"Deep in the Caribbean..."  Oh no, wait. 
"Deep in the Specific Ocean..."  Specific?  Surely not?  No.  Pacific.  Specific?  The Specific Ocean.  That's right, isn't it?  Okay.  Good.  So, deep in the Specific Ocean in the early 1940s, some shit was going down.  Apparently.  All the Japanese people were, like, crashing their planes into everything and they'd done that so much that there wasn't anyone, like, left.  But the Americans, who were all on holiday in Hawaii were really annoyed because the Japanese ruined their nice time by dragging them into a world war.  Bummer. 

Battlestations: Pacific allows you to go, "ooh yeah, that was a bummer" for a very long time while roving around some rather lovely scenery in some questionably manoeuvrable vehicles.

So let's take a closer look...
  
"Oh good!"  I hear you cry, "another World War II game!  Just - JUST - what we need!"  Okay, yes, I concede that your statement, sopping wet with the moistness of ironic sentiment, does ring true and that yet another WWII sim is perhaps not what we might be after at the moment, but it's fair to say that Battlestations: Pacific does offer something quite apart from your Worlds at War and 1943s and primarily, that's realism.  Sort-of.

What games like Call of Duty and Battlefield provide is a fast-paced, thrill-a-minute war-based rampage through various settings where the focus is largely in pushing you further and further to the edge of your seat, causing beads of sweat to pool and run down your brow, to burn and blister your very nerve endings with sheer exhilliration, while Battlestations: Pacific...  Well...  It doesn't do that.  Where the explosive brash action-fests of recent war-based games might be likened to the stereotypical attitudes of the American national persona, Battlestations: Pacific (BSP) takes more of a (also stereotypical) Japanese approach.  It is considered.  Measured.  Careful.  Slower.  More deliberate.  Which is undeniably great; we need that in a game from time to time, but the problem occurs that, to employ a similar metaphor, when you've been brought up on a diet of McDonalds' burgers, salty fries, sugary, flavoursome drinks and hot apple pies, a small plate of sushi can be unappealing, perhaps a little too subtle in flavour and maybe, frankly, dull.

And it's a danger that BSP flirts with a little too closely.  Like the perception that McDonalds food is homogenised, pumped up and synthetically enhanced to be bigger, tastier and more filling, BSP is real food, taking realism as its goal and trying to get as close to it as possible.  It may shock us all to learn but fighter planes in the second world war were not capable of turning on a sixpence or, to bring the phrase up-to-date, a five pence piece.  Their response times were not as impressive as most games would have you believe.  They were, in short, bastards to fly.  And BSP represents that, as a number of my crashes into the sides of verdant slopes, battleships and the Specific Ocean will testify.  You can't loop-the-loop so close to the ground in these things.  You.  Will.  Crash. 

And the boats.  Dear god, the boats.  If you want to turn your boat around you must leave six to eight working days free in order to complete this simple task.  Yes, it's realistic, but Christ on a bike, it's dull.  But on the plus side, while your craft is slowly rotating like an old grey hotdog in a defective microwave, you can use your anti-aircraft guns to help clear incoming bogeys*.  There really is nothing more satisfying than clearing your airways of bogeys**. 

The music and sound effects are pretty faultless while the graphics are really quite stunning at times, but every so often, something will occur on your screen that makes you think, "erm.  No."  The first thing in this category was the first time I saw an explosion.  It was my plane hitting the ground, actually and it was the most impotent, piddling little explosion I've seen in a long time.  And my craft just disappeared.  It looked pretty awful.  But then, you look at the detail on the ships; you can see the little men walking about the decks.  It's quite cool.  The water effects are pleasing to the eye, especially where it crashes against shorelines, but there are just the odd thing where you just can't help but think it looks a bit as if much of the time has been spent elsewhere.  Like buying posh biscuits, perhaps.

The voice acting is pretty funny as well, but for all the wrong reasons.  The Japanese people, speaking English, do sound very Japanese.  It would be the equivalent of a British person doing voice acting as a British person and saying, "well, hello there, old chap; jolly nice day, what!" as if he were wearing a bowler hat, black suit and carried an umbrella.  It's just a bit too much, but apparently these are really Japanese people doing the voice acting, so it's authentic... 

Cutscenes are rendered with an old film grain look about them and, if you end up with a game over, the cutscene renders itself from realtime gameplay, which is really very nifty and really adds to the feel of the game being part of some lengthy WWII documentary on Discovery (other factual channels are available in a similar price range) but this is again, an integral part of the fundamental flaw with BSP.  It feels like a documentary.  It plays sluggishly and there were times when I wanted to turn my submarine around, set the steer to hard right and actually went to make a cup of tea.  Can you do this in a Call of Duty game?  Of course you can't. 

Objectives are easy enough to understand, the map is a little confusing, but the radar really gets to you.  If you play as Americans, then you are blue, your enemies, the Japanese, are red.  Enemies: red, allies: blue.  Makes sense.  But if you play as Japanese, you're still red.  Your allies are red and your enemies are blue.  No!  Don't be so silly!  Okay, I get the idea that the Japanese flag is a red circle on a white background and those white stars are on a blue background, but it's the rule of thumb that red is bad!  Danger! Enemies!  So that can take a while to get used to.  I got quite a few radio messages from allies asking me very nicely not to shoot at them since we're on the same side.  Whoops.  Also, objectives aren't terribly clear.  Of course in real life, there is no hefty neon sign saying, "LorD: blow me up", flashing rhythmically while the W blinks pathetically, buzzing slightly.  So yes, we're back to realism, but there were times when I was flying, sailing or... whatever-submarines-do-ing around wondering just what it was I was meant to do.  I got gold medals though, so I'm quite pleased with my efforts.

There is some satisfaction to be had in sinking ships as a submarine, even if they do slowly disappear through the ocean bed instead of settling onto it.  There is also a great amount of joy in shooting another plane down in an aerial dogfight.  It's just that the pace is a little too sedate for a war sim.  It verges on being a bit real-time strategy because it introduces - to no great advantage - a repairs system for the waterbound vehicles and the ability to send other units to different places while you switch between them, so if you're into RTS, then perhaps the combination would suit you, but for me, it feels a bit too much like they've made war into a game of cricket.  Confusing, protracted and generally only fully understood by those with a lifetime interest.

All in all, Battlestations: Pacific is a spectacular-looking, competent game that is let down by its selling out of gameplay in exchange for some realism.  It is realistic, it is accurate, it's historically sound (unless you win key battles when you shouldn't, but that's why it invites you to rewrite history).  Pearl Harbour was good fun, but at every stage, you're presented with that sluggishness, the reluctance of your vehicles to do exactly what you want them to because you're used to games being more weighted for gameplay.  And some things are incredibly precise.  Multiplayer is "quite good" by all accounts, but currently, I'm unable to test that, it being prior to release and all. 

I didn't play the previous game, so I've no basis for comparison, but as a newcomer, I am impressed by the graphics and the faithfulness to realism, but the gameplay is pretty dire.  I am not an RTS player, however and can see that if you are more of a simmy/RTSy type person, then you will love this game.  And so for the score...


Not my cup of tea, but not terrible, by any means.

*You can make your own joke here.
**Sorry.  I couldn't resist.