The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific Reviews

Story:
The player is a World War II soldier, the game takes place in some of the surroundings of the pacific side of the war, such as The Battle of Iwo Jima. Before every mission, there is a boring World War II video, which shows some kind of background stuff for what is happening in the mission. But mostly the game is running from place A to place B, so the player basically runs from mission to another without any kind of plotline.

Graphics:
Graphics look alright for an old game, but the framerate is horrible. I had hard time figuring, was aiming so hard because of the clumsy controls, or because the framerate sucked so hard. This game is just an outcome of very mediocre game design and with better porting to the Xbox 360 hardware, it would have made somekind of difference.

Gameplay:
It is a typical COD-style FPS-shooter. As I already mentioned, the controls are bad. It is difficult to aim because the aiming feels clumsy and there's some sort of "lag" to it. You are mostly in a squad of soldiers, you follow your commanding officer around, that is of course when the officer is not standing still without any idea where to go next. Yes, it is scripted game but the AI still forgets what it is doing. Unfortunately the player can't get much past of these idiotic AI partners, because the game forces you to stay close to your commanding soldier, and it will be an instant game over if you are too far behind or try to go forward on your own.

Some of the gameplay events are just ridiculous. A couple times you are told to shoot some planes with an AA gun, but the planes won't go down. Some smoke comes from them, but otherwise you just can't kill them. Also the singleplayer only lasts about 2 hours, which might be a good thing because how awful experience this game is and it only should be played to get some gamerscore.

Sound:
Well, at least they made different kind of sounds to different weapons, sound effects aren't as bad as the rest of the game, but the sounds don't make the game much better. There isn't much talking in the game, but I think the voice acting was somewhat decent, hard to remember, because how forgettable experience the game is.

Achievements:
460 singleplayer / 540 multiplayer. The Achievements are easy, but around 80% of your game time will go to multiplayer boosting if you are going to 100% this game. Boosting is absolutely needed, i've never came across as dead multiplayer as this game has. When me and my partner were boosting, we were literally the only players who played the multiplayer. No occasional randoms ever joined, so at least you can boost this turd at peace. There might be one problem when 100% this game. There is one achievement which requires 4 players to join in a game and trust me, finding 4 player to play this game is a pain.

Summary:
Do not buy it, renting can be considered for a gamerscore boost but the game is absolutely not worth your time. It ranks as one of the worst shooters on the Xbox 360.

Story:

The single player games is almost your typical WWII shooter. The only thing that sets it apart from every other WWII game is that it places a complete focus on the Pacific campaign of the Second World War. It begins at the Battle of Wake Island and closes with the scene of the American soldiers lifting the American flag atop Iwo Jima.

Graphics:

For the age of this game, the picture is beautiful, but the framerate stutters in pretty regular intervals.

Gameplay:

Nothing sets this game apart from other games in the FPS genre. The controls are an odd combination of Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and Halo controls, but they are manageable to learn.

The story doesn't set itself apart from any other shooter either, aside from the obvious difference being the Pacific setting. The landscapes look the same as any other game and even has the obligatory beach landing level.

The real struggle in this game is the extremely linear gameplay. From start to finish the MO is to follow your commanding officer from one location to the next, shoot the bad guys and then follow your CO some more. Following your CO can become aggravating in many situations due to the proximity requirements the game forces.

You must stay within a certain distance of the CO or the game will fail you and force you back to the last checkpoint, which are few and far between. Ordinarily this is no issue, but the AI has the tendency to run into open fields and get shot at. The player must follow which means that he runs into fields and gets shot at as well.

An answer to this is throwing grenades, but beware. cover doesn't stop grenade explosions. If you aren't out of the blast radius when it goes off, you will sustain serious damage or even die.

Sound:

The sound was just as good as the graphics. The only exception to this would be the sound bites used amidst gameplay. The cutscenes are flawless, but once the game hands over controls to the player, "That's an order!" becomes something you'll hear in your sleep.

Achievements:
460 Offline/ 540 Online

The achievements are a piece of cake, especially the single player achievements. The 460 offline points will take you approximately 2-3 hours to complete. Fair warning, it may seem more like 4-5 hours if your game bugs in the manner that mine did. It's also worth noting that the glitch for the hard mode achievement is no longer an issue. It can be done in multiple sittings now.

The majority of the time spent in this game will be with online boosting. It doesn't seem particularly difficult but be sure to set aside a fair amount of time to boost with a partner. One achievement even requires winning a ranked match. More time will probably be spent trying to find four people who own this game than will be spent on actually boosting the achievements.

Before the COD: Modern Warfare days most war based games were based off of World War II. The difference between this game and other WWII games of this era is that you face off against the Japanese instead of the Germans.

The graphics to this game are not bad considering that it is five years old. I would put the graphics on par with Call of Duty 2. If you desire the graphics from current games you should look elseware.

The difficulty to this game is non-existant. It took me 2.5 hours to play start to finish and I stopped in the middle to eat breakfast. There were a few parts I got stock on for a few deaths but nothing an average gamer could handle.

Throughout the whole game your basically following another soldier from checkpoint to checkpoint. Some of the problems I encountered were sometime he would never move after finishing a section of a level resulting of me having to load the last checkpoint. Also if you wonder off, approximately 40 meters, it is an automatic fail. If you go beyond 20 meters you get a "your not following orders" message, this even happened when I was running for cover when I was injured.

When in combat the AI was rather bad, I would say there would be a 50/50 that they would be helpful. The would either kill everything for you or stand there in the middle of your viewpoint doing nothing.

The final issue with combat is there is a lack of ammo. I ran completely out of ammo on the second to last level. Once you run out you get 40 more rounds and thats all you can have. You cant even pick up enemy guns so use your ammo wisely or you'll be hoping the AI decides to finish the battle for you.

The game does have online but it is a complete ghost town. I have searched for games and done research on it and nobody plays this game. After looking on 360v there have not been more than five people playing this game on the same day but on most days there is only a single person playing.

The achievements are half easy and half a pain in the rear. Beating the story on hard will net you a nice 460 points but there is a catch. Reportingly you have to complete it on hard in one playthrough to get

The remaining 540 points are all multiplayer achievements which means you have to find some boosting partners for the full 1000. The list looks like a grind but Ive read its not to bad, I tend to believe it because of the 25% completion.

At the end of the day this is just an average game, even for its time. The story is to short and the AI is terrible. The ability to use enemy guns would have been a nice addition. Even though I am rating this game a 2 I do feel it is worth a rental if you are looking for a way to kill a few hours.