3/5 ★ – WrathofBen's review of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault.

Boy oh boy, this one was a weird one. I started off really enjoying it, but it felt like the game was trying to make me hate it the more I played. And playing this one on PC, I thought I'd enjoy it more. After all, my favorite MoH title is Allied Assault, a PC exclusive MoH game. But this one is just barely better than the DICE reboot games... let's get into it. You play as Tommy Conlin as a marine stationed on Pearl Harbor. That is, until it is surprise attacked by Japanese bombers. This game opens up very much like Rising Sun, but this time you are on the island itself witnessing the havoc. It's honestly a much more immersive experience this time around, and that's with me enjoying how Rising Sun handled it. From then on out, you engage on missions in the Pacific Theatre of war with a squad of marines throughout the entire game. And I'd say that's what this game brings to the table, squad commands and teamwork. In previous MoH titles, you are pretty much alone, while sometimes having friendlies help you along the way. Here, you always have a fireteam. This changes how the entire game plays, as you can command your squad to push forward, fall back, cover you or regroup. Your squad also has a full-time medic, who starts each level with 4 medkits to fully heal you. Because of this, health packs are extremely limited in the overall sandbox of the game. But if you strategically use you heals, you'll make it through most levels just fine. Now with squads being the biggest strength of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, with it comes a ton of weaknesses. First off, squad commands function maybe half the time. Every time I wanted to tell my squad to do something, the options were greyed out, making the option useless. The medic also would randomly ignore my requests to heal, and even run PAST me when down. You can tell this is the first time the series has tried to do this, because their mechanics can be a bit wonky. But I still think the inclusion of squad mates is a huge plus to the game, and gives a greater sense of comradery, even if they are constantly in my way and blocking me from moving forward. Gunplay here is probably some of the worst the series has ever been. I never felt like any of the guns were doing what they were supposed to, especially turrets. The Japanese precision weapon almost never hit its mark, and the Thompson was just a bullet hose, even at close range. I rarely hit my target when I wanted to. This was also the first game to introduce "aim down sights" or "ADS" for all weapons in the game. I was excited at first, but its execution is super weak here. The animation takes a full second, and honestly makes aiming worse than using the hip fire reticle (which now blooms when moving or firing repeatedly, FINALLY!) Turrets never hit anything the sights were laid on, often requiring me to fire blindly in the direction of enemies with a hope and a prayer that I actually hit them (which I usually never did). Grenades also felt weak here, often overshooting my targeted throw with no real control for how hard I can throw them. Overall, this game was VERY clunky to control, and felt like a massive step down from Allied Assault. Mission structure was also very mediocre. There was no real variety, it all felt like the same level stretched to 9 hours. The only real change of pace was the Flyboys mission that was absolute torture to play. It starts off fine enough, with you in the back of a plane with a turret. But then you are told to pilot the plane, and the controls go full throttle into the danger zone. I was stuck on this level for hours just because I couldn't control it very well. Even when I beat the level after sinking an aircraft carrier and battleship, the level glitched and said I abandoned the mission, killed me, and started me over at the last checkpoint. Even when I won, I lost. Which brings me to GLITCHES! You can tell EA started pushing the devs harder to pump these games out quickly to beat Call of Duty, because this is one of the least polished games in the series so far. For an entire mission, my crouch button just stopped working. I couldn't progress in the game because a certain section required me to crouch to get to cover. I had to full reboot the game to get it to work. Enemies also just shrug off lethal hits from snipers and shotguns. Like a full shot to the chest with a shotgun doesn't phase a guy charging at me with a bonzai attack. Damage just feels so inconsistent, and not exactly on purpose. Graphically, this game is a beauty for 2004. Facial animations are truly impressive. Playing through the boot camp level was really technically amazing, from the solider animations to the pretty well done cutscenes. Sound design also gets a huge plus here, however I feel the soundtrack was a bit weaker here than in previous titles. I know Christopher Lennertz did really well with Rising Sun, and hope his European Assault score makes up for how weak this one felt. Most levels had zero music, and made me miss the wonderful scores from previous games. Which honestly brings me to my biggest gripe with this game. It's great they did so many new things here, but it's missing fundamental MoH features. There's no stealth or espionage, no mention of OSS, no mission variety, and no real personality to the game as a whole. What made previous titles so great was the mission variety and somewhat whimsical representation of a dark time in history. Enemies were kinda goofy in the other games, making light of a pretty damning war period. This game almost takes itself TOO seriously. But, the last level was a ton of fun, and defense levels were pretty satisfying to play. All in all, it's still a positive experience, but I'm getting more frustrations than with other titles, even Frontline. 6/10, almost a 5/10 but I cannot give this game that low of a score with good faith. It really tries to do new things, it just wasn't sure how to do many of those things... Back to the PS2 next for European Assault and then Vanguard after! Nearing the finish line with these games, minus some PSP, GameBoy and Meta Quest titles.