Battlestations: Pacific

This game is far too complicated, what happened to Midway's simple control system I can't even fly a plane stick too good old Midway this game is a total ripoff!

I recently purchased both Battlestations: Midway (M) and Battlestations: Pacific (P). I’ve played M through several times and enjoy it very much, even though there are some really odd ahistorical stats on some units such as Wildcats being able to out-turn Zeros. I’m not very good at handling the units individually in what I think of as arcade mode so I mainly let the AI handle that and focus on the strategic/tactical end of the game. The planes don’t really fly as they would in a proper simulator anyway so I don’t think you miss out on too much that way, although for people with better hand-eye coordination than me you can score more hits and avoid more damage by jumping into each of your units as they make their attack runs, are avoiding torpedos, or what-have-you rather than allowing the AI to handle all that. P has more-modern graphics and a lot of new units to play and battles to experience. The game runs fairly well on my late-2012 Mac Mini (w/16gb RAM) even with all the graphics options on maximum, although obviously not as well as does M since that is a less-demanding, older game. Unfortunately, there are some basic game design decisions in P which make absolutely no sense to me and are kind of ruining my ability to enjoy the game. One of the most egregious examples is the way bombs and other expendable ordinance on planes magically respawn on the plane a minute or two after they're expended as long as the plane survives. To me, this just kills the entire experience of the game for me. I can live with the unlimited range, unlimited fuel, unlimited gun ammo, and that sort of thing (you the player might be holding down the fire button continuously but that’s not “really” happening, etc. – there are ways of justifying or ignoring such things for simulation purposes) but this respawning of expendable ordinance is silly. You hit the enemy carrier but not hard enough? Don’t return to your own carrier to rearm and then fly back to finish her off; just fly around in circles for a minute or so and your Avenger magically gets its torpedo back! Dumb. This is handled much better in M where repair and rearm of planes might be instantaneous but at least you have to get your planes back to base and then out to the target again. I also miss the story of the two fictional characters that bound together all the single-player missions in M. In P it’s all quite impersonal. Maybe that got it a better ESRP rating for younger audiences but pointing out to players that war results in loss of life is not a bad thing. •1 star for these dumb game design decisions. •4 stars for the gameplay experience which is still decently fun although the design decision head-scratchers keep it from working as a good simulation game. •5 stars for Feral’s port of the game which is running completely without problems for me; Feral did a good job, many other companies porting PC games don’t do as well. •So… 3 stars, I guess. If you’re going to buy only one, get M instead of P. If you get both, and are just looking for an arcade experience, P is fine. But if you care at all about the tactics employed in the game being at least vaguely similar to tactics one might have employed in the experience being simulated, P is going to bug you and you’ll be much better off with M.

You’ll never have so much fun blowing up airplanes of watching yourself lose in this game. The death animations are pretty cool for the airplanes, and it’s a great mix of first person shooter and stategy game. Although the controls at first seem hard you get the hang of them pretty quick. Whish they had tanks though.

i downloaded the manual , completed the training and away i went . Very good graphics . flying a bit tricky as my game pad doesn’t work . but the game is excellent and i will get better . i hope lol . the support is excellent .