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impossible to controll plane when shooting

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: January 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

as 2 time world champion of warbirds i say with some authority that this game is unplayable concerning lining up a shot......absolutely the worst i've ever played

What a disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Normally I don't write video game reviews, but since I had wanted this game so badly and it turned out to be such a disappointment, here you go.

Being from the very old school of gamers, some of my favorite games of all time include "Aces of the Pacific" and "Aces Over Europe" (look 'em up, kids). Those games not only provided hours of enjoyment back in the day, but also sparked my interest in the aircraft from the WWII era (how do you imagine I thought up my wicked Amazon name, hm?). Since then, I've enjoyed a number of flying combat games, including the "Ace Combat" series for the PS2.

So when I saw that there was a new WWII flying combat game for the PS2, I was very excited and rushed to get a copy of "Heroes of the Pacific." What a terrible disappointment it turned out to be.

There are some positives, of course. The graphics are fantastic - very good use of WWII propaganda posters, fonts, and other pictures help place you in the time period. You can tell a lot of effort was put into giving the cutscenes that "old film" look, complete with scratches, skips, etc.

But nice graphics do not a good game make, and this game falls short in most other areas.

If you're the type of person who likes to customize their controls to suit their flying style, you will be disappointed and frustrated here. You have precisely 2 control layouts to choose from, and no matter which one you choose, your left thumbstick controls your banking and diving, and your right thumbstick controls your throttle and rudder. So if you're like me and you have a clumsy left thumb, then you're going to be a clumsy pilot, and that's that. These controls are difficult and non-intuitive, especially when compared to the Ace Combat controls.

Of the 4 available skill levels, I selected "Pilot" (second from easiest), and still couldn't hack even the tutorial levels. Not to say that I'm the best game player out there - I'm actually rather bad - but this was ridiculous. The mission that requires you to just recover from a stall took me half a dozen times to get through. I don't know what physics the programmers put into the game here, but when you stall your plane, it's like the hand of God suddenly shoves you towards the earth at about 5 times the normal rate of speed. You literally have 3 seconds to get your plane's nose pointed down, rev your throttle, and pull out of your stall.

I finally gave up on the training missions (and their ultra-annoying voice acting) and decided to jump straight into the historical missions. And more trouble surfaced, of course.

It's already been mentioned by other reviewers, but you have zero freedom in this game. You get too close to your very small mission area boundary and you'll find yourself getting chewed out by some faceless voice, your plane is forced into a sudden roll, and you're headed back into the fray.

And the difficulty of these missions! For example, one of the very first missions requires you to go help your buddies get back to the airbase, while they're being chased by enemy planes. This is all well and good, if it weren't for the fact that you start the mission about 10 miles away from the action, and no matter how fast you fly your plane toward the battle, inevitably one or two of your buddies gets shot down before you even get there. And get this - you can only lose something like 5 pilots before you get sent right back to the beginning of the mission.

So you gamely wade into the fray with your clumsy left thumb piloting your plane, manage to miraculously pop one or two enemies, and then you crash. What? Why did I crash? Oh, it's because, while I was cutting a tight circle to line up an enemy in my sights, I failed to notice that my altitude was dropping rather quickly. But if I DON'T circle to line up the enemy, then my buddies get shot down even faster. So here, let me throttle back a bit this time to try and line them up and... stall, hand-of-God crash, "Mission Failed."

You know what? During all the time I played this game, I never once got shot down by an enemy plane. I just crashed.

What fun!

I played this game twice, for a combined total of 4 hours, before giving up. It's really no fun at all, and I'm not surprised it never became very popular. Perhaps someone younger and with quicker reflexes could do better at it. Me, I'm going back to Ace Combat.

Ok, like's & dislike's

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

these are gas engines not jet engines they dont rely on trust but in engine speed.it's not like Ace combat.your having to pay attention to the (RPM)in order to control the planes.
Being a former machanic and having a good knowage of internal combustion engines as well as jet engine theory, it's done fairly well as far as the
old time fighters go.(This Game).
I think that people need to spend more time with the control is all after which well You'll understand.
That's all i need too say.Kindest regards,
Tony A.[liked the realinsim as close as you can get W/flt. sims(PS2). Didn't like having such a closed mission area!]

Ugh

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love flight sims... I REALLY love WWII games... so the thought of a WWII flight sim was too much to ignore.

But this game is just awful. I've played 2 levels of this game and some instant action, and it's just waaaaaay too difficult to control your plane. I am not a huge fan of arcade-style sims; I prefer a game like Ace Combat over something like After Burner, which is what this game reminds me of. Dogfighting is a thrill, but the controls are depressingly bad. It's either too much pitch or not enough. And without the benefit of a 1st-person HUD, it's even worse. Essentially, if you want a good WWII flight sim, stick to something like Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator for your computer. Until someone comes out with something like that for PS2, I'll stick with the Ace Combat games.

ww2 fighter planes

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

like this game because you can fly most of the planes used in the Pacific war against Japan.

Awesome Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is my first flying game and I love it. It is so much fun learning the controls and flying all over the place. I recommend it to everyone who loves playing games.

Heroes, smeroes

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: October 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Heroes of the Pacific

This game sucks. I've been flying MS Flight Sim for a couple of years. I thought a PS2 game might be better since the 'computer' is designated for the game. I failed to consider the stupidity of programmers. It seems that realism is something of which they are completely unaware. The 'targets' are either too close too quick or too far away for the unrealistic amount of time given to complete the level. And the side shots or flybys are not just stupid, they interfere with your concentration and smoothness. I'll stick to driving games on PS2. I'm going back to the computer for flight.

Way, Way Too Hard

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Unless you fly or flew P-30's you won't be able to get past the "Training" part of the game. The plane stalls, the controls are mushy and the flight characteristics of the planes are insane; my hat is off to all the aviators in WWII who mastered these stall prone, sluggish response war birds. Give me the over powered jets in Air Combat 4 any day.

A great game with a few minor issues

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Overall the game is excellent. The missions and the plot is intuitve and the ingame controls are alright. The menu system has some issues. It takes several seconds to go from screen to screen in the menus. I also found that I could shoot easier when all the planes crosshairs were set to ground. Not a big deal, but I had to do it every mission with every plane.

Just yucky

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I am no stranger flight games, both arcade and simulation, and this is a complete waste of money. Extremely high learning curve, it's impossible to control your plane, and unless you have a very big TV you won't ever even see the plane that kills you...again...and again...and again. It's not realistic and not fun. If you must have WW2 dogfighting, find a copy of Microsoft's Flight Combat Simulator, the first or second one will run on any PC made in the last ten years. You can fine-tune the realism from instant arcade action and immortality to a realistic 20 seconds of bullets and several hours of travel.

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