"Deadly Dozen Pacific Theater, developed by nFusion Interactive, is a prime example of what happens when you get a small team of hardcore gamers together that set out to make a good game, as opposed to a cheap game. The game, while rehashing certain aspects of shooters, is nonetheless groundbreaking in many other aspects from the lush terrain to the tactical combat to the full featured multiplayer. While reasonably priced at $30 (compare that to $50 for BF1942), it's no cheap game in terms of quality and in fact surpasses that title in many aspects.

The graphics are superb for a game of this cost and while do not match the quality of say UT3000K, they are easily competitive with the graphics of today's market. One thing that I noticed immediately was the LUSH terrain. Thick jungle you can hide in, grass you can hunker down in, rolling ocean waves are just a few of the features I haven't seen in any other game to this date. This really shines in multiplayer where it's actually advantageous for once to hide in the bushes prone, as opposed to say Delta Force Land Warrior where doing so will only give you away (due to lack of foliage) and get you killed (due to poor network coding).

Some people will like the tactical combat, others not. You control a group of up to 4 guys out of 12 (hence the name Deadly Dozen), 3 of whom are partially controlled by the AI. I saw partially because they act independently about as much as units do in most real time strategy games. They fire at what they see, they stay in formation, but otherwise won't act without orders. Most of the gameplay in singleplayer comes from carefully positioning your men to setup ambush points and drawing in enemies with your sniper.

Unlike Medal of Honor, which most closely resembles this game in genre if not price and quality, missions are open-ended. You have an objective, say capture some documents, and pick the guys you want to do it. For example a good group would be a sniper, a heavy machine gunner, a medic, and an all-around leader. You can pick your path to attack from, go in slow or quick, and use stealth or firepower. This is certainly no run-and-gun type of shooter. Doing so, as I did the first few games, will lead to an early grave. Thankfully quicksave and quickload are indeed quick and can be used anytime.

Multiplayer at first crashed quite frequently with over a few players. Most people stuck to small cooperative games, and one nice feature they included was the ability to save multiplayer game. That's something you almost never see due to the difficulty of programming it. That it's in a $30 game, and in all 4 game modes to boot (DM, CTF, Coop, Competitive Coop), is extra icing on an already delicious cake. The latest patch seems to have fixed most of the bugs though so the game is pretty stable. There usually aren't many players on, but I've been able to play when I want to. MP played lag-free and fair, which was a refreshing change from BF1942 where you can unload an entire clip into a guy before he dies and it's impossible to snipe unless your victim is standing still. A few hits kill here and there's a vast array of server options to suit different tastes.

Deadly Dozen Pacific Theater is one of those rare sub $50 games that are not only good, but competitive with higher priced games of the same genre. I'd recommend this game to anyone interested in realistic shooters that actually play well online, or anyone interested in tactical shooters." - Kevin Jenkins