Mixing real-time strategy elements with all out action has made the Battlestations series a hit among a broad range of the gaming audience. Battlestations: Pacific aims to take that popularity to the next level by ramping up everything from the visual quality, to the sheer scale of the game while aiming at being easily accessible to series novices.
Land grab
The first thing you notice upon entering the Battlestations: Pacific world, at least from the missions we were exposed to, is that the size of the maps have dramatically increased from the previous game, allowing for larger scale battles and more variation in your tactical options. For example, islands can now be captured from the enemy and put to good use supporting your own troops. Capture an island with a radar station and your tactical map’s fog of war will be greatly reduced, allowing you to monitor enemy troop movement, capture an enemy airstrip and you have a greater number of aircraft at your disposal.
Island capture is not easy though, as it will usually require a coordinated air, land and sea attack to be successful. We were shown an example in which Japanese ships destroyed an island’s anti-aircraft guns, which allowed the bombers to soften up the land defenses which, in turn, paved the way for an all out ground assault on the severely weakened American positions.
Upon your land force storming the island a ‘swingometer’ appears showing how well, or how badly, the invasion is going. This information is valuable in helping you make a decision on whether to continue the attack as is, to withdraw your troops so as not to lose them all in the fight or to send in reinforcements. Of course, after the air and sea onslaught the island already suffered the land attack we witnessed went rather well; as things generally do in media demos.
All this works the other way too; with you having to defend the islands under your control. To help you in achieving this you can take direct control of defenses such as flak cannons and AA guns, putting them to good use ripping through the enemy attack and, hopefully, putting an end to it before the land assault can begin.
The accessibility factor
Listen to the developers talk for the briefest moment and you realise the buzzword for this game is ‘accessibility’. While the game is undoubtedly bigger and more in-depth than its predecessors, it gives you a lot more help along the way too. You have the option of enabling on-screen hints that advise you on what to do next, along with a few pointers as to how to go about doing it. An automatic checkpoint system has also been implemented that saves the game during missions, removing the pain of having to start up all over again upon your last ship succumbing to the murky deep.
In the U.S. mission we got our hands on (the single player campaign is split into separate US and Japanese story-lines) the auto-save feature turned out to be a gift from heaven, considering the scale of the mission presented to us. Our objective was split into four parts – protect the battleships, destroy an enemy hangar, destroy enemy landing bays and finally, take out a rather imposing battleship – after each objective had been accomplished a save point was created, easing the pain of dying; which was rather frequent given our lack of military skill.
Streamlining the experience is also key to accessibility, as highlighted by the redesigned vehicle repair menu. Used for ordering repairs to anything from battleship engine failure to manually removing water from an aircraft carriers hull, the menu is now accessible in-game. This small design change greatly streamlines gameplay, removing the hassle caused by having to trawl through menu screens, allowing you to always stay within the action with very minimal disruption.
All the visceral goodness
Compared with Battlestations: Midway, graphically Pacific is simply a cut above. Damage modeling on all units, from fighter planes to battleships, is excellent. Wings tear apart, entire ships disintegrate under a barrage of kamikaze pilots and infantry troops devolve into a bloody, soupy mess at the hands of a mounted gun emplacement. Damage modeling appears to be ‘dynamic’ in that you won’t constantly witness the exact same damage to a unit time after time, instead you’ll see damage wherever the impact took place; either that or the sheer number of animations is an achievement in itself as we witnessed a lot of carnage in our time with the game. Couple this with impressive levels of smoke and fire and what was originally a lush tropical environment quickly becomes a scene worthy of Dante himself.
Water is now, what the Eidos developers referred to as, ‘semi-transparent’, meaning you can see through it to a certain depth. As a result you can now watch, with total visceral satisfaction, as the battleship you just sunk slowly sinks to its watery grave, or the fighter plane you just knocked out of the sky quickly disappears into the depths below. Having said that the visuals of the sinking units are, as this point at least, somewhat crude, looking more like a blob of discolouration to the surface water than an actual vessel.
Thankfully, and at the request of countless fans, an interior cockpit view is now available for all aircraft. Impressively cockpit visuals are unique to each aircraft adding to the sense of authenticity established by the rest of the game. While it was slightly more difficult for us to shot down our enemies using this view, it certainly created an increased sense of intimacy compared with the standard third person perspective.
From what we could garner from our hands-on time, Battlestations: Pacific seems to be sticking close to the formula that has garnered such a hardcore following for the series, while adding optional elements that soften the learning curve for novices. It will be interesting to see just how these elements develop closer to the game’s release and, of course, what is being planned for the multiplayer modes.
Stay tuned for more in the coming months…
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