Heroes of the Pacific for Xbox Reviews by Gamers

No more than five years ago on consoles, platformers, shooters, and 2D fighting games still weighed in heavily with the popular vote. A generation of games later, none of these genres holds a candle to their former selves, despite the advances games in these genres have made. As a genre, air combat shooters and flying sims never experienced the trendy rollercoaster rides in popularity those other genres did, but not long ago, they too were more popular.

While the PC still regularly sees games of this kind, the dearth of flying games on consoles, sans Namco's regularly popular Air Combat and Microsoft's Xbox remaking of Crimson Skies on Xbox, has been more than apparent. It's been worrisome. Is that about to change? Well, no. But Ubisoft, having grown from a strange little French company known for a limbless platform character as its defacto mascot, has taken big chances with different kinds of games, betting heavily on Xbox Live, and exploding the tactical shooter sub-genre all on its very own.

Substance and Style

Which brings us to Heroes of the Pacific. Ubisoft's combat flying title on Xbox, PS2, and PC is a good quality example of where World War II games should go -- to the skies. Sure, the genre has been done before. God and all his children are aware of how many first-person World War II games we've seen over the past four years. But World War II flying combat games? There's much room to grow. Ubisoft's flyer coolly blends a personal story and historical narrative together into an arcade-style game built with legitimate options for sim and PC players who like more realism. The result is an impressive concoction of diverse levels, superb presentation, and a huge platoon of unlockable, upgradeable planes.

While Microsoft took the Indiana Jones approach of "flying adventure" with Crimson Skies, which taps into a 1940s-style tone, Heroes of the Pacific tells the story of a naturally born American flyboy who, along with his brother, joins the armed forces in the 1940s to fight off Nazi Germany and Japan. This is a buddy-story. You play as William Crowe who joins the air force while his brother enlists in the land forces. As the campaign progresses, Crowe meets new characters from rescued POWs who join up with your squad to rival Japanese ace pilots.

Developer IR Gurus Interactive's intelligent blend of story and history telling are smoothly weaved into a superb presentation and design. Everything feels like it's been handcrafted with care and an acute aesthetic sensibility. Highly stylized and old-fashioned looking cells visually dramatize your quick youth, enlistment, and your brother's death during Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The narrative sets up an emotional tie that later binds with more extensive historical texts covering all of the major Pacific Theater battles in which you fight. Missions start in Pearl Harbor and move to Wake Island, the Marshall Islands, then move along to Coral Sea ventures at Midway, and continue for a full 26-mission stint. From the animated maps streaked with dotted arcs showing the Japanese attacks across the Pacific to the slow zooms on simple cells to the animated cutscenes of fighters dive bombing enemy ships -- the presentation all comes together in a classy homage to the styles of the times.

The best looking aspects of Heroes are the plane models and the strikingly attractive clouds -- yes, I said it, the clouds are so good looking they're sexy! All of the plane models are sharp and distinct, showing off the old designs with correct shape and color. They look respectable while they're healthy, and they look disturbingly better looking when they're catching fire and pouring out smoke. A nearly destroyed plane is a fantastic sight to behold. The clouds are thick, opaque, and the tops shine with bloom lighting, creating an interesting set of obstacles and aerial landscapes to use or even hide behind. Otherwise, visually, Heroes suffers occasionally from a few framerate drops, and poorly textured landscapes and dull land vehicles. It's true, they got the main things down -- the draw distance and good looking planes, but compared to say the aircraft in Air Combat 5? This isn't close.

The Friendly Skies

If the stylistic presentation doesn't hook you, a half dozen other things might. The flying and fighting combine to make the mix of action varied and refreshing. The crafts themselves are easy to handle, as the controls are generally designed around pick-up-and-play sensibilities. On the Xbox and PS2, shoulder and trigger buttons enable primary and secondary fire, while the analogs control speed, height, and direction. The camera has at least three settings including a cockpit mode (though no dials are shown), and perhaps the biggest draw for advanced flying aces is the option before each level to pick Arcade or Professional controls. Arcade controls are less realistic while Pro controls enable more precise rudder manipulation. But don't be deceived, it's still not a real flight simulator. You can cycle through weapons, switch targets, and flip the reticule from objective to objective with face or simple keypad buttons. But because of the game's relative ease and the generally easy controls, it always feels more like an arcade game than a sim. Honestly, I caught a few whiff of Starfox and Crimson Skies while playing.

