you're being directed to go somewhere by the objective, but it is only because the scripts haven't caught up yet. Up to the very end of the game, your mini-objectives will mess with your sense of direction. But don't worry, it is all linear. If you can't see a way out, just wait five seconds for something to blow up or someone to shoot at you and then investigate it.  The weapons in Pacific Assault are good, but not up to the same level as Allied Assault and comparable games. Animation and fire rates are good, but the available ammo will often have you using slow-reload weapons that leave you very vulnerable, especially when paired with the previously mentioned ghost-spawning. Indeed, you often die on the bayonet of an enemy who spawns in an area you just cleared and decided would be good as a reload point. The weapons are good but not remarkable. The sounds are well done and augment the playing of the game, but there is nothing much that you take away from the experience. The flying controls are difficult. Once you get them customized, in terms of mouse sensitivity and first/third person, they work well enough but until then, they are very frustrating. One would think that standard WASD controls you have gotten used to over the large part of the game you've completed would serve you well in the sky. They don't. Load times and loading screens stink. Whenever you finish an area, you are treated to a fairly lengthy level load that finishes with a 'Start Game' button on screen. "What? I'm in the middle of a jungle I've been playing for an hour and I need to 'Start Game'?!?" It might seem picky, but it's terribly annoying! Why not 'Continue', since that is what I'm doing? Long loads and a dumb loading screen. Yuck. While most WWII games are exciting as a single player experience, they do not lend themselves to tremendous replayability. Given their highly scripted nature these games usually offer little variety in strategy or tactics for any given operation, so a second run through is like watching a movie again. Multiplayer is where replayability comes from in many of these games, and Pacific Assault's seems to be very good. Allied Assault and Call of Duty have extensive player bases, while many players have not jumped into online Pacific Assault yet and it is not clear if that will happen. A full two months after release the game is struggling to remain in the ﾑtop 40' in terms of players and servers. However, here are certainly enough out there that it will be possible to find a good game for some time to come. In terms of single player value and repeated single player runs through the game, Pacific Assault is ok. The game's serious flaws inhibit the desire to play again. You probably will uninstall after you've run through the game one time while leaving many older games from this World War II first-person shooter subgenre available for later play. Overall the game is best for WWII first-person action fans. It is a good game but most should wait until the price comes down, which shouldn't take very long. The game's many flawsﾗload times, average weapons and poor vehicle controls, unnecessarily stretched out jungle sequences, poor scripting and ghost spawningﾗlimit enjoyment. 
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is a violent game with rampant death and intense situations. Nothing goes beyond what you have seen in any other ﾑT' rated WWII action games. The usual parental discretion should be used with this game when deciding on allowing someone under 13 to play. It is intense and features close combat, but is not gory or bloody. One thing I did like in this game is the historical perspective. Call of Duty shows Stalingrad in ruins, but never as a beautiful city. This game shows you Pearl Harbor as a peaceful, easy, laid-back place considered a ﾑpearl' of an assignment. You also get very good insight into some of the thoughts of people serving in the war as there is much banter going on during the missions.
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