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Battlestations Pacific Free Download GAMESPACK.NET Even though Battlestations: Pacific was preceded by Battlestations: Midway, there’s something a bit old school about this hybrid action and strategy game. Those who cut their teeth on the Commodore 64 as a gaming machine may remember the classic Beach Head. The goal in that game is to land your troops on a beach successfully, but to do so you have to navigate through five levels, each of which offers a different challenge. In the first, you must navigate your units through tricky waters; this takes place from a map perspective. Next, you man the antiaircraft guns to shoot down enemy planes. In the following level, you switch to the big turrets and sink enemy warships. I bring this up because Battlestations: Pacific reminds me a lot of Beach Head; it’s sort of a sampler of the many different types of combat that took place in the Pacific during World War II. It’s also presented with arcade-style gameplay that no one will mistake for being realistic but that does have the benefit of being enjoyable. As noted previously, this is basically a follow-up to 2007’s Battlestations: Midway. Developer Eidos Hungary delivers a bigger game this time around. New is a Japanese campaign to accompany the American campaign, and while many of the battles are based on history, many liberties have been taken with the facts. Again, this isn’t a historically-accurate wargame but rather an abstract representation of the events. TOP/BEST ADULT VIDEO GAMES IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA)

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The idea here is to jump in and experience many aspects of World War II at sea in an accessible way. The presentation is a bit lackluster; the missions are presented with canned in-game cutscenes and some pretty bad voiceover (more on that later). The loading times feel overlong, as well. Rest assured, the rest of the game feels much more polished. There’s a great deal of variety throughout the campaigns. You’ll go from flying various aircraft ranging from fighters, torpedo planes, dive bombers, scout planes, and more. The array of naval equipment is even greater; there are submarines, PT Boats, destroyers, light cruisers, cruisers, battleships, and carriers. Each of these categories is represented by a number of historically accurate classes for both sides of the conflict, and the attention to detail is lovely at times. Yet with all this variety, there are gameplay moments that work magnificently, and others that feel more tedious in comparison. For instance, having to sneak into Sydney Harbor aboard a miniature Japanese submarine feels like one of those puzzle-style missions where you have to get your timing right. In retrospect, the submarine missions feel the most frustrating, mainly because of their slow speed and their slow rate of fire. In another Japanese mission, you have to take on a submarine hunting patrol group, which is sort of like asking the mouse to kill the cats. Timed missions tend to be the worst, since there’s very little room for error; fail and you have to restart the mission or hit the last checkpoint save. On the flip side, there are moments that border on cinematic awesomeness.

MASTER YOUR FLEET.

The game shines when you’re thrown into the thick of action and tasked with the simple task of blowing things up, whether you’re flying around in a fighter, zipping about in a PT Boat, or lumbering along in a mighty battlewagon. And there’s nothing quite like engaging in a pitched naval and air battle, with battleships blazing away with their huge guns and maneuvering amidst the splashes of near misses. Or watching formations try to dance their way through a spread of torpedoes, delivered by waves of incoming fighters trying to dodge the antiaircraft fire and the flak. There’s a hefty amount of gameplay throughout the campaigns. Each mission can have multiple stages; you might have to do everything from clearing the enemy fighter cover from the skies to taking control of an aircraft carrier and launching strikes to taking control of a battleship and pummeling land installations. You can also jump between various platforms during a battle manually, as well as zoom out on a strategic map and give separate orders to different units. This is where the strategic aspects of the game come in, and the developers manage to squeeze the ability to launch squadrons, create formations, and issue orders onto the gamepad, but just barely. The controls are a bit complex, but the game does ease you into them, and there’s no shortage of on-screen hints if you forget how to do something. The Padre Switch NSP

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For the PC version, you’ll probably want to get a gamepad. It is playable with a keyboard and mouse, but the flight sequences will give your arm a workout if you use a mouse as a flight yoke; you’ll constantly have to pick up the mouse in turning engagements, for example. In some games, you pilot a World War II fighter, riddling enemy aircraft with machine-gun fire as the skies erupt with flames and smoke. In others, you maneuver a battleship across the waves, avoiding oncoming torpedoes while volleying artillery fire toward ground installations. And in still others, you command entire battles by issuing orders to dozens of units, weighing the various strengths and weaknesses of each. In Battlestations: Pacific, you do all of these things during the course of a single mission. Not only does the game execute each element exceedingly well, but it also balances them with precision, leading to enjoyably chaotic battles that stop just short of being overwhelming. By addressing the problems of 2007’s Battlestations: Midway and expanding its scope, developer Eidos Hungary delivers a highly appealing experience that overcomes its pacing difficulties with sheer variety and practically endless replay value. Battlestations: Pacific begins where its predecessor left off, depicting the United States’ wartime operations in the Pacific theater, though this time, it lets you experience history from both sides of the coin. Actually, in the case of the Japanese campaign, you’ll explore an alternate history in which the Japanese expand their empire across the greater Pacific after destroying Pearl Harbor. Both the American campaign and its counterpart eschew an actual story, limiting narrative exposition to prebattle mission briefings and sepia-toned cutscenes made to look as if they were culled from old film footage.

NEW LEVEL OF REALISM.

This History Channel-inspired method of storytelling works just fine, though the accompanying dialogue, especially that of the American campaign, is stilted and awkward, and the voice acting is at best amateurish–and at worst, deeply embarrassing. These are minor gripes in a game with such lofty ambitions, and it’s a wonder that Battlestations: Pacific offers so many different types of gameplay and delivers them so well. You’ll spend a good amount of time in the cockpit of a fighter or bomber (perhaps enjoying the new cockpit view), laying waste to enemy aircraft, launching torpedoes into battleships, and pelleting PT boats with machine-gun fire. It’s a shame that a more standard flight-control scheme isn’t an option. However, once you get used to the controls, you’ll find that Battlestations: Pacific offers a tight and enjoyable flight-combat experience that is as exciting as any arcade sim. From the B-25 bomber to the speedy F4U Corsair, each plane feels good to fly and appropriately powerful. Likewise, the responsive controls make both aerial battles and bombing runs equally rewarding, especially when you lock the camera on to your payload and watch it slam into the target. However, Battlestations: Pacific is not a one-trick pony. Flight combat is only one piece of this complex experience, and unless the mission shoehorns you into a single craft, you can switch between any active units at will. This lets you jump quickly into the hot spots in which you’re most needed and exercise your combat prowess in the skies, amid the ocean waves, or underwater. Wargroove

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Indeed, naval combat offers another satisfying slice of action, and the sheer variety of aircraft that you can pilot is matched by the large number of ships at your disposal. Destroyers such as the Japanese Akizuki are equipped with artillery, antiaircraft turrets, and torpedoes; during the heat of battle, you will find yourself switching between them often. Watching a target battleship begin to flame and smoke during a protracted battle is rewarding, and the loud booms of volleyed artillery make these battles pack even more punch. And just as with aerial bombing runs, locking on to a torpedo and following it to its destination is a terrific way to experience the payoff for a well-aimed shot. Submarines fill out this impressive variety of units at your command. They demand more patience than their other naval brethren but also present their own intriguing tactical concerns. You can surface if you need to exercise some artillery power (or if you need to refill your oxygen reserves), but doing so leaves you incredibly vulnerable. At a midlevel depth, you can raise your periscope to help you survey your surroundings and properly aim your torpedoes, but you risk damaging the scope should a ship pass overhead while it’s extended. If you need to escape the enemy’s notice, you can submerge even further. This makes submarines perfect for hit-and-run techniques, though they are vulnerable and require more micromanagement than other units. Submarines are a great addition to large battles.

TAKE THE BATTLE ONLINE.

But on their own they aren’t much fun to maneuver, which makes sub-based missions slow-paced and boring, such as one in which you infiltrate an Australian harbor. In fact, the Japanese campaign in general is very slow to get moving, and even later missions often spend too much time forcing you to control a specific unit. The best missions are those in which you must coordinate full-scale attacks on land bases to capture them. Once you’re managing a large force of aircraft, ships, and submarines, the excitement levels rise exponentially. You can switch easily from unit to unit, or you can use an overhead tactical map to select a unit caught in the heat of battle. You’ll be spending a lot of time gazing at battles from this view, issuing attack commands and creating waypoints for your units from above. Fortunately, friendly AI is terrific, acting appropriately in most situations and avoiding sure death unless you command them otherwise. However, the player is still almost always more capable than the AI, so if a group of units is in trouble, jumping behind the helm of a battleship and pounding the enemy with artillery and torpedoes will help extricate you from the sticky situation. Battlestations: Pacific strikes a pleasant balance between strategic control and heated action by weighing the effectiveness of the AI with that of the player, which in turn means that you must switch from one view to the other, and from one unit to another, with frequency.

Battlestations Midway was a rather unusual hybrid of a game, a mix of real-time strategy and lightweight military simulation. It let you pilot a wide variety of aircraft, ships and submarines as part of a campaign that culminated in the pivotal Battle of Midway – one of the most important conflicts of WW2’s Pacific Theatre. Despite the odd flaw it was thoroughly enjoyable stuff, earning a respectable score of 8 in our review. And now Mrs Battlestation (Eidos Hungary) has produced an offspring, a lively chap christened Pacific. To get straight to the heart of the matter, Battlestations Pacific is pretty much more of the same stuff we enjoyed in Midway – only this time there’s more of it. Once again there’s a hefty set of single-player missions based upon real WW2 events, but this time there are two campaigns to plough through – allowing you to play as the Japanese for the first time. If you follow this path you’ll begin by blowing seven shades out of Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett during the attack on Pearl Harbour, progressing towards a What If? scenario that imagines what might have happened if the Americans had failed at Midway. Meanwhile the Yanks get to continue their efforts from the end of the last game, building up to the Battle of Okinawa at the end of the war.

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One of our larger criticisms of the original Midway was that the game didn’t do that solid a job of guiding the player through its rather confusing array of controls and menus. There’s no mandatory training section this time around, but there is a practice mode for those who want it – and to be honest, newcomers should probably head here first before diving straight in to the action. Despite some clear concessions towards less hardcore players, the first 60 odd minutes of Pacific can be a tad confusing – our video producer Seb said that it made him want to cry, and not in the good way. The first couple of missions for either side will introduce aerial and naval combat, with submarines surfacing slightly further in to each campaign. There are simple video tutorials available at the start of each mission, with a further set of tips that can be accessed mid mission, but these work better as quick memory-joggers than as fully-fledged instructions. Once you actually get in charge of a vehicle, you’ll find everything relatively simple. While each of the three craft classes has its own set of controls, there’s enough common ground to keep things relatively straightforward. On the Xbox 360, the left analogue stick is generally used to control your speed while the right steers you about. Ridge Racer Unbounded

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