User Reviews (21 - 31 of 96)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

One of the best in class

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault has some excellent action, and these are the times that make it worth playing. The only con is the most annoying loading times of any PC game caused by over-protective copy protection. Why must they annoy the legal owners of the game?

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, when it's on, it can be intense, exciting, and thrilling. To some degree, Pacific Assault follows other World War 2 games like Medal of Honor Allied Assault and to a lesser extent..Call of Duty(i prefer medal of honor series over Call of Duty). The game is mostly linear, and it contains a lot of mayhem mixed in with scripted events. However, this is definitely not just another World War 2 game. It is different in some good ways.

For starters, Pacific Assault's on-foot action is less scripted than other WWII games have been. The jungle firefights remind me a lot of last year's "Vietcong" than Allied Assault. You creep slowly through the jungle and encounter small groups of Japanese troops, and then engage them in short but sweet firefights. The firefights are mostly unscripted, relying instead upon this game's underrated AI. Both your squad mates and your enemies are pretty smart about staying alive and using cover. It's very satisfying to relieve your pinned down squad by finding a way to flank your enemies, and then blast them from their rear. Sometimes, the hardest part of a firefight is just finding where the enemy is hiding. Using cover is paramount to surviving, and so is popping out from behind cover to deliver quick blasts with your weapon. Enemies will attempt to do the same to you. However, sometimes, when you are winning a battle, the last couple of guys in a Japanese squad will rush at you screaming in a mad, desperate Banzai frenzy. This leads to some truly memorable moments.

The medic is a great mechanic that seems to borrow from games like Halo and Vietcong. The idea is that instead of picking up frequent health packs and armor, you can be healed if you find some safe cover for a while. This adds a tactical level to the game that most first person shooters don't have.

The jungle scenes are the best part of this game in every way. It's too bad that you have to play the game for an hour and a half before you experience them. That's how long it takes you to get through the tutorial level and the disappointing Pearl Harbor level. The game mixes up the action quite a bit. Specifically, there are rail-shooter and turret-shooter sequences sprinkled here and there, where you shoot at enemies while riding in the back of a truck or operate an anti-aircraft gun and shoot down Japanese Zeroes. There is even a flying mission. None of these other missions are particularly memorable, and some of them are quite bad. There is one ridiculous "shoot down Zeroes with an AA gun" scene that is literally impossible until you learn that there is a lame trick that makes it easy to complete in about 60 seconds. It takes dozens of trial-and-error quick save and reload sequences to learn this (or, you can look on the internet for it), and this totally ruins that part of the game.

The visuals aren't as nice as Half-Life 2 or Far Cry, but they are still very good. The water, fire, and smoke, all look very nice. Best of all is the most beautiful and realistic looking sky that I have ever seen. The jungle is also very convincing. The music is sort of generic, but it's high quality stuff. Best of all, the game feels very authentic. It maintains the high drama of the other World War 2 games, while giving it a different feel too.

The campaign ends after about 10 hours, which isn't very long, considering that at least 2 or 3 of them are spent looking at the loading screen. The way that the loading screens disrupt this game's flow cannot be understated. The ending is also horribly unsatisfying. I absolutely hated the ending level of this game with a passion. It is a maddeningly and impossibly difficult, unforgving quick save fest where you are constantly getting cut down by two or three machine gun nests at a time, all of which can reduce you from full health to zero in about two seconds. The entire last two hours of the game is filled with trial-and-error and trying to scamper from cover to cover in increments of about three feet, reloading your game constantly as you get cut down in seconds. The last level is filled with barbed wire (which you cannot climb over) and invisible walls, which funnel you into these death trap trenches that have machine gun nests awaiting you at the end, and absolutely no alternate path. The game gives you no flamethrower or bazooka, and no ability to call in naval strikes. The last level is designed to kill you. There is no other way to describe it. Overall? This is great game. The verdict? If you like war games you are obligated to add this gem to your collection.

Excellent Addition to an Excellent Franchise!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is the best Medal of Honor game I have played. I loved Allied Assault, but I think this one is better. I can back this up with several reasons. First, the story is great. It is the story of a young soldier going through first time experiences of battle. The game plays this to perfection, you feel like you are in each scenario for real. The gameplay is also phenominal, rivaling the likes of Halo, or Battlefield 1942. I found the story, plus the gameplay to be amazing, and surprisingly emotional. It was very touching for me, the way they handled Pearl Harbor. It was a complete, saddening experience. I have never played a game that showed it all, people drowning in air tight compartments, bombings, giant machine guns... All of this is dramatized by excellent voice acting, incredible sound effects, and heart wrenching music featuring orchestra and choir.

The third highlight is GRAPHICS! These are the best I have ever seen in a PC game. Honestly, they are beautiful. The water actually reflects and looks glassy. The helmets show sunlight, and you can see particles of dirt and stuff. This is a major high point of an already excellent game.

