Medal of Honor Pacific Assault

"An Eerily Realistic FPS"

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is the newest Medal of Honor game, and is a realistic war game, especially the beginning!

STORY: 10/10

You can't easily go wrong with a WW2 plot, can you? Ok, maybe you can, but it's pretty hard to. The story here is that you are Tom (Often called Tommy) Conlin, a Marine fighting the Japaneses alongside his allies during the second world war. The first mission is not training, but you begin at a D-Day like landing of Tarawa, where you are wounded and have flashbacks to your training, Pearl Harbor, and many other places like Guadalcanal. Oh, and by "flashbacks" I mean missions. Or, really REALLY long flashbacks. You have many comrades, but only three of them (Medic, squad leader/tough guy, and the sharp-shooting guy) really develop. Some others develop, like the Rookie, but they don't have as much of an effect on the story as these three. Between missions, your character writes letters to his father, which helps you relate to the character.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

This game has many of the old war gameplay mechanics and some new ones. The old is that you have to kill a certain amount of guys at times and go on search-and-destroy or protection missions, but you can't play a war game and not expect that, now can you? The enemy A.I. is intelligent, they throw grenades when you and your allies are in a tightly-packed group, take cover in strange places, attack when you least expect it, and go on "Banzai" raids. When they go on Banzai raids, the officers raise their swords and the soldiers charge with their bayonets attached to their rifles and they attempt to storm your positions with numbers alone. They also often do this when only one of them is left, even if that one is a lightly-armed medic. Speaking of medics, there are very few med-kits in this game: You always have to call for your Corpsman (AKA Medic) to "heal" you, but he has a limited supply of medical tools. When your allies are hit, they fall to the ground and wait for the medic to come help them, so you often have to decide if you want the kit or you want a buddy to have it. There are a ton of new guns, stationary and hand-held. One of them is the flame thrower. Like other new FPS games, you can hit enemies with your gun. There is a good physics system as well, but it's not as good as Half-Life 2's physics system. When you shoot certain objects, their physics system "starts up" and they fly around, and after that, when you walk into them they react by rolling. If you don't shoot them, they don't react. When you shoot or hit a man with your gun they fall backwards and react like the objects do when you walk into them. You also command your squad later on in the game, but you can only really command them to retreat, advance, group together, or lay down covering fire. It's easy to give commands, although I would have liked a few more, but these basic commands are all youreally need. That about does it for the gameplay, which, to wrap it up, is excellent.

SOUND: 10/10

Not much to say about the sound, it's excellent.

MUSIC: 10/10

During hard battles, you hear new or classic Medal of Honor classical music reminiscent of good war or anti-war movies. The music sort of "reflects" what is going on in the game, which is a nice touch.

VOICE ACTING: 9/10

Voice acting is very, very professional. The voice acting almost never falls flat, except once or twice. From the voice acting alone you can tell the desperation or joy in the character. And it's always good to have an authentic foreign language, too.

OTHER SOUNDS: 9/10

In this game, bullets sound like bullets, not pebbles, and explosions sound real, not faked. Each gun, as expected in a war game, makes a different noise when shot and you can easily distinguish them. The explosions sound very realy and the screen even "shakes" when there is an explosion close by to give it a better, but sometimes annoying, effect.

GRAPHICS: 9/10

I usually say that graphics don't make a game good, but they can usually make a game better or worse. The graphics in this game are easily superb, and the textures are good. The lighting effects are very realistic, but a little annoying at times. Particle effects are some of the best I've ever seen. That's all I really have to say about the graphics.

MULTIPLAYER: 8/10.

This game has your average Deathmatch and team deathmatch, which is nice but not exactly revolutionary. A Class-based Battlefield 1942-like mode is in this game as well, known as Invader mode. The only difference in this mode from Battlefield 1942 is that when you die the team's medics can revive you (Think Return To Castle Wolfenstein) but opposing teams can kill you in this mode by melee attacking your character, throwing a grenade near your character, or causing a large explosion near your character. Like in Battlefield 1942, when you die it costs the team a "ticket", and the team that loses the most tickets loses the game. That's all there is to say about multiplayer.

BUY OR RENT:

Since you can't rent computer games, buy this one if you're an FPS or World War 2 fan.

Overall (Not an average: 9/10.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/04