Xbox Hardware & Games

Dogfighting action, bombs, and torpedoes. Still needs more!

Video: 3.5
Sound: 3
Gameplay: 2

Do you have what it takes to defend your country? Have you got the guts to become one of the heroes of the pacific? These are the questions that the game book for Heroes of the Pacific asks of you. Maybe the game developers thought these questions would psych up gamers and cause them to play.

Here is the question they should be asking: Do you have the time to play a game that gets boring real fast and is not too much fun but has pretty good graphics and some nice sound effects? Ok, obviously that wouldn't sell too many copies, but at least it's honest.

Heroes of the Pacific opens on December 7, 1941, the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor. You play as Lt. William Crowe, a young pilot right out of flight school, taking part in 26 significant missions from the Pacific campaign of World War II. Throughout the game you are able to pilot 36 aircrafts and dogfight with over 150 enemy planes. That is, if you can play the whole game. I personally got bored halfway through the training missions.

Any average gamer would think that training mission are there to help. Not here-on the fourth objective you are told to stall out the plane and then regain control. The only problem is that the trainer never tells you how to get the plane going again. I finally got past that part by somehow bouncing off the ground and flying again. This instance was also indicative of one of the main problems with the game-the lack of realism. I cannot tell you how many times I bumped into another plane and just kept on flying. Gameplay is weak, at best. You can't do much with the plane except turn and roll. This will not help you get out of a sticky situation, like open fire on your craft.

The graphics, however, are good for the most part. Flying over the main airfield, you can see fuel depots, trucks, and hangers, all with really nice detail. The water is probably the best feature-it is crisp, clean and sparkles in the sunlight. The only thing that bothers me with the graphics is the explosions, another aspect that just lacked realism.

The soundtrack, the voice acting, and the script for Heroes fall short. You may want to turn down the volume during loading and menus, because it can get pretty annoying after a while. However, turn it back up when flying a mission, because there are some cool sound effects when you zip by other planes and are circling them-you will hear them all around you-and flying by a plane while it is exploding sounds great.

So, as I asked earlier - do you have time to play this game? Maybe, but I wouldn't recommend it. This is not one of the better games from Ubisoft. Am I willing to forget this fact? You bet.