Battlestations: Pacific Demo

The waters of the Pacific ocean saw more than their share of battle during the second World War, when America and Japan had their fierce skirmishes. Beside the constant aerial battles that sent thousands of pilots to theirs deaths, the sea itself was crawling with destroyers, carriers and many other warships, while deep below lurked the silent submarines and their deadly torpedoes.

Battlestations: Pacific is a game that aims to properly depict this conflict and give you total control of the entire theater of war, by allowing you to quickly switch between bombing a bunker from above, to manning the destroyer artillery and bringing down the enemy fighter planes. Hence, you get to experience every moment of battle, as well as coordinate your efforts in order to be as efficient as possible.

One of the defining characteristics of the game is the fact that you get to control a variety of war machinery throughout the main campaign, ranging from battle cruises, to bombers, fighter jets and even submarines, depending on what your objectives are. Each scenario has multiple checkpoints, which allow you to switch vehicles and redirect your attacks toward different targets.

Since you will be jumping back and forth between different mediums and control schemes, the game needed to employ a very intuitive and easy-to-handle gameplay mechanics, in order to make it simple for you to quickly get adjusted to the new vehicle. Fortunately, the developers did a good job and it is really easy to take advantage of each weapon, whether it's mounted on a plane or on a fierce cruiser.

The game uses a very potent graphics engine as well, which is quite capable of rendering a massive amount of detail when it comes to the vehicles and the environments, especially since the maps are very open and wide. The special effects look convincing as well, with intense explosions and plenty of particles to handle the massive amounts of smoke that usually covers the area.

Although it may not be a typical game and it may not belong to any particular genre, Battlestations: Pacific is definitely a worthy experience and it can provide you with quite a few hours of intense battles. However, the difficulty may prove to be a bit too forgiving for a proper challenge, especially after you learn how to accurately control the planes.