Product Description

Battlestations: Pacific is an action-packed WWII tactical shooter on an extraordinary scale and features two distinctly different single player campaigns. As the Americans, the game picks up the story where Battlestations: Midway left off and allows players to fight their way from The Battle of Midway to Okinawa as they try to secure peace in the Pacific. As the Japanese however, players take control of the Imperial Japanese fleet and have the unique chance to fight at Pearl Harbor before attempting to change the course of history and take full control of the Pacific Ocean.

• Combined Real-Time Strategy, Flight, and Naval Action Gameplay: Command the air, sea, and sub forces. Launch full-scale attacks and at anytime switch to and take full-control of any plane, ship or sub. You command, fly the attack, fire the battleship's 15-inch guns, and submerge the mini-sub anyway you choose throughout the battle.
• Two Massive Campaigns: 28 full-scale battles across two unique campaigns. The historic American campaign begins after Midway and goes to Guadalcanal, Leyte, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and more. The "what if" Japanese campaign begins at Pearl Harbor and goes to the Java Sea, Port Moresby, Midway, and beyond.
• 100 War Machines: Fighters, bombers, carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, subs, mini-subs and more. 17 US planes including the new Corsair fighters and Curtis Helldivers, and 20 Japanese planes including the Mitsubishi J2M Raiden (Thunderbolt), and the night-fighting Nakajima J1N1 Gekko.
• Innovative Online Multiplayer Battles: Huge multi-unit battles for up to eight players (four on each side) on Games For Windows LIVE. The largest battle involves over 100 units. Includes five all-new online gameplay modes: Island capture, Duel, Siege, Escort, and Competitive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3152 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Eidos
• Released on: 2009-05-15
• Platform: Windows XP
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Dimensions: .28 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review

Battlestations: Pacific is an action-packed WWII tactical shooter on an extraordinary scale and features two distinctly different single player campaigns. As the Americans, the game picks up the story where Battlestations: Midway left off and allows players to fight their way from The Battle of Midway to Okinawa as they try to secure peace in the Pacific. As the Japanese however, players take control of the Imperial Japanese fleet and have the unique chance to fight at Pearl Harbor before attempting to change the course of history and take full control of the Pacific Ocean.

Battlestations: Pacific offers a unique blend of action and strategy, as players must plan their moves carefully on huge open-world arenas and then fight in the air, above sea and underwater as they take direct control of their units and storm into combat. Join forces with friends online or play solo against the computer controlled opponents in the all-new Skirmish mode or battle each other in one of the five new, innovative multiplayer modes.

Customer Reviews

Arcade Based Action/Strategy
Battlestations Pacific (BP) is the sequel to the earlier Midway title, which I admit to getting about halfway through before giving up.

I think the most important point potential end users need to be aware of is that despite all the hype about strategy, this is primarily an action orientated shoot-em up. It is most emphatically not Silent Hunter with surface vessels or EF2000 with WWII propeller planes.

For the single player you are offered a choice of two campaigns, either playing as American or Japanese forces. The American campaign is a straightforward re-enactment of key battles in the Pacific theatre between 1942 and 1945. The Japanese campaign on the other hand is supposed to represent a "what if" scenario, had the war followed a different path and the Japanese forces achieved a land invasion of the mainland USA. Sometimes it is fun to play as the bad guy, as those of us who enjoyed Tie Fighter far more than X-Wing will testify. However be under no illusion that what you are presented with in either scenarios is other than a set of pre-scripted missions, in no way approaching the dynamic campaigns of long gone but fondly remembered 90's flight sims.

I've currently progressing well in both campaigns. Each mission gives you a number of primary objectives to accomplish, some secondaries and the occasional hidden objective. However again it's important to note that you are prettymuch expected to follow the pre-determined path conceived by the level designer. If you go off to pursue a secondary task and in the meantime one of your other units manages to get the primary then you are rudely interrupted by a cut scene and skipped forward to the next "set-piece" or even ends the mission. So you don't really have that much freedom to go about on your own initiative. The action is good fun and combined with the graphics and sound effects is quite immersive. More often than not though, it becomes a simple slugging match between you and the AI rather than a tactical cat and mouse.

A quick word about the interface. The game can be controlled by either Mouse/Keyboard or X-Box 360 controller for PC but note not both at the same time. This leads to frantic scrambling around in the options during missions as the KBM is preferable for controlling surface units while the joypad is better for aerial engagements. As the game has a habit of switching you from a naval unit one minute to a plane the next this gets a tad annoying. Best learning how to fly with the mouse. Physics by the way are grossly simplified and, at least on Regular setting, you have virtually unlimited ammo.

From time to time the game expects you to take command of the strategy but trying to do this from the map or support screen while piloting a bomber on a torpedo run is not exactly easy. The interface is decidedly fickle. At one moment in the battle you can only give commands to certain units but then without warning they are suddenly available to you. Likewise clicking on a unit in the 2D map may (though not always) transfer you - most inconvenient in the middle of combat as you need to faff about re-opening the map and trying to get back on the plane or ship you were controlling a moment ago.

As regards DRM, you need the disc in the drive and the game connects to Windows Live requiring you to input the serial number. I'm not sure if that is a mandatory requirement to run the game standalone as my Live runs automatically.

In conclusion BP is a reasonable game and I'm giving it 3 stars. Just remember it is not the dynamic/strategic wargame the box might have you believe.

Nice graphics but where's the game
Far too much time and effort on the videos & graphics and little attention to the actual campaigns. No strategy or skills required here. Too much an arcade style shoot-em-up. I was totally bored and disappointed within an hour of installing the game, so don't waste your money on this one! In fact the original Battlestations Midway was a far better game, despite its inferior graphics ... Oh well, back to Silent Hunter 4.

ps: BS Pacific took about nearly an hour to load and has subsequently crashed quite a few times.

Battlestations Pacific
Battlestations Pacific (PC DVD)
To be honest the reviews that proceed my review say it all.

I can't fault the graphics but unfortunately this game isn't anywhere near the game that I thought and hoped it would be. This said, my 10 year old son really enjoys Battlestations Pacific so I guess therein lies the "proof in the pudding".

If you are looking for a game that works your brain and involves planning your strategy and getting deeply involved, this probably isn't the game for you. If you are like my 10 year old son and just like blowing the hell out of things without any thought of the long term strategy or realism then, go ahead. But bottom line, I definitely would not recommend this game.