I do agree that the loading times are a little long, but not long enough to keep me from playing hours on end. A truly wonderful game with an excellent story, graphics, music, and gameplay.

A must buy!
(Rated T for Violence, Blood and Language)

I agree with everyone else, Call of Duty is still the king!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 27
Date: November 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I agree for once with the other reviewers. This game is kind of boring after you get passed the Peral Habor part. Basicly, you are a U.S. Marine fighting your way through the Pacific Islands that all look the same with the same old missions "kill the ememy (Japs) and destroy or rescue a downed polot." I have not finished the game but I am all ready mad at it. I think I am towards the end fighting through the missions on Guadacanal or however you spell it? I know you will finnish up on Tawana during the battle but I don't know if I realy want to finnish it. The AI seems to have the advantage as others have mentioned. They run at you and there really is too many of them to kill efectively making dieing and restarting missions a way of life. They probably though they were making it challenging but its just more frustrating than anything for the player. No Health packs in this game and when you really need your medic he either gets shot or blown up by an ememy grenade and dies well, he's dead unitl you expire then comes back to life. I like the health pack version better like in C of D because you don't have to rely on the AI to keep you alive!

Anyway, if you really want a great PC game that involves the Pacific Theater of WWII wait until "Midway" comes out next Summer in 2005 (third quater). I read a preview on this game and from I read it sounds totaly awesome! They said you will be able to fly planes like HellCats, WildCats, Zeros, SpitFires, etc. and then command Battleships, Subs, Carriers, Destroyers, PT boats with all the weapondry on them kind of like BF 1942 but 10X's better because of the advanced graphics engine and real time physics invloved. You can even fight as a Marine on land so they are covering every aspect of the war in the Pacific during WWII not just the Marine side of it like M of H Pacific Assult. (and excluding the flying mission of course!) They also will include not just Multiplayer but Single player campaigns as well unlike BF 1942 and it's bad single player that did not really exist, no this will include all the major battles of the Pacific theater from every side who fought them including the Navel, Aerial and Land sides of the war and in the battles such as Midway, Iwo Jima and many more!!! Cheak it out at their web site and see for yourself!

M OF H Pacifc Assult Directors Edition/Full Game did sound great a year ago also but I guess when you have played the best (meaning Call of Duty-2003) then nothing else will even come close! I think everyone will agree with me on that one!

too much cinematics at the beginning

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I was half enjoying the heavily scripted movie (with a little bit of gaming, but not much) at the beginning. I didn't need to go through boot camp, but I put up with it. I had however made a huge mistake: I had started the game on realistic level, wanting a challenge; only to find that I couldn't get past the pearl harbour plane shoot-out. After half an hour I got really, really, really jerked off and decided that I should play it on the easy level. Then lo and behold I would have had to sit through the entire MOH 45 min long movie AGAIN!!! Errrr, no thanks.
Where is the option to cut straight to the chase? There isn't one!
What were EA thinking? Don't they play their own games?
I felt more sorry for my girlfriend who accidentally got this game for me as an early Christmas present after a misunderstanding on msn. Thank God she got me Call of duty united offensive first. That game simply kicks ass (Although I'm not too in love with heavily scripted games like COD, it was still highly- enjoyable. The only game I have played that got cinematic, atmospheric, game play and freedom right has been "Far Cry" and "Half-Life". Hopefully the developers of Far Cry will do a second world war epic.)

Average but enjoyable

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm not a huge fan of the Medal of Honor series, but decided to try this one mainly because I got it for a good price on eBay. Having just finished Half Life 2, which was relatively easy on Normal mode, I made the horrible mistake of playing this game on Hard mode. After much cursing and reloads, I finally finished.

It wouldn't have been so bad except your teamates are morons and the modeling is, at times, really bad. (In one sequence I had a perfect sniping spot beneath a building, but the game engine wouldn't let me actually shoot anything since the shots were being stopped at the "wall".)

What did impress me was the enemy AI. It was by no means perfect, but worlds better than Doom 3 and several other games.

The single biggest problem with the game is the flying level. It was lame, badly implemented and just plain absurd. A game based on this level would be easiliy considered one of the worse games of all time.

And then there are the long load times. I played this on a brand new Athlon 64 3500 based system with blindingly fast everything and it was slow. I can't imagine load times on old systems.

It's also quite obvious the program has major memory leaks. The game slowed to a near halt several times. I was usually able to hit the ESC key enough to get to the main menu to quit, but a few times I had to hit the old reset button.

In the end, the real dissapointment with this game is that it could have been so much better.

Missed the mark

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: June 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I looked forward to this game and although at times it is fun, it is also, at times, lame. The Pearl Harbor scenario is a case in point. The graphics are great and the action is good but then you wind up shooting down tons of planes when in reality the Japanese lost 29 planes in the actual attack.

