The History Channel: Battle for The Pacific
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"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it"
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The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific is a historical first-person shooter video game developed by Cauldron HQ for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, Fun Labs for PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii, ported to Microsoft Windows by Ladyluck Digital Media and published by Activision Value released in 2007
Story
Cauldron Version
TBA
Fun Labs Version
The game starts out in 1942, with the main character saying that his reward for taking part in a special forces operation in Luxembourg is to serve in the Pacific War. He is part of a special forces group, and is a one-man-army. First, he is ordered to deliver a telegram to General Douglas MacArthur, fighting his way through the jungles of Corregidor to get to a PT boat that brings him to MacArthur. Afterwards, he serves on Guadalcanal, where he takes part in the Battle of Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo, where he blows up a Japanese seaplane base, and later takes part in the destruction of Henderson Field, calling in airstrikes on key buildings. As a reward for his services, he was sent to Australia for R&R, but before he could do so, he was caught up in the Battle of Milne Bay, where he escaped New Guinea with important documents after blowing up Japanese Zeroes with an AA gun. He goes to Australia, and returns to duty when he is sent to Buna-Gona to steal communication codes from beach houses. He finds a dead Japanese officer, and the officer's suicide troubles the main character mentally, as he is confused about it. After this mission, he is sent to Truk to search for communication codes. The next missions involve him heading to Guam to save POWs from a camp and going to Tinian to call in airstrikes on key storehouses that the naval bombardment missed. Finally, he is sent to Iwo Jima to blow up huge artillery pieces in Mt. Suribachi, and the story ends there.
Why It's a History That Should Be Forgotten
Cauldron Version:
- It is very short lasting about a hour and a half long.
- Back when it was released it, the game was 50$, which is too expensive given the quality and length of the game
- The console version has an very abysmal frame rate consisting about 20FPS
- The PC version isn't any better as because just like any other Cauldron game, there is no V-Sync and running at higher framerate causes issues, but somehow here it's even worse, not only the enemies can't be killed by bullets but even the physics ragdolls are broken this time, the only way to fix this problem is by going to your graphic card control panel and lock it to 60FPS, and V-Sync is absolutely needed because of the amount of terrible screen tearing, it also has audio issues such as: bad mixing and sometimes audio delays.
- Just like Soldier of Fortune: Payback, the Aiming Down Sights doesn't funtion properly.
- The graphics are awful as it looks like a game that came out in 2004 instead of 2007.
- The character models look ugly and they lack lip-syncing
- Shooting a gun in a cave causes the muzzle flashes to light up the entire cave in white.
- The music loop is broken as it can sometimes stop for no reason.
- There isn't any story to follow at all.
- It reuses assets from Soldier of Fortune: Payback (which is another Cauldron game that came out the same year)
- Some of the animations, mostly notable the pistol reloading animation are reused.
- The menu layout is the same but with slight changes.
- Even the subtitles and dying animation are reused.
- Unlike other FPS games, you can't sprint in this game, only your allies can.
- The enemy A.I are completly dumb, as they sometimes can't kill you, heck you can actually just finish this game without doing absolutely anything, because the allies will kill them fast.
- There is also a rare time where some enemies can kill you in one shot, which makes the difficulty completely unbalanced.
- The allies A.I aren't any better as they can sometimes die for no reason (heart attack as we might call it).
- The game is extremely linear, if you get more then 50 feet away from your allies, you get a game over.
- Sometimes you can also get a game over screen for no reason.
- The game over screen highlights restart level instead of restart checkpoint, which can cause confusion and make you accidently restart the entire level from the beginning.
- Huge amount of screen shakes whenever there's an explosion nearby which can outright cause motion sickness when playing for too long.
- When defusing the mines in one of the levels, the mines pop out of nowhere in front of you.
- There are only 6 or 7 weapons to use, even more less than the Fun Labs version and Secret Service: Ultimate Sacrifice (which is yet another Cauldron game).
- The weapons themselves are not very satisfying to use as they suffer from a lack of punch and they sound rather weak, unlike it's previous Cauldron game Soldier of Fortune: Payback and the Fun Labs Version.
- The game has been delisted from steam which makes the game hard to get as it is now abandonware.
Fun Labs Version:
- The graphics look muddy.
- The weapons selection in this version is also lackluster, it has only 10 weapons to use.
- It reuses the melee sound effect from Call of Duty
- The Wii version motion controls aren't really good to use.
- The enemy A.I are also dumb as they dont react to being shot and sometimes try to melee attack you for no reason.
Redeeming Qualities
Cauldron Version:
- Atleast there are mods that fixes this game marginally: Functional Ironsights & Extended Viewmodels (this mod adds proper aiming down sights, changes the FOV and extended the viewmodel) and Blood Mod (simply adds blood like in Soldier of Fortune: Payback).
Fun Labs Version:
- Unlike the Cauldron Version, this one has an actual aiming down sights
- Despite there only being 10 weapons to use it's still a bigger rooster than Cauldron's version.
- It runs at a smooth 60FPS
- There is an actual story to follow this time.
- Despite the bad enemy A.I atleast they are not also unbalanced, and they put up a fair challenge sometimes.
- The controls on PS2 are actually good.
- The weapons are actually fun to use.
- This version is more longer lasting 3 hours and 10 minutes.
- Overall, it's just more superior than the main Cauldron Version.
Reception
Upon release, History Channel: Battle for the Pacific received generally unfavorable reviews.
On Game Rankings, it ranges from 30 to 50%, and on Metacritic, the Xbox 360 version received 38 out of a 100.
On IGN, the Xbox 360 and PC versions got 4.5/10 and 4.9/10 respectively, citing its lack of story, repetitious gameplay and short game length, while the Wii and PS2 version suffered even more with scores of 2.5 and 3, due to bad graphics, bad narration, and overall being worse than the Xbox 360 and PC versions.
GameSpot has also given the game a negative review, with the Xbox 360 version receiving a 2/10, the Wii version receiving a 4/10, and the PS2 version with 4.5/10, mainly due to many factors including short game length and derivative gameplay for the Xbox 360, while the PS2 and Wii version had bad graphics, inconsistency with the framerate, and poor artificial intelligence.
ScrewAttacks' "The Scoop" said that the game had "horrible graphics, poor online multiplayer, bad music, and a lack of a sprint feature."
Videos
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