Last Pacific Storm Review [82%]

[Cain]

What do you get when you combine Rome: Total War, Risk, Axis & Allies and Gary Grigsby’s War in the Pacific? You get Pacific Storm, a real time strategy game/action combat hybrid.

 

I’m always afraid of these types of games because when you try to cover everything, you sometimes cover nothing. That’s not the case here! We’ll cover more about this later. I think the first thing I should mention is the installation process. This is something that I almost never talk about during game reviews. Either the game installs or it doesn’t.

 

However, this game was a mess to install and that’s always a bad sign. I received the U.S. retail version for review, it even had the anti-theft device in the box. I put the CD in my drive and let the auto install do its stuff. About 5% of the way in, I was greeted to a viscous CTD and a reboot. This continued at various points of the install program until I copied the files to a temp folder and installed from there. I felt it necessary to point this out just in case anyone else encountered the same problem. I should also point out that this could be a problem with the game, or it may have something to do with my computer in all fairness.

 

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Pacific Storm (PS) is a game about the U.S. war in the pacific with Japan during World War 2. The game takes place between 1940 and 1948. The game provides elements of a global strategy game, tactical combat, and flight simulation. Although it may be a stretch of the imagination to consider the flight simulation aspect anything other than an arcade game. For those of you that own Sonylast’s Dangerous Waters the helicopter and Orion flight model’s seem like Lock-On’s compared to PS. Now, I do have a problem with games that try to combine different genres into one game. Sometimes when you try to be a jack-of-all-trades, you become master-of-none. However, aside from the basic arcade simulator, PS does everything else very well. You can play either as the Japanese or the U.S. in large scale naval and air operations in the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO).

 

During the real-time aspect of the strategy game, you develop new technologies, build new weapons and deploy new weapons, including nuclear for the Americans and biological for the Japanese. The war could go either way, there is no set script, other than the fact the U.S. can’t declare war on Japan without a major penalty. On the Japanese side, you must declare war on the U.S. within a year of starting the game or you will lose. Once you build up your infrastructure and war machine on the world map, there’s a lot to do here. You must build up your forces, get production going, store resources, manage fleets, assign commanders, move personnel, develop bases, well you get the idea. The world map is made up of zones and when opposing forces enter the zone, tactical combat takes place.

 

Tactical Combat is done on a 3D map using a large selection of beautifully rendered 3D units. There are dozens of units all represented faithfully. On some of the ships you can see sailors manning the guns on the deck. There are some problems with the 3D portion of the game, including some path-finding issues next to landmasses and super torpedoes. You can’t expect to win battles by just pointing and clicking. You must take into account, ship size, maneuverability, caliber size, ship position, etc.

 

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The units possess learning abilities, although I expect that they do cheat at times. In my first campaign, the Japanese did two things. First they attacked my weakest defended bases with superior forces and second, they tried to attack my strategic bases with inferior forces. So it was clear to me what strategy the enemy was going to use. The Japanese are relentless, because they know that if you as the Americans can hold off the initial attack, they will be crushed. There is some serious micro-management to do during all phases of combat and some things are not clear when you do them.

 

For example, some buildings and structures require two parts to be built, but it’s not clear on how to do it. There are no build times readily apparent for you to review at a glance. Some things take years of game time to build and it would be nice to review them somewhere before you commit. Fortunately you can delegate all of the more mundane tasks of managing your war machine to the computer. As it stands, I wouldn’t recommend using the simulation part of the game. Not just because of the arcade aspect, but there seems to be a lot of bugs. I couldn’t launch any type of weapon without a crash, the only work-around was not to use it. It won’t be missed as the 3D tactical battles are good enough until it’s patched.

 

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There are many things in this review I did not cover, because of the immense size and nature of the game. I’m still discovering things and I’m sure there are things that I missed. One thing I suggest is that you run through the tutorials BEFORE you read the manual, which is very well done by the way. Trust me, things will be much clearer if you do. This is an interesting title, with plenty of potential. The seamless combination of the various genres works very well.

 

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You could begin to think, “Why couldn’t other strategy/war games look like this”. The bottom line is the game is made up of three parts. Strategy, RTS, and simulation. The first two can easily be made into separate games and would probably sell real well. The flight simulation mode of the game would be in the bargain bin within a week. As it stands, the game is good enough to recommend. Wargamers and strategy gamers alike would appreciate all that’s going on under the hood. Especially in the PTO, an area of WW2 that’s often been ignored by game developers. Pacific Storm will keep you busy for hours. I highly recommend it.

 

Review by Gus Lane.

 

http://pcgames.gwn.com/reviews/gamereview.php/id/1056/p/1/

 

PS. I got the same copy from CDV and my CD worked fine.