Battlestations Pacific

[Dundradal]

As a big fan of the first game, I was pretty excited to hear about the sequel. I just got it the other day and found it to be great in some regards and a bit odd in others.

The graphics are really incredible. Ships, planes, subs, land masses, even the ocean floor has much more life in it than BS Midway. Ships react to receiving damage (nothing like watching your sub rock when it gets struck by torpedoes) and look great doing it.

The new control scheme is a bit odd at first, although after a while you get used to it, even if it doesn't seem as nice as the old one.

One thing that is a bit cool/odd is that to unlock better units for multiplayer you have to win certain medals on certain campaign missions. While it's a nice reward, it kind of limits MP for a while until you unlock everything.

As for MP, the new modes can be pretty fun, however the developers left out the BS Midway game type model. There isn't a battle you can just jump into and select your units and go at it. There's not even a mode close to it. Island Capture allows you to capture airfields and shipyards, but the maps aren't exciting (typically just a bunch of tiny islands scattered around) and it's pretty hard to get a large force together to go cause trouble.

There also seems to be an abundance of plane MP missions without corresponding ship and sub missions. One thing I loved about BS Midway was those set-piece battles. Granted, they could get a bit repetitive if you were playing with people who excelled at the game and just did the same thing over and over, however it was still great to keep your little fleet together and plan on how you were going to destroy the enemy.

BS Pacific removes this entirely and its unfortunate. I like the new game a lot but the error with the MP is really depressing.

If anybody else grabs this game look me up online, I'd love to play a few engagements with some wingnuts.

 

[ck9791]

I enjoyed BS Midway and was looking for this game yesterday but didn't see it in the local target or Wal-Mart.

Finding BS Midway late, I have only played the single player campaign and challenges. Is the basic structure of the single player stuff in BS Pacific similar to Midway? That being there is a campaign or two where you start out with a smaller unit like a PT boat and work your way up to command larger units and groups of units which you can order around using the map and then jump to and command individually? Are there challenge missions like in Midway?

 

[Dundradal]

The campaigns are sort of similar, although in Pacific they tend to throw a lot more at you. There isn't the story of being an officer working the way up (well not in the Japanese side not sure about the US). There are no challenge missions.

I believe I was on the 4th or 5th Japanese mission when I was given command of far too many ships (2 BBs, 1 CV, 1 CA, 1 CL, 3 DD). I essentially had condition pig pile instead of a nice formation. The ship AI seems to have been dumbed down. In Midway if you gave it an attack order a ship would attempt to close the range and then get position on the target. In Pacific they try to do this but have a bad habit of going to all stop when they get to a certain point. Not exactly a smart thing for a ship to do.

Unfortunately they sort of moved away from certain aspects of Midway that were great and added a bunch of things that remove some nice game elements. Planes now auto reload in the air (and while waiting will circle a target getting shot down instead of returning to base) although this feature can be turned off.

On the battle map they removed the grid letters and numbers so it's harder to get people to understand where you are trying to get your units. And there's this big god damn control window on the map that while nice shouldn't be a permanent fixture.

While so far I do like the game quite a bit, I'm finding some of the changes they made to be very detrimental as opposed to enhancing the experience. Going to get some time with it this weekend and see if maybe I just haven't played it enough yet to fully appreciate everything.

 

[Dundradal]

After logging some more playing time I've got a better opinion of the game.

Pros

Improved graphics really look great

Unit variation is a bit better and some of the new units are pretty fun to use

Some new MP modes are fun (island capture, duel)

Still retains some of the fun gameplay seen in BS Midway

I like the addition of BB and CA floatplanes for recon and ASW duties. They are very useful for scouting ahead of your main vessel.

True kamikazes are great as well, Zeroes, Kaitens and Okhas can be devastating weapons. I'm not sure if I'm entirely positive on the developers removal of damage potential by other aircraft (in BS Midway players would often kamikaze planes into an enemy ship, not so much for causing damage as for allowing the player to launch new planes faster without waiting for the others to recover).

And the game retains enough of BS Midway's gameplay to still make it fairly enjoyable.


Cons

Bugs, bugs bugs! This game is riddled with them. From units not unlocking when they should, to the game causing the box to freeze when trying to join an MP game, they are simply everywhere!

Half-assed Campaigns - both the fictional Japanese campaign and the US campaign are no where as enjoyable as the one in BS Midway. They also rely too much on aircraft missions than on ships.

MP modes - there is no longer the classic battle maps mode that made BS Midway so fun. Instead you get several modes, some of which will probably never get played (Competitive is a great idea, but in reality it's not fun) While some of the modes are enjoyable, far too many again rely on aircraft instead of ships. Also, you no longer have the same level of control over ships (on Map 8 Coral one player controls the carrier while another controls the aircraft that launches from them) Carriers have also been given a backseat, they aren't spawnable in any MP map and are only present in one of them.

Aiming system - the game only registers hits (mostly on aircraft) when you are on the game's ideal aiming point, so even if you are 100 yards behind a plane and laying rounds right into the body they won't do any damage until you move the crosshair into the zone the game thinks it should be. This can be really annoying with AA fire and fighter intercepts.

MP Command Points - there is a new system for deciding how many units you can have spawned. This is put in place to replace the BS Midway system of each map having certain units with players picking the slots to command said units. Now you can spawn units from bases you/your team controls. At first, I thought ok, this might be ok, however when you see some of the values used for certain units it makes no sense. You can only have 1 Okha carrying Betty squadron, but if you were the US you can have 2 B-29 squads?

Auto Reload - by default this option is on. Planes will now fly around in circles after dropping their payload while the timer ticks for reload. In doing so they often circle the enemy getting shot down in the process. Thankfully, it's an option and you can turn it off.

Overall, I think with a title update or two this would be a great game, but as it stands now, it's still enjoyable to play, it's in need of some work to make it comparable to the original.

 

[ck9791]

Can you get a lot of the achievements in single player? Or are most of them geared towards multiplayer battles?

 

[Dundradal]

Most of them you can get in either the campaign or in Skirmish mode.

Achievements

Despite some of the things I complained about before, the game is still pretty fun in its own right. It's just too bad about some of the changes they made.

 

[Dundradal]

Has anyone else picked up this game? It would be great to get a CIC team going on there.

 

[Frosty]

A couple of us considered it and had it pre-ordered but we bailed after seeing the more extensive previews that showed up shortly before release. Battlestations Midway was an excellent concept and an acceptable game. Battlestations Pacific mutates that concept questionably and, from what I've seen, doesn't rate "acceptable" anymore. I might pick it up when it's in the ultradiscount pile.

 

[Dundradal]

At first, I would have agreed with you. Pacific does change a lot from the Midway formula, however after having logged quite a bit of time with it, I think it's a nice game in its own right. Although, I still prefer the Midway experience (mostly because it has less bugs and the AI isn't as stupid). I am having quite a bit of fun with the new version despite its inadequacies.