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Medal of Honour : Pacific Assault
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Game Name:
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Medal of Honour : Pacific Assault |
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Console:
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Xbox |
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Reviewed:
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Unknown |
I finally finished playing this game after receiving it for Christmas. In many ways it's a big improvement over the earlier MoH games and even better than Call of Duty in some ways.
One of the biggest changes is healing - it's more like a cross between Vietcong and Call of Duty. You can find items that you simply collect to restore health but these are fairly rare. More commonly you have to call over your team medic to patch you up. The medic carries a limited number of heals per area of the game - I think this in terms of 100% health so restoring you from 50% health twice will only take one heal total. You can even call over your medic when you are "dead" - you only have a limited time before you expire though but putting pressure on the wound helps. This is a good feature as it dissuades Rambo tactics such as going off on your own. This is reinforced by the enemy soldiers who will finish you off if they catch you while you are down.
The AI is kind of mixed. The enemy are fairly smart - they will use cover, throw grenades at your sqaud and occupy any MG nest that might be free. They also tend to perform a Banzai charge on occasion when they simply charge at you headlong and try to stab you to death. When they do it in number it can be quite effective. Your teammates aren't exactly dumb - they work together ok but they don't factor you into the equation and will happily run into your line of fire. Your team also seem to "teleport" sometimes to appear near you at certain points during a mission. Fortunately they are more or less unkillable so don't be too worried about them. You can even pick up wounded marines and take them to the team medic - this can be a bad move and you can't use any weapon except the pistol while carrying a marine and it might be a long walk if your medic is some distance away.
The load times in this game tend to be awful. Even on my system (Athlon 64 3400+, 1 Gig low latency RAM) load times for a level tend to be excessive and even quick loads just aren't quick. In some cases the hard drive starts going during a mission and I'm not sure what it is loading in.
There is an odd counterpoint to Call of Duty where every US firearms except the springfield is semi automatic or automatic. You start the game with a bolt action rifle and a pistol and don't get an automatic rifle for a while. One somewhat annoying feature is that your weapons change from mission to mission without you having a say in what you get. Vietcong was much better in this respect. Your guns even change within the same mission which is really strange, often one of your weapons slots is filled with a pistol which is close to useless except at close range. Reloading time is kind of a pain as well. Some weapons seem to take an inordinate amount of time to reload, especially the one assault rifle that you can find. The same Garand that is in Call of Duty takes about three times as long to reload in this game. It might be more realistic but you often find yourself in trouble when the Japanese are charing en masse. Static guns have an interesting effect when fired for an extended burst - your vision will begin to blur making it harder to aim. On top of that, static gun emplacements generally have limited ammo so you can't just spray like mad.
There are a number of battles where you have to take on aircraft using fixed gun emplacements. These are often quite confusing fights since it's hard to tell friend from foe and thus which planes you should be shooting at. One mission in particular has you being told that dive bombers are coming in from "12 O'Clock high". This information is completely useless as your gun swivels a full 360 degrees so you've no idea where they mean by 12 O'Clock (it's actually a bit to the right of where the gun starts aiming at first and up high in the sky). In another mission you start out as a turret gunner in an aircraft and then have to take over as pilot. This takes a bit of getting used to as your plane steers like a whale. Taking on fighters while flying the plane is almost impossible IMO as they manouver a lot better than you can. You have to do some strafing and bombing runs along the way which aren't too bad once you get used to them.
The firefights vary from simple to tough and annoying. In some places the enemy are inside small MG nests which you generally have to take out by shooting at the occupant from in front. The enemy can often shoot in your direction from within their nests depite not having line of sight. You can toss in a grenade if you are good enough but generally grenades are as bad as in other FPS games - it's hard to aim them accurately and their bounce often takes them well off target. I'd really love to see something like the Splinter Cell throwing arc for grenades or some easier way of directing them. As well as grenades you also have satchel charges which have a larger blast radius and a short fuse. Mostly the satchel charges aren't that useful except in defensive situations since their timer is a little bit too long to use them like some kind of super grenade and their range is much too short for lobbing them at enemies unless they are close or below you. They are good when your enemies are coming at you through a narrow area.
Another odd feature is that often your bullets often don't follow the path you expect - I've had bullets hit the object I'm hiding behind despite the fact that I'm aiming past it. The are some problems with the sniper rifle as well, trying to toggle off sights while using the bolt action or reloading often doesn't work until you are finished. Even changing guns sometimes doesn't take you off of the sights immediately.
One pet hate I have in FPS games are infinitely spawning enemies. I can understand them when you are defending a position like the British bridge defense mission in Call Of Duty. What I don't like are when the enemy in a bunker with MG emplacements have an endless supply of reinforcements which means you can't simply snipe out the defenders before moving in. Pacific Assault doesn't do this often but it does do it in some places.
Battlefields often offer you the chance to use tactics like flanking and using cover. In some cases though they are annoyingly limited and prevent you from approaching MG nests from the side or behind.
There is one really annoying "feature" in the game. When you pause the screen changes to look like a really old photo. When you unpause it shifts back. When you reload a save the game takes a second or so to fully shift back to normal and sometimes in this time you can't turn or shoot. This can cause major problems if you saved when you are about to come under attack.
All up this game is innovative enough to justify purchase for FPS fans. Just have a good book handy to read through during the load times.
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