Battlestations: Pacific Review
Battlestations: Pacific is certainly an ambitious game. It combines elements of real-time strategy gaming with the control-everything style of action gameplay of the Battlefield games in large-scale battles between the Imperial Japanese Navy and US Navy. When it works, it really works, providing some intense and enjoyable gameplay. The problem is, it doesn't always work, and those times of gaming joy are tempered with too many frustrating moments.
On the strategy side of the coin, Battlestations provides you with an overhead map of the battle area from which you can direct the forces at your disposal. If you've ever played a real-time strategy game before, controlling your forces in Battlestations will be second nature to you. You can select individual ships or aircraft squadrons, set movement destinations and waypoints, issue attack orders, and more from the map screen. You can also issue unit specific orders such as ordering a carrier to launch a squadron of planes or a battleship to send its scout plane into the fog-of-war to look for enemy ships. You can also select any unit on the map and jump right into direct control of that unit.
Once you're in control of a unit, the game sheds its strategic side and becomes an action game. There's an amazing number of units available in the game – naval units range from submarines to PT Boats to aircraft carriers and everything in-between while air units include scouts, heavy bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters. Every type of ship or plane that took part in combat in the Pacific Theater is represented here and in a number of variants and classes. Each unit feels and controls differently as appropriate so flying a B-24 is a lot different than a Corsair, but the game definitely sits firmly on the arcade side of the arcade-sim fence.
Switching between units is a snap and can be done on the fly using the D-pad. If you go down, you're not necessarily out as the game will automatically switch you to the next unit if you are shot out of the sky or sunk to the bottom of the briny deep. While this keeps the action going it can also be a bit disorienting as you can be dogfighting Zeroes one moment and then suddenly find yourself just above the deck on the final approach of a torpedo run before you realize that you've been shot down. Each unit type has its own unique features and weapons, and part of the initial fun of the game is trying out all of the various weapons stations on the ships. You can man the antiaircraft guns of a carrier to fend off torpedo bombers, drop depth charges at submarines, or let loose a deafening and satisfying broadside from a battleship's main guns, to name a few. You'll need to properly arc your shots and lead your targets with the ship-based weapons, but like with the plane combat things go light on the sim aspects of naval gunnery. Of course you'll have full control over the engines and rudder, and on the larger ships you'll be able to direct damage control teams to specific systems in an effort to keep these ships in the fight. You'll also have the opportunity to take control of submarines in the game, but the amount of micromanagement and patience required make your sub an effective weapon will turn off most gamers – especially since the other units provide a lot more, and more continuous, action. In spite of the variety of ships available in the game, in practice you'll probably spend most of your time in aircraft. Part of this is due to the fact that the ships are very slow in comparison and spend large chunks of battles just trying to get to the action, but the reality of the situation is that it's air power that ultimately wins battles.
The battles can be exciting while you're in the thick of things and the game certainly delivers some spectacular looking battle scenes, but you can't spend all of your time blowing things up and enjoying the fireworks. You'll have to make frequent trips back to the strategic map because it can take a lot of effort to make sure that your ships are in the right place or are at least on their way there. Enemy ships can often appear out of the shroud and if you're not careful you can find suddenly yourself in a precarious situation. Your ships will also tend to follow long movement orders with blind obedience, neglecting to engage target's of opportunity or avoid fights that they can not win. It's also important to frequently check in on your carriers and make sure that replacement squadrons are queued up for launch so that you're not caught with a sudden lack of air cover. Once they're in the fight that you want them to be in, the AI does a pretty competent job of controlling your units. However, you'll be required to complete many of the objectives while in control of the necessary unit because the AI often won't do it for you.
Battlestations is not a game that you can really sit down with and enjoy a quick battle or two. The missions in both the Japanese and American campaigns can be long affairs, with multiple phases and new objectives introduced during the mission. Unfortunately you can't save the state of a battle mid-mission, so there will be times when things will go your way for a half hour or so only to quickly turn to defeat and you'll be forced to start the whole thing over again from the beginning. While this will extend the game time that you'll get out of the campaign, it can also certainly be pretty frustrating at times. This problem is compounded further by the fact that some of the mission's are pretty tedious to begin with, such as a stealth-style mission that has you trying to sneak a sub into an enemy harbor.
Battlestations supports multiplayer play and deserves credit for not simply turning the online play into a naval shooter deathmatch game. Well, there is that and it's not all that fun, but that's not all that there is. The centerpiece mode of multiplayer is Island Capture, which has two teams of players competing to capture a number of islands dotting the map- islands can be captured by landing troop transports on them or by dropping paratroopers from aircraft. You can choose to spawn in as a number of different ship or aircraft types, and teams that choose the right balance of weapons for the right phase of the battle will be more successful than the teams that take a free-for-all approach. Get into a good match and you'll be part of a dynamic and exciting battle that can run upwards of a half hour or so to complete. On the downside, it can take some time to get a full match together and when you finally do there's no guarantee that it will be a fun one. It's not just a lack of players that's an issue, but also the barrier to entry the game puts up to new players that can quickly turn them off to the game. Experienced players have access to better weapons that are gained through success in battle. New players have to make their way through their first games with decidedly less powerful units, and can often find themselves outgunned by the opposition. Unless they're willing to take their licks for a while, the veteran players will continue to get richer at the expense of turning off new players to the game and sacrificing the game's future in the process.
Battlestations: Pacific is not perfect and will not appeal to everyone. Those with the patience to put up with the game's frustrating and annoying aspects, though, will find that there's some exciting action to be had with this diamond in the rough.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
68%. Are you willing to put up with the tedium and
frustration to get to the game's good parts?