Thankfully, the aircraft all handle differently. And, along with a plethora of aircraft available (36 altogether), the game is kept fun and well balanced. For instance, when you first start out, the planes are old, single-prop dogs that were used in the beginning of World War II. You start with the FYU-1 Corsair, P-40C Warhawk, and the 7Y7-4 Wildcat. These are novel for a few minutes, until you realize how quickly and dynamically the enemy planes are zipping around you. After the first several missions, however, you graduate to torpedo bombers, which function much differently than typical fighters. While squad mates automatically fight off bogeys and fighter planes, the torpedo bomber must fly low and slow to launch the perfect "fish." A meter measures your speed and height off the water, turning green when each setting is correct.

Learning to handle the different planes comes in the face of moving, shooting naval craft and aerial attacks, and it took me a little while to get the hang of the torpedo and dive bomber controls. Once I did, however, I grew to love the torpedo bombers, despite their limitations. You'll also fly dive bombers, which must achieve the perfect speed and angle toward an enemy ship to effective launch bombs. And you'll get to pilot early reconnaissance models, such as the B26B Maurader, which is tough as nails, but stinks as a fighter plane. The mixture of fighting styles provided me with a new gaming experience, and as I played deeper into Heroes of the Pacific I grew to admire and like it more every passing minute. Sure, I've handled bomber planes before (from Jedi Starfighter to a half dozen other games), but using the authentic World War II planes felt real. Not only did I feel like I was flying the authentic American and Japanese planes fought in WWII, but each completed mission rewarded me with points to upgrade the planes as I saw fit. Once you progress past a certain point in the missions you'll earn enough points to switch around different kinds of secondary ammo as well as select the kind of plane you'd like in a mission.

Mission Design

Corresponding with the various types of airplanes is the healthy range of mission types. The game follows generally historical missions over land and sea, some taking place on islands, requiring you to defend a base or attack an enemy populated island, while others take place in deep sea, where there is nothing but dark blue water and endless skies. IR Gurus starts each mission with a single waypoint or objective, but the missions quickly build into a cacophony of overlapping goals. While defending the landing of American troops on an enemy island, for instance, you'll have to fend off snipers from villages, tanks, enemy air raids from the sea, and fleets of boat ranging from small attack craft to fighters, subs, super subs, and aircraft carriers to name a few.

The action quickly grows frantic, and you can easily lose a battle if you misgauge the distance of an enemy or miss an audio communication. It would have been preferable if gamers could see visual cues indicating how far one squadron of airplanes is away from another. But as it is, you'll only see enemies with equally sized yellow markers over their heads regardless of distance. I realized several times I had missed a radio communication and had to pause the game, check the radio transcript and read messages or even instructions I had missed just one minute before. Aside from the basic attack and defend missions, IR Gurus lays down bomb runs, torpedo runs, squad runs, and reconnaissance run, and boss fights among others.

To complete its full arch of gameplay features, Ubisoft sets up some missions with wingmen support. Using the Dpad on consoles, players can command a minimum of two fights to accompany him or her. Tell them to form up, attack any enemies, defend an area or break. The audio commands are slightly delayed, and it takes a few seconds for your team to follow the command, but it's a functional set of commands that provide another little layer of control. Players also square off with bosses. Japanese ace pilots are the main culprits, however, every so often a giant ship appears with a health bar, and even though it's not presented like a boss, it sure feels like one. Among the other cool additions are historical missions unlockable for even more fun.

Online

Finally, the online game: It ranges from good on Xbox to passable on PS2. You can create matches or join quick matches for up to eight players online, and the game list includes standard Dogfights, Team Dogfights, Capture the Flag, Fox and Hounds, and Scratch the Flattop. There is also a split-screen option and a LAN option for both systems. Options include tweaking time settings, point settings, and number of player settings. Online play instantly elevates the gameplay due to unpredictable human errors or just plain crazy flying, but the unpredictable nature of human pilots creates a much more fun atmosphere, so it's well worth getting online.

Turns out, players online are far more devious and ruthless than the programmed AI, so you'll find enemies ramming you more often, leading you into the water, or even teaming up against you in plain free-for-all dogfights. You'll occasionally find little power-ups such as slowdown or super speed balloons, too. The PS2's draw-distance isn't as long as the Xbox version, which translates into a lack of a long-range game. The long-range game isn't all that significant, but when you cannot see a plane in long- to medium-range distances, it's frustrating. Also, there are small instances of lag that turn out to both hinder and help dogfights. When you're on an enemy's tail and about to finish him off, a second of lag frees him from your sights. It makes aiming more difficult, but it also adds a crazy kind of random factor that equalizes things in a karmic kind of way. Lag affects everybody, and it's team free, so it could help you too.

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