EA Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault review

After a break in which Call of Duty claimed the crown as the best World War II game, Medal of Honor is aiming to hit back with Pacific Assault. With a shiny new 3D engine, the game transports the action away from Europe and into the Far East.

Rather than rehashing the same old formula, EA has updated the gameplay too. The original Medal of Honor took a Rambo-esque approach, but Pacific Assault has a more realistic feel to it. This means it's harder to shoot targets far away, slow to reload and the enemy won't stand still waiting for you to put them out of their misery. Instead they'll flank you, hide behind trees, throw grenades and, when the chips are down, fix bayonets and charge.

When you've got a whole squad of enemy soldiers screaming their way towards you and a couple of bullets left in your machine gun, things get quite scary. If that's not bad enough, the jungle terrain neatly blocks your field of vision, so they can come at you from anywhere.

Thankfully, you're backed up by a squad of men. Rather than the standard cannon fodder, they're invaluable. They'll fight alongside you and actually kill the enemy too. They can't die, although when injured they'll fall to the ground waiting for the company's Corpsman to heal them. It's in your best interests to protect them, as you'll soon be wiped out once they're all injured.

The Corpsman is also useful when you're injured. There are precious few medical kits lying around, so you'll rely on him to come and heal you too. However, he carries only enough equipment for a few heals in each mission, so use him wisely.

He also introduces an interesting feature in the game; when your health reaches zero, you lie on the floor waiting for help. If he's in time, you're brought back into the battle; if he's too late or a Japanese soldier gets you, it's game over. Even with these touches, the game can be frustratingly difficult. In some missions you'll probably find yourself replaying the same section two or three times.

The 3D engine, based on Quake 3's, is up to the job and provides lush visuals and detailed characters. However, it needs a fairly hefty PC to cope well. On our test 2.53GHz Pentium 4 PC with a Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card, we had to run the game at 800x600 to keep a playable frame rate.

It might not be the best WWII game but it's far from bad. The difficult missions and support of a squad will provide enough interest for even the most battle-hardened veterans.

Author: David Ludlow