Heroes of the Pacific

Back in the days when I was a junior high school student (yes, we had computers back then), I became hopelessly addicted to a Macintosh combat flight simulator titled “Hellcats Over the Pacific.” It was a simple flight sim that relied on fantastic dog fighting gameplay rather than flashy this and flashy that. It was all about outmaneuvering your opponent to gain an advantage and shoot ‘em down. As soon as Justin Halliday, producer at IRGurus Interactive, previewed Heroes of the Pacific for me, I knew the game was similar in style, strategy, and gameplay as the combat classic I was enamored with as a youth, and I knew it would be good.

The game begins with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the campaigns encompass all the authentic action that happened in the second World War, with battles occurring in such hot spots as Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Midway, and The Coral Sea. The development team did intense research to assure that the game was as authentic as possible, leading to ten campaigns all depicting real battles that took place in the war. Each campaign has two to four missions and will have the hero facing targets in the air, land, and sea. Ace pilots will be blowing up fleets of destroyers, PT boats, anti-aircraft stations, infantry, and bunkers. Sweeeeet.

Don’t start worrying kids, this isn’t a fly about the sky and lock on to targets and blow ‘em up with heat-seeking missiles type of game. No Siree, this game has some great air-to-air dog fighting that’s been missing in console games for years. Halliday chose the WWII setting for its planes – not too technologically advanced, but not lacking the sufficient punch. These were the days when pilots were gritting their teeth, going through round after round never sure if they were going to make it back. The aerial combat itself plays more like Crimson Skies than the Ace Combat series, which is a good thing.

The dog fighting is quite impressive. At times, there could be more than three hundred planes involved in the fight. “We wanted to represent the epic battles that happened in the war,” said Halliday. And represent they did. There are plenty of options for targets in the sky, and hunting them down is a blast thanks to the variations in controls. For those who get air-sick, one mode straightens out the plane automatically along the horizon. For young Yeagers, standard nausea inducing controls are available. It’s pick-up-and-play, so jump right in.

It’s great to shoot the hell out of everything and be a stud of the sky, but it should at least look good while you’re doing it. And good it does. The environments are gorgeous… they made me want to land on a sandy white beach, break out a lawn chair, and order about twenty Mai Tais. It’s all set in the Pacific, and the islands look great. Flying through the clouds is fantastic, watching enemies fall like ducks during hunting season is amazing, and speeding by mountains is beautiful. Graphics are not a problem in Heroes of the Pacific. Even the menus and loading screens with real pictures from WWII propaganda posters look great.

Heroes of the Pacific will be online with Dogfight, Team Dogfight, Capture the Flag, Cooperative multiplayer missions, and a keep-away mode, and from the time I spent playing the game, it should be a great experience. Players will be able to play as Wildcats, Hellcats, P38’s (Cadillac’s of the sky), Japanese Zeroes, and many more. Heroes of the Pacific takes to the skies, err shelves, this Winter.

For All E3 2004 Previews