Genre: Flight Sim
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: 1C: Maddox Games
Release Date: October 26, 2004

Buy 'PACIFIC FIGHTERS': PC

Scratch Another Flattop

A few years back, a little-known Russian development house put out a tech demo for an upcoming flight sim engine. The engine was marveled at by technical gurus worldwide, as it could render clouds more realistically than any other engine had at that point. Since then, that little development house, 1C, burst onto the flight sim scene with a game that was exactly what a flagging genre needed. That game was Il-2: Sturmovik.

What began as a tech demo put together by a guy named Oleg Maddox soon blossomed into arguably the best WWII flight sim ever produced. Not only was the graphics engine robust in its rendering of clouds and planes, but the game also flexed some of the highest fidelity flight physics experienced on a desktop. To further the résumé, IL-2 came packed with a dynamic campaign, taking the Second World War from a Soviet perspective.

Since then, IL-2 has grown and grown. The sequel, IL-2: Forgotten Battles took that same appreciation for aerial dynamics and applied it to skies never rendered before, namely Finland, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), and Poland. Forgotten Battles has grown with the Ace Expansion Pack and countless user-made missions, campaigns and planes. The latest addition to the hangar comes in the form of Pacific Fighters, which brings the Sturmovik engine to the sunny skies of the Pacific Theater, ranging from Pearl Harbor to Midway to Tokyo.

Pacific Fighters has been long overdue. While the flight sim crowd has been grinding it out over Western Europe, the Pacific Theater has languished since Microsoft's Combat Flight Sim 2, which is already more than three years old. Unlike any other genre, war games and flight simulators rely primarily a limited canon of theaters and battles. If you played spin the bottle with the flight sims of the past decade, then nine times out of 10, you'd be kissing something that was either about the Battle of Britain or the 8th Air Force. That's not a bad thing, but pilots have been there, done that, and downed many a Luftwaffe brat over the skies of Normandy, and we needed something new. IL-2 provided what the genre desperately needed, and Pacific Fighters extends that tact of doing something different.

Pacific Fighters boasts the same strong feature set of Forgotten Battles. You have several campaigns during different periods from American, Japanese and British perspectives, and there is a veritable host of planes and variants to fly. A few major models have been recreated, although I would like to see some more seminal furballs offered. The game comes with the same development tools for user-made missions and campaigns that can feature all of the same triggers, cues and features that the provided campaigns deliver. There is a choice between either a static or dynamic campaign. The former follows the footsteps, or in this case flight paths, of a specific squadron throughout the war, while the latter is slightly misleading, as no matter how well you fly, Japan still loses. What you can do is prolong or shorten various campaigns and the overall conflict, depending on who you fly for and how well you fly.

Graphically, Forgotten Battles was a mammoth game, and Pacific Fighters is still a system hog like any flight sim worth its weight in megabytes. Thankfully, there have been considerable improvements in rendering software and hardware that makes the game more playable on your "average" desktop. Even so, with my rig, I was averaging between 30 and 40 frames per second, depending on how much land I was flying over and how many planes were on screen. With the graphics and sound provided, not to mention the flight handling and AI, it's impressive that Pacific Fighters performed that well. It is difficult to strike a balance between stability, playability and graphical flair in a flight sim, and Pacific Fighters does everything very well.

What I would have liked from Pacific Fighters would have to be more finish and polish to the game. As with prior IL-2 offerings, Pacific Fighters is best described as spartan. Flight sim geeks like me prefer a game that is playable over a game that is flavorful, but there are some creature comforts that I would have liked to have. For one, the game's tutorials are not much for teaching a newbie anything. Many of the keystrokes need to be user-defined, which can be a daunting task to those who lack commitment to the game. On top of that, flying and fighting can be mercilessly difficult. Maxing out the difficulty settings to realistic levels will leave most casual gamers burning in a heap at the end of the runway before they raise their landing gear. I count myself as a seasoned flight sim vet, and this game keeps me honest, but thankfully, you can make the game more accessible with scalable difficulty settings. I would also have liked some more background information on the different squadrons you can fly in and a brief description of the squadron's battle history and primary missions. You can choose between being a bomber pilot or a fighter pilot, but remember that if you want to be an Army Air Corps jock or a Marine Aviator then you'll be slogging your way through a lot of mud as you strafe depots and airfields. If you want to be one of the valiant few who torpedoed that Akagi at Midway, then be ready to mash your way through fields of flak in the sorties between Pearl Harbor and that pivotal day when the war changed hands.

My point is this: Pacific Fighters is not for the lighthearted. Don't even think of insulting this game with a gamepad, let alone a mouse and keyboard. Invest in a good flight stick if you don't already have one. Even with the watered down difficulty, this game is all business. As a gamer who loves flight sims, I can appreciate and be thankful for this level of uncompromising game design as you don't see that sort of design ethic anymore in mainstream games. I also recognize that this level of realism isn't for everybody. In any event, Pacific Fighters expands upon the already illustrious lineage established by the house Oleg built. Another nice little bonus to the game is the inclusion of the editing tools. You can also install Pacific Fighters as a standalone program or incorporate it into your already existing IL-2 folders, which will save you space and make things convenient for you.

If you are a flight sim gamer, you need this title. If you're looking into the genre and want to learn more, Pacific Fighters is a good place to start off so long as you're willing to wade through some frustration. If you're not into flight sims or are brand new to the game, then look elsewhere first. Take on the IL-2 games when you've developed your understanding of flight sims, and the overall experience will be that much more satisfying. Pacific Fighters would get my vote for flight sim of the year, but in light of the lack of amenities, I must temper my zeal. You see, if Pacific Fighters were a sports car, it'd be a Porsche Carrera 993, which would speed along the roadways and gracefully weave in and out of corners … but have no cup holders or seat warmers.

Score: 8.5/10