Heroes of the Pacific [PS2]

While you're not often likely to hear the phrase, "Gee, I sure wish there were more WWII-themed games on the market," for all the flight games available on consoles, there are few that focus on this period. That's despite World War II being the peak of the dogfight era. In the years following the war, air-to-air combat quickly became a fire-and-forget affair. In Heroes of the Pacific, you have nothing more than your wits and your machine guns to save you in combat.

Taking more than a few pages' worth of inspiration from LucasArts' Secret Weapons over Normandy, Heroes of the Pacific presents a simplified view of WWII aerial combat. Here you pilot your craft from a chase-cam view and use relatively simple controls to pitch and guide your plane through the air. For rookies, the game offers a lightweight control scheme, while a "professional" mode gives full control of pitch, roll, and yaw.

The flight engine here is simplified, but can still be punishing. Many of these WWII planes were not terribly aerodynamic and had very high stall speeds. For the uninitiated, stalling is when you fly too slow or turn too quickly and turn the plane into a brick with non-functional wings. To recover, you have to point your nose downward and let them do their thing again. Stall too close to the ground, and you're a goner. In Heroes, it's all too easy to pull up quickly into an ill-advised climb while chasing after a Zero, then watch helplessly as your plane falls out of the sky. Thankfully, a restart is just a button press away.

The game has a number of training missions that will get you up to speed, but the flight instructor is so obnoxious and annoying that you'll be skipping class after the first few. Nearly all of the voiceover work in the game is laughably bad, from the Rico Suave-like pilot's voice to the clueless Jeep driver on the ground who can't get his intonation right. And, worst of all, you can't skip any of the mid-mission cinemas, so you're stuck listening to all of it.

Missions tend to be very challenging, if only because this game often suffers from hero syndrome, where you, the super pilot, must do absolutely everything to ensure the U.S. wins the war. You have to destroy the Japanese landing craft. You have to escort the Admiral's plane out of range. You need to take care of those dive bombers. Slipping up on any of your responsibilities results in instant mission failure. As you progress through the game, you will earn a cadre of wingmen to help you out; they can be surprisingly effective, but you'll always be very, very busy in every mission.

The game's campaign will keep you plenty busy, too, and through it you'll progress through the Pacific theater, advancing and retreating as gains are made and losses are suffered. You'll also unlock five historic missions that take a stab at recreating air battles along with 36 different aircraft. Your hangars will be filled with a solid selection of U.S. and Japanese fighters, bombers, torpedo bombers, and dive bombers. You can always select which aircraft type to take into a mission, while some allow you to choose between a bomber or fighter, resulting in different objectives in the same mission.

Each aircraft can be upgraded as well. Success in a mission will earn you points to spend on your craft, enabling advancements in each individual model. You'll start off with a slow and clunky P-40, for example, but a few upgrade points will turn it into a P-40C, with more power and more guns. A few more points will net you the next model up, and so forth.

Upgraded craft are obviously quite helpful in completing the campaign mode, but will also give you an edge in multiplayer combat. Up to eight pilots can battle, either via splitscreen, over system link, or through Xbox Live. You can stage simple dogfights and team dogfights, but there are a few more interesting gameplay modes. A version of capture the flag has you snapping recon photos of the other team's carriers. Another called fox and hounds has everyone chasing a designated fox aircraft, while the final mode calls on teams to sink their opponents' carrier. With the right crowd, all of these gameplay modes are a blast.

Online or off, the game looks very impressive. Sun shimmers off of the water convincingly and the aircraft models themselves are minutely detailed and animated. As we approach the end of the current generation of consoles, it's clear that this one is definitely making good use of the available horsepower.

While a few frustrating missions and some obnoxious wingmen dampen the fun somewhat, Heroes of the Pacific is a genuinely entertaining game for those who dig WWII aviation but don't feel quite like diving into a hardcore sim. It presents a taste of the rush felt from dogfighting, while greatly reducing the penalty for buying the farm.