MEDAL OF HONOR: PACIFIC ASSAULT

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : EALA And TKO Software

Publisher : Electronic Arts

Engine : EALA's own Medal Of Honor Tech [Modified LithTech Jupiter] And Havok Physics

Genre : Historic First-Person Shooter

Release Date : November 4 , 2004

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows 2000 / Windows XP

CPU : AMD Athlon 2600+ / Intel Pentium 4 Processor

Memory (RAM) : 512 MB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 8.1 Compatible Video Card with Memory 64 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 4 Series
ATI : Radeon 9200 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 1 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

Pacific Assault features a good-sized single-player campaign consisting of roughly two dozen missions, which will take you 10 or so hours to fight through at the game's default difficulty setting. Whereas Allied Assault clearly drew inspiration from Saving Private Ryan, Pacific Assault kicks off with an ostentatious bang straight out of Pearl Harbor and proceeds to deliver some tense, cutthroat action sequences reminiscent of The Thin Red Line. Throughout the game, you'll play as a Marine named Tommy Conlin, and you'll fight together with the rest of his squad. As Conlin, you'll get to wield a variety of authentic Allied and Axis WWII-era weapons, ranging from pistols to light machine guns, and you'll be able to issue some basic orders to your squad. The campaign occurs during the course of several years, which gave the designers license to change some of the weapons, outfits, and settings from mission to mission. Pacific Assault starts off slowly, with a drawn-out training sequence and sort of a guided tour of Pearl Harbor, but afterwards, the game's action mostly stays hot. You'll operate in such places as Guadalcanal, Makin Atoll, Tarawa, and more. These tropical settings and the fearless Japanese soldiers you'll be facing in each of them stand in sharp contrast to the ravaged European countryside of Allied Assault and most WWII shooters. Ironically, though, the setting doesn't feel all that different from that of the recent glut of Vietnam-based shooters, so when you're rustling through the underbrush with a Thompson in hand, looking for any signs of your hidden foes, it's actually easy to forget that this is World War II. Nevertheless, Pacific Assault does a great job of rendering lush, tropical environments and the dangers they may conceal. Strangely enough, none of your squadmates can actually be killed, but your corpsman may already be preoccupied with tending to one of them when you desperately need his help, so the game encourages you to try to keep your squad safe. However, it doesn't force you to babysit your squad, either.

Pacific Assault's multiplayer mode includes three game types: free-for-all, team deathmatch, and invader. The former two are conventional and pretty straightforward, while the third one obviously got most of the attention from the game's developer. It's an objective-based game type, much like that of Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multiplayer, and it pits American forces against Japanese forces on eight different maps--each with its own specific multitiered mission that places either the Axis or the Allies on offense while placing the other side on defense. One side needs to accomplish a series of sequential objectives, such as demolishing some gun emplacements, retrieving some documents, or radioing back to headquarters, while the other side needs to try to prevent all this from happening. An onscreen radar display and other visual indicators help direct you to where the action is at any given moment, and audio cues will also keep you updated on the mission objective. These features greatly help you get your bearings quickly rather than force you to spend a lot of time learning the flow and layout of each map. Depending on the server, up to 32 players can have at it in any of the game's rather large, complex maps, but we encountered some mixed results in terms of online performance. Character and weapon models also feature high levels of detail and exhibit mostly very good animation. Additionally, there are a lot of nice touches in the environments. You'll spot some indigenous animals in the rustling trees, and bullets seem to rip into most of the different types of surfaces in the game. Realistic weather effects will also influence battles. Here, the corpses of your slain enemies will drift downstream, perhaps to warn the enemy of your forthcoming arrival. But as mentioned, Pacific Assault's visuals do come at a price, because the game's frame rate and loading times can leave something to be desired even on fast machines. Meanwhile, the game's more notable effects simply aren't available on lower-detail settings. And, of course, Pacific Assault features an impressive military orchestra soundtrack befitting a World War II epic, and it kicks in at opportune times during the campaign. In a nice touch, the game's menu system is set within a makeshift allied base, where you'll hear various late '30s and '40s-era radio broadcasts that include news, commercials, and music. Pacific Assault delivers some intense and challenging firefights in its single-player campaign, while also offering a solid multiplayer component for the long haul.

GAME REVIEW :-

8.5/10

Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault Trailer :-