Most of the ground missions (like Makin Island, Guadalcanal and Tarawa) are great. But then you do something lame like fly a dive bomber or shoot down 10 Zeros (carrying torpedoes) from your submarine.

The aerial scenario is extremely lame and I could have done without it. Marines are Marines and Navy aircrews are Navy aircrews (airdales) and I didn't understand why the developers felt this was a good idea.

I am being extremely generous giving this 3 stars.

Ambitious but seriously flawed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: November 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm not a part of the MOH "community," as much as a guy who has played through (and mostly enjoyed) the MOH and COD series. Even "Breakthrough."

Although I'd read mixed reviews, I decided to buy MOHPA a few days ago. I really wanted to find the good in it, but after about 8 hours of play, I've concluded that it the game has basic gameplay and efficiency problems that prevent it from being the jewel its designers might have envisioned.

While I love the graphics, especially the advanced shader features, I feel like I'm swimming in mud when I play in SP. I don't expect MOHAA responsiveness by any means, but this game drags.

More on gameplay: "Snipertown" is the only MOH level to seriously frustrate me during the MOH series. But a few levels that seem impossible can make a gamer more persistent and more observant.

Yet, I'm a stuck at a few saves past "Campfire" on "veteran" in MOHPA and I'm already wondering if pushing on is worth the effort and time. I literally have a headache from playing. Not an adrenaline-caffeine headache, just a headache.

On the graphics front, MOHPA is gorgeous, but seems a bigger suck on resources than games of similar graphical quality. For instance, I can play the COD 2 demo fairly comfortably on my mainstream rig (A64 2800, 1GB Corsair, 9800 Pro), but have to make seemingly much bigger sacrifices graphically to play MOHPA at acceptable frame rates.

I could blame my relatively old hardware, but for comparison,I had a excellent gaming experience two years ago when running COD on my Athlon XP 1600/512/Radeon 9200. That hardware was not exactly cutting edge, either.

Regarding load times: I have decent HD access speed, so my load times are perhaps 30 seconds for levels and 20 seconds after deaths -- better than some reports, but this is still too long. Part of the reason I could handle "Snipertown" in MOHAA was that I was instantly back in the action.

In MOHPA, already know after I'm shot once that I need to reload the level if I hope to have any health left by the end, but this reloading process takes forever. Spending a minute "dying" and waiting for a medic (when you know he doesn't have enough medicine left to sustain you through the leve) when you're on your 15th attempt to cut through a level is maddening.

To me, MOHPA is an ambitious, but severely flawed game. I can grasp where the production team was headed, and I think this game could have been a jewel. But its flashes of brilliance do not compensate for the mediocre user experience.

The most interesting aspect of MOHPA for the gamer, I think, are that one can see how truly important gameplay and optimization are to a game. Another few months of development, and this game might have been a COD for the Pacific Theatre. As it is, it's an interesting tech demo that has already been surpassed by better supported, better executed WW2 games.

I recommend this game only for big fans of WW2 games who have cutting-edge hardware, a surplus of patience, and can tolerate spending $30 on a game that -- all told -- will likely be a little disappointing.

Pacific Assault

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have to say that this is the most immersive MOH instalment yet. Whilst I and other gamers I know are getting rather bored of WWII shooters set in Europe against the forces of the Third Reich, this game breathes new life into our gameplay. The game takes you from boot camp right the way through to the final mission on Tarawa Atoll and feels rather too real at times. I am certainly not used to bayonet or samurai sword charges from the opposition when they run out of ammo. That really picks up the game a notch. This games absolutely rocks. It is immersive and sucks you right in. There are a few AI annoyances but the rest of the game makes up for it. Do make sure you have a reasonably up to date rig to run this beast as it's a system hogger. Good system = great gaming.

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is just awful. Extremely long load times, and choppy game play even on the most powerful of PC's. The forced registration took almost 12 hours to complete because EA's servers were down, and I could not play online until I registered. The multiplayer levels are rich in textures, but poor in gameplay. Having been a HUGE fan of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Spearhead, I could not be more disappointed by the game. Call of Duty offers a much better multiplayer experience. I don't know what the folks at EA games were thinking, but they have a lemon on their hands with Pacific Assault. Its just a poorly designed game, and I don't think a patch will save this one from being $19.99 in a bargain bin in a few months.

New yet already old

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The new MOH Pacific Assault has some interesting settings (Pearl Harbor during the attack, for example) but the game play is only good (not great)even when run on a Pentium IV 3.2 with a gig of memory--which is way past their minimum requirements. The reload of rifles seems slow and there is a lot of forest the game just won't let you enter. The medic and the way the squad works "together" are good elements as are the abilities to carry a wounded soldier and apply bandages. However it feels as if they kept an old game engine and tried to tweak it instead of moving forward with the technology. Farcry and Call of Duty both play much better and would be my advice for an investment.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions