The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific PS3 Review

There are a lot of World War II games, Most are FPS’s that consist of shooting Germans and blowing stuff up, with you playing as an American and taking part in virtual recreations of some of history’s most significant and brutal battles. At least The History Channel: Battle For The Pacific, whilst somewhat tediously casting you as an American soldier, is set in the less worn pacific war and thus the Japanese are your adversaries, but its slightly out of the ordinary setting is meaningless if the game isn’t any good to start with.

Battle for the Pacific doesn’t have much in the way of a story, but in between missions there are some informative scenes, learning you about the war, which hardly comes as a surprise when you consider the History Channel’s involvement in the game. In regards to other good things, there’s no doubting the excitement and chaos of storming beaches or ascending a mountain for the games final mission, even if such set-pieces have been executed better in a host of far better games. But as far as good goes, that’s about your lot for Battle of the Pacific, I’m afraid.

Missions are all very familiar to regular FPS players and progression is very linear, even more so than usual, as the majority of the game has you following one soldier or another, whilst taking down typically stupid enemies along the way as well as blowing things up. None of these elements are in the least bit bad, at least when they’re in good games (see the fine Call of Duty 4 or the slightly less good Conflict: Denied Ops for a couple of examples), but Battle for the Pacific is not a good game.

Moving on to the bad. Battle for the Pacific is lacking in music, which is a shame as many similar games boast stirring soundtracks, which can make your fight feel all the more intense and gives you something else to listen to other than soldier chatter and gunfire. The visuals are adequate, but short on detail, with an erratic but not terrible framerate, whilst the game is just a couple of hours in length, which is a disgrace when you consider the asking price, the desolate online mode does little to help matters in the lifespan department. The thing that really makes what could have been at the very least an adequate (though way overpriced) game into a horror is the inconsistent targeting, which can see enemies dropped even when your crosshair is obviously not aiming at them, whilst other times you’ll be shooting them repeatedly in the head but the stupid game doesn’t register the hits.

Battle For The Pacific is a slapdash effort, and when you consider that it can be completed in a single session of play it’s just way overpriced. Worse still is the fact that the game just isn’t very good and should be left in history, just like the war that inspired it, with the difference being that the game will have little in the way of historical significance to speak of.