Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault Review

Medal of Honor Pacific Assault, the newest WWII shooter from EA, takes you in the Pacific theatre of war as Private Tommy Conlin during WWII, America versus Japan. The game puts you through famous battles such as Pearl Harbour, Tarawa Island and Makin Atoll and pits you against the relentless Japanese Forces. It sports the Havok physics engine and the rather old Quake 3 graphics engine.

For a game using the ancient Quake 3 engine, MOHPA actually achieves amazing visuals. The jungles settings were designed to cover up the linear game play and it does so very effectively, hiding the edges of the map in dense jungle without confusing you where to go next. The textures and the jungle foliage are easy on the eyes, although this certainly isn't a "sit and enjoy the view" kinda game like Halo or Farcry. Even though it’s not stunningly beautiful, it definitely is above standard and has its own “distinctiveness”. MOHPA’s graphics are above average but when compared to the new FPS titles, it doesn’t really match up, not that that matters too much. IMO, EA has pushed the outdated Quake engine to its limits with this game.

A new and very cool effect is used in MOHPA. It occurs when you go get concussion from a grenade or you’re on the brink of death. Actually, it’s more like 3 effects; one occurs when a grenade/artillery lands near you, I call it shellshock; One happens occasionally when you have like 10 or below health; And the last happens when you’re technically dead, 0 health, and lying on the ground. With the shell shock, you screen goes vintage brown, your view is distorted and ringing sounds play for a while, sometimes you’ll even be tossed a few metres away and off the ground. The brink of death and the near brink of death are the same, except when you are at the brink of death you’re on the ground waiting for either a medic to come (only if you call for help BEFORE you 0 health) or a bayonet to come and skew your heart out.

There isn't much to comment on the weapon selection, you'll be using SMGs most of the way unless you want to be reloading have the time with the rifles. Throughout the game you'll get to man larger guns on battleships, landing crafts and even on a plane, a nice distraction from the normal killfest.

Gameplay is fast paced and always interesting thanks a whole lot to banter from your friends as they provide interesting observations and bicker among themselves. The story moves along quickly and whole missions are separated into segments of objectives to keep you interested. The jungle maps basically consist of patches of areas with enemies and winding paths connecting them. This allows rest in between the carnage and adds to the ‘creeping through the jungle’ feel.

Difficulty is rather lacking as, apart from the shooting down planes, etc, objectives, the enemies behave the same throughout the whole game and never quite get their heads behind that rock allowing easy headshots. The accuracy of your Japanese foes don't seem to get much better with the difficulty settings (probably because EA was going for realism and all). However the realistic difficulty mode is an interesting new feature, it removes the HUD so you wont be able to see your ammo, health and such and also enables bleeding, which will happen if you get gutted by a bayonet or if you stand to close to the deadly poisoned (I think) sharp (as if) bamboo sticks littered throughout the some levels.

A new feature MOHPA contains sees you accompanied by 3 or sometimes more immortal marine friends along your adventures (yippee, meat shield, but not really, they do fall down). Team commands and specialized units allow MOHPA to be played like a half-way team based hybrid shooter. Although many will never make use of the team commands that can be issued to your friends, it is a nice feature to have. There are some situations where getting your team to fall back or provide cover fire will greatly help and they perform surprisingly intelligently too. On the subject of AI, your friends will also use cover and vantage points effectively without depending on them, a lot more effectively than some other team based games.

There is plenty of background battle noise during the hectic battles adding depth whilst during the intervals between battles, half stealth, half military style music is played. The gun sounds are often paired with an echoing effect to add to the atmosphere of the jungle.

EA has introduced a new objective/deathmatch mode called Invader Mode for Multiplayer. Basically you get the option of either killing off the enemy (a limit on how many times a team gets to respawn) or completing the objectives (only the ‘invaders’ side get the objectives). With lots of people and if they work in teams, the Invader mode can get pretty fun and co-op like. However, in some of the smaller maps, it gets annoying when someone (usually me) camps around with a bayonet one-hit KO-ing everyone that spawns. Even when not spawn camping, the bayonet is just too powerful a weapon to use.

All in all Medal of Honor Pacific Assault is well made, face-paced, accurate and interesting WWII FPS. Although it doesn’t have cutting edge graphics like Halo or Splinter Cell, it does amazingly well and a bit more with the Quake engine it’s got. Worth playing over once or twice and the multiplayer can be a blast with a good amount of people.