As every MoH fan knows, Allied Assault and it's expansions were built around the Quake 3 engine, but Pacific Assault is an entirely new game with a new graphics engine, and it shows. While it falls short of Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 in terms of visuals and physics, it's a very good looking game which can hold it's own among the best military shooters available. Bullets ripple through the water beside you, the sun gets in your eyes, and explosions are convincing enough make you jump.
Sound is something I often overlook in games, perhaps because there is usually nothing exceptional about it, but the sound in the Medal of Honor series simply can't be ignored. PA carries on the tradition with some of the highest quality, richest sound I've ever heard in a game. From footsteps to gunfire, most military shooters simply sound like crap compared to this one.
Realism tends to be a priority in games of this kind. You can aim with the gun's iron sights, you shoot more accurately in the prone position, you don't take much damage before going down, and replacing the magazine in your weapon can seem to take forever. You can't rely on finding medi-kits scattered around the map anymore, you must call a Corpsman for help when you need healing.
Players choose one of 4 classes when they start a match: infantry, corpsman (medic), combat engineer, or ammo technician. Corpsman can heal and revive other players, engineers can plant and defuse explosives and mines, and ammo techs have the ability to resupply soldiers in the field. I found corpsman to be the most frustrating, as you get the more or less thankless task of running around reviving guys, and you have to do it with a bolt-action rifle which is borderline useless at close range. Small wonder that hardly anyone plays corpsman, although they have vital role in a team's success.
Along with the usual deathmatch and team deathmatch multiplayer modes, PA has Invader mode, which allows for objective-based matches with one team defending a series of targets while the team on offense trys to overcome them. Invader is shaping up to be the preferred method of play and it does do a good job of focusing the action.
There are 8 multiplayer maps included with game, and they manage to recreate the war in the Pacific quite well. One issue I have is that, although they are large, they certainly aren't as open as maps available in other shooters. Unlike Battlefield or Joint Ops, where you are free to travel around the play area pretty much as the crow flies, PA maps are noticeably confining, along the lines of Allied Assault and Wolfenstein ET. No doubt this is done to limit the load on the rendering engine, but it leaves little room for tactics like flanking the enemy.
Aside from one mission in the single-player campaign where you're flying a plane, there is a noticeable absence of player controlled vehicles in PA. If you're of the school that such things just throw off the balance of infantry combat, you will applaud this. However, if you enjoy the variety that comes with going from tank commander to chopper pilot over the course of a match, you might find the run and gun skirmishes of PA rather mundane.
Note that multiplayer requires a high-speed Net connection, which is unusual for a game that accommodates only 32 players.
It's encouraging to see details that have not been overlooked for a change. As well as an integrated stat tracking system, the server browser actually has a chat function and a buddy list.
Be prepared to sit though some load screens that are sure to try your patience. Even the fancy game menu loads slowly enough to require a status bar. I also had a few technical problems running the game, most notably a tendency for the game to freeze shortly after taking a screenshot.
The Director's Edition DVD is convenient and has some extras including segments about how the game was made and a nifty interactive timeline of the war in the Pacific.
The Bottom Line
Pacific Assault is a solid multiplayer shooter, and I'm sure it will provide many hours of enjoyment to those who have completed the single-player campaign. If multiplayer is a priority to you, however, you may want to pass on this one. I know that the pure infantry combat, which is very well-implemented, will appeal to some people, but it is a little hard to recommend when games like Battlefield and Joint Ops are bringing huge open maps and a wide variety of vehicles into the mix.
