Do you like to fly? Do you like to shoot things? Do you like it simple?
When offered the chance to review Attack on Pearl Harbor, I was immediately interested in getting some playtime in. I’ve played a lot of WWII games recently - who hasn’t - but they’ve all focused on the German side of the war. Flying against and even as the Japanese would be a refreshing break from my gaming experience of late.
Attack on Pearl Harbor is a fun “accessible” air-combat game that takes place in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Despite the misleading visuals, it looks like an air-combat simulation, it is very easy to sit down and play. This is where the “accessible” part comes from. You don’t have to worry about all of the hyper-complicated stuff found in the “more serious” flight sims. All you have to worry about is keeping your speed up, hitting your target, and not getting blown up. You can control the game with the mouse, a joystick, or even an Xbox360 controller. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but none seem to be strictly superior.
There are three classes of planes, each having a different type of machine-gun and an alt-fire. The Fighter has heavy machine guns, good for knocking planes out of the sky, and fires unguided (of course) rockets. The Dive Bomber has weaker machine guns but destroys ground targets by dropping bombs – uh, duh. The Torpedo Bomber has what feels like the weakest machine guns and drops - you guessed it - torpedoes to take out enemy water targets.
Ammunition is unlimited. Your machine guns can overheat and your alt-fire weapons have a cool down timer; but other than that you can feel free to fill the sky with ordinance and not worry about whether you’ll have a bomb left for that surprise target at the end of the mission. Of course there’s no need to worry about fuel either, so keep the speed at full and perform as many loops as you want.
The arcade-style game play makes me equate the game to Microsoft’s Crimson Skies, but with better graphics. Attack on Pearl Harbor is a great looking game that has yet to drag on my computer. A battle with 15-20 planes in the sky over 6 ships shooting flak cannons looks and runs great. I’m very impressed with the feel of the game overall.
Don’t let the title fool you, The Pearl Harbor battle just starts off the single player campaigns (both American and Japanese.) Over the course of both campaigns, you will literally cover the entire timeline of the Pacific part of the war. Missions feature fast-paced action-movie style dogfighting where you will take on an obscene amount of enemies while protecting your troops and taking out enemy ground-targets and ships. Expect to go through many objectives each time you take off, sometimes moving from destroying planes, to airbases, to ships before completing the mission.
Doing well in your missions will reward you with reinforcement planes. These are like ‘extra lives’ in that if you get shot down while in a bomber, you have one less bomber to fly on your next mission so be careful or you’ll be out of the proper aircraft to complete your objectives and destroying a battleship by strafing it with a Japanese Zero takes a LONG time.
As fun as the single-player is, the real enjoyment in this game for me came from the multiplayer. Three-to-four friends playing in the same room, weaving in and out of a big furball-dogfight while screaming smack talk and insults back and forth can really get your adrenaline going. Getting friends to play isn’t hard to do with this game either, as the game is geared to be friendly to players who have never played a flight sim in their lives. Unfortunately, you’ll have to recruit friends to play as I have yet to see anyone using the online server and this is a fact that I lament. I’d like nothing more right now than to trade “splash ones” with some random people.
Overall, Attack on Pearl Harbor is a great game. It’s a simple to learn air combat game that pulls off its goals flawlessly. The action is fast paced and very fun. While it’s not a super-high graphics game, it still looks great and the performance tradeout more than makes up for a few thousand more polys per frame. Don’t come here expecting a flight sim, that’s not what the guys at Legendo and CDV USA were going for. If you’re looking for a fun, light, air combat experience, then definitely give it a shot. The $30 pricetag is well worth it.
