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The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific Review for PlayStation 3

The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific Review for PlayStation 3

Yep, Another World War II Shooter

Quick, answer these two questions. Name the one genre that has saturated the market. If you answered the “first person shooter” then you’re correct. Okay, now for the next question. What particular historical period has provided the source material for this genre more than any other? If you answered “World War II” you’re correct yet again. Now, surely developer Cauldron must have asked themselves the same questions. Why have did they ignore the clear signs that the market could do without another WWII shooter?

The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific screenshot

The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific is a no risk, by-the-numbers kind of game. It sticks to the standard first person scheme and has no desire to break out of any kind of design box. You take the role of Delvinski (no first name here, folks), a U.S. solider fighting in the the Pacific theater of World War II. Considering most WWII shooters center on European campaigns, this different backdrop provides a refreshing change of pace. You’ll storm beaches, clear out trenches, comb through jungles, and even help plant the flag at Iwo Jima. And you’ll do it in under three hours with little fanfare.

The most apparent problem with Battle for the Pacific is the Japanese enemies you encounter. Now, a FPS needs at least two elements: solid artificial intelligence and believable hit detection. Let’s discuss the first element. From beginning to end, the Japanese do not put up an intelligent fight. Enemies spawn in predetermined locations and lack any kind of common sense. You can fire a few rounds and then retreat around a corner. The expectation would normally be for an enemy to follow you. Not in this game. The Japanese soldiers will simply stand there, waiting for you to run around the corner and finish them off. They also seem to have no concern for explosives. You can throw a grenade at a group of soldiers and instead of them scattering or diving to find cover, they will stare at the grenade until it lets out its predictable blast.

The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific screenshot

As far as hit detection is concerned, the game is flat-out broken and easily exploitable. Here’s where the exploitable angle comes in: the aiming cursor is white when there is nothing to shoot, red when there is. There’s only one problem with this system: the cursor turns red a foot or two away from an enemy. As long as you fire in the general direction of an enemy soldier, you’re pretty much guaranteed a hit. No challenge there.

Lots of shots fired means lots of dead bodies. One would assume that shooting different parts of the body results in different death animations. Not here. The majority of enemies have a peculiar death pose: their knees buckle forward while their back bends in the opposite direction.

The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific screenshot

During your island hopping tour of duty, most missions boil down to three types: clear an area of enemies, fetch items, or defend a particular point on the map. To accomplish these tasks you are usually accompanied by ally A.I. soldiers who present a weird dichotomy. Most of the time, if you hold back, they can clear out an entire area on their own, leaving little for you to do, while during more important missions they seem to be at a loss regarding their objectives and resign to staring at a nearby object. Perhaps the most annoying component of the ally A.I. is the commanding officers who lead the squads. Occasionally the commanding officer will demonstrate Olympic speed, sprinting away from while you’re still clearing out enemies. There’s one major problem with this: if you fall behind, the game assumes you’re ignoring mission objectives and you’ll be treated to a mission failed screen.

The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific screenshot

Battle for the Pacific tries to simulate the scale of the war by loading trenches with enemies and starting the occasional mission with a beach landing. However, there’s never a true sense of unease. Trenches are easy to clear out thanks to the game’s lackluster A.I., and storming a beach has never been so easy. Even on the default, normal difficulty setting, machine gunners have terrible accuracy and you literally have to stand on the beach, in one location, for an extended period of time before your character expires. But, even if you start to take damage, no worries: the game features a regenerating health system. Simply duck behind an object for a few seconds, and your health is back to full. Health might be a concern when it comes to the game’s fascination with constant mortar fire, but at the end of the day it’s not. Mortar fire does zero damage to the player. It’s more of a cheap fireworks display that sometimes rocks the screen back and forth.

On the visual front, the game hardly seems to being pushing boundaries. The texture work exhibits that last gen, fake, glossy look, and the game suffers from draw-in from beginning to end. Also, bouts of slow down occur continually, holding the frame rate back from a smooth and acceptable measure. The audio side of the coin doesn’t fare much better. The voice acting is passable, but unfortunately is made up of soldiers just yelling for cover and screaming at the enemy. There’s no reason to comment on the music, as levels do not have any perceivable soundtrack. Hope you like soldiers yelling and weapon fire because that’s all you get.

Yes, the game has The History Channel in the title, but its presence is only known from a presentation angle. Video clips, pulled straight from the network, are your reward in between levels and are well produced, but in totality, all these segments probably run under a half an hour and provide you with a very generic history lesson – one you’ve probably already experienced on a dozen occasions.

Five multiplayer modes are available, but they suffer from an embarrassing complication: at the time of review, none of the game’s servers were occupied by a single other player. Even after trying on multiple occasions, not one player in any of the game modes could be found. Add to this the fact that to create a game you need at least one other player, and just loading a multiplayer match is a unwarranted trial.

Battle for the Pacific brings zilch to an already overstuffed corner of the market. Don’t let the discounted price or the The History Channel branding fool you, the game is a poor attempt at historical immersion.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.2 Graphics
The frame rate dips and there’s constant draw-in. 3.0 Control
Standard FPS-fare here; the mechanics work, but aren’t stellar. 2.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Get used to continual mortar and gun fire – there’s no music to speak of during actual levels. The The History Channel segments stand out, but are short. 1.3 Play Value
With an extremely short single player campaign and multiplayer servers containing no opponents, the game runs out of steam quick. 2.0 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Fight from Henderson Field in Guadalcanal through the Philippines to Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Experience some of the most exotic and forbidden battlefields including dense jungles and barren volcanic islands.
  • Face the harsh realities of war as you engage the enemy on the frontlines. Fight alongside squadron members reacting to the events of the battlefield, where fighting is often hand to hand and your objective is simple – defeat the enemy at all costs.
  • Based on actual battles including storming the beaches in an amphibious assault, recapturing a strategic airfield, defending against an enemy assault, going on a search and destroy mission, fighting through fortified caves, and scaling Mount Suribachi to plant the American flag.
  • Play online as an American or Japanese soldier in your favorite individual and team based modes including elimination, team elimination, death match, team death match, and capture the flag on battlefields painstakingly recreated from topographical maps and historical records.
  • Battles come to life amidst exploding artillery, whistling bullets, falling comrades, unrelenting enemies, and much more!

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