12 Days of Midas (and other Budget games) - Day 7: Pacific Warriors II: Dogfight

Game: Pacific Warriors II: Dogfight
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: InterActive Vision Games
Release Date: 1st October 2004

Before playing this particular game, my expectations of World War II aeroplane games were based entirely on "Secret Weapons Over Normandy" for PS2, a fairly comprehensive and exciting account of the air battles of the war. While I wasn't expecting too much from a Midas published title, I found the experience to be frustratingly close to being an enjoyable game on some levels.

With campaign being the only game mode, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's another classic case of a shallow budget title, but there's a fair set of missions from both the American and Japanese sides of the war. The selection of planes is slightly more limited, with one fighter and one bomber for each side for a total of 4 planes. By completing missions, players earn upgrade points and can improve aspects of their planes for more effective use during missions.

Controlwise, the game is pretty solid; apart from having no real sense of speed, aeroplanes handle as you might expect them to. L1 and L2 buttons increase and decrease overall speed, R1 and R2 control weapons such as rockets and bombs, and the d-pad gives a selection of viewing angles from around the plane. Strangely though, the game seems to change viewing angles of its own accord at random points during missions, which is offputting even at the best of times.

Missions themselves are incredibly linear and short, usually with a single objective such as "shoot down all the planes" or "sink the ships". Once this is achieved, the next mission is unlocked alongside some story in the form of text. The variety of missions is also pretty narrow; there wasn't a single memorable objective in the whole American campaign.

Graphically the game is mixed; plane textures and graphics are average at best, as are the ground locations, however much of the map is uninteresting and empty. This gives a strange impression to flight which can only be compared to flying over some sort of post-apocalyptic world. The music and sound effects are generally good, and in fact reminded me of the style of audio used in Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

Overall Pacific Warriors II isn't a bad game in terms of gameplay, but its lack of variety, planes, true mission depth and graphical quality lets it down in many ways. A lot of work would be needed to make the game truly enjoyable but the basics are there, unlike many Midas published games. This is a game that might be worth playing on a rainy day as a basis for comparison to other war flying games.

Rating: 45/100
Grade: D