By Gary Kearney

Oh yea there are a bunch of World War II games out there, and just as many WWII game reviews stating that, and when they're done well I don't have a problem with the excess. Give me a good game and I'm a happy camper just about no matter the genera. I'm pretty much that way with music too, a really good song can overcome my biases of the music type, i.e., I don't like bubblegum pop music for the most part but every now and then one sneaks up on me...like Mmm-Boop by Hanson. Uh...OK, that was a little too much information to put out in the Internet about myself. Anyhoo, back to WWII. Ubisoft brings us a WWII game but instead of the usual first-person shooter this one puts you in the cockpit and send you into the skies. Is this a hit or miss on the charts? Let's see...

On a Zero's tail.

Heroes of the Pacific, great name by the way, for the PlayStation 2 is a WWII action game where the action is all in the sky and in a slight twist from the norm, you are dealing much more with the Japanese than the German forces. The action is heavy on the dogfighting so if you're more of a land lover you will certainly want to look elsewhere, but for those hunting for a good arcade style air combat game your plane just may have come in.

Heroes has several different game modes including the “jump right and and see what happens” Instant Action, the “how the heck do I work this thing” Fight Training, the “I think I heard about this in school” Historical Missions, and the “so this is where the action's at” Campaign mode. A word of advice that might seem a bit backwards, but do not go through the Flight Training. I just read part of the Xbox review for this game by my colleague and he seemed to have the exact same difficulties in the training that I did. Like him, I was not looking forward to the rest of the game if I was failing so terribly at just learning how to play it! But once I gave up on training and just started playing through the Campaign things got much more enjoyable. So kids, for this time only, don't stay in school.

The story in Heroes revolves around Lt. William Crowe posted at Hickam Field and in his ill-fated brother who was on doomed USS Arizona. Right from the beginning you are in some serious action as you climb in your P-40 Warhawk and try to help in the inevitable defeat that was Pearl Harbor. From here you progress through many (up to 26) of the key battles from the Pacific theater. Along the way you will unlock 36 different aircrafts from four different classes; fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and bombers. You will also gather points that can be used to upgrade your plane...kind of like Pimp My Ride but instead of spinning rims you would be much better off getting better guns. Depending of the class of plane you select your objectives for the mission will vary. And as you would expect each class has very distinct characteristics from slow and lumbering to quick and agile.

I've been playing video games for a very long time...probably longer than many of you readers have been around. Yet during this extensive time I have never adapted very well to flight games. I'm constantly trying to find my next target, looking up and down, spinning out of control, and generally making trouble for no one but myself. With the exception of the training missions, I found myself doing this with much less regularity. There are two control types to choose from; Arcade for the more casual gamer and Professional for the gamer that has some experience already with flying the none too friendly skies. I stuck with the arcade for the most part but gave the pro a try just to see the difference. The main one is that with arcade you can't do a 360 very easily.

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