Reviewed: November 25, 2004
Reviewed by: Tyler Whitney

Publisher
Ubisoft

Developer
1C

Released: October 26, 2004
Genre: Simulation
Players: 1 / Online
ESRB: Teen

7
9
7
8
7.8

PC System Requirements

My experience with flight sims has mainly taken place in games like WW2online, where it may not be a dedicated flying game, but the flight models and game play were as realistic as could be. Picking up Il-2 or Pacific Fighters brings back feelings of familiarity and comfort, unlike my experience with Lock On Modern Air Combat, where all I could do was stall and spend countless hours going in circles trying to get missile lock. There is something to be said about the beauty of dog fighting with thumping machine guns and the art of working into position.

Some of the main features include:

• Fly a variety of WWII fighters and bombers: Fly for the U.S., Japan, Great Britain, and Australia in famous fighters such as the F6F Hellcat, the deadly Japanese Zero, and the UK's Super marine Seafire. Flyable bombers such as the Aichi D3A1 Val, G4M2 Betty, SBD Dauntless, and A-20 Havoc are also included. Over 40 flyable aircraft models are available.
• New! Includes aircraft carriers: For the first time in the 1C: Maddox game series, players will be able to take off from, land on, and engage enemy aircraft carriers in combat.
• Accessible to players of all skill levels: With its extensive tutorials and customizable settings, the game will appeal to both beginning and expert pilots. Nearly every level of realism and difficulty can be tuned to fit user tastes.
• Maps of the most famous battles of the Pacific: 16 new maps are included with famous historical locations such as Midway, Okinawa, Pearl Harbor, and Singapore. Wave movements on the beach, volumetric clouds, and thick vegetation are some of the visual attributes that are rendered in detail.
• Attack a vast array of targets ranging from railroads to battleships: Ground objects such as trains, trucks, and tanks can all be pounded from the air. Torpedo historically accurate ships, drop parafrags on enemy airfields, and encounter over 100 other targets on the ground and at sea.
• An unsurpassed multiplayer option: Take part in massive live engagements on huge maps that feature plane formations, numerous ships, and ground troops in a variety of modes from free-for-all dogfights to multiplayer campaigns.

The physics in Pacific Fighters are extremely realistic resulting in stalls and damage to aircraft affecting your craft accordingly, Dog fights are the name of the game here, flying in your squadrons of fighters or bombers as you try and maneuver for the shot You can jump into instant action for a quick chance at dog fighting either the Japanese or Americans. You can also play in career mode, where you follow your created pilot on a journey through aviation history, joining the battle in some major historical engagements.

The addition of aircraft carriers is amazing as well; trying to land on a floating football field at 150mph is a bit of a rush to say the least. Luckily, a well-crafted manual accompanies the game, and explains many of the controls and interface, thus helping with a steep learning curve, especially for those people new to the genre. I would recommend you use a joystick with a little knob at the top of a joystick that allows for head movement to look around inside your plane for enemy pilots, objectives etc- much easier than using the numpad. Or if you feel like something different, you can pick up a TrackIR ™., which follows your head movements much like the PS2 Eyetoy does, allowing you complete hands free awareness in the cockpit.

The planes handle differently as well, from the nimble Japanese Zero to the lumbering A-20 Havoc. The UI is presented soundly, with scalable maps with waypoints, icons for your friends/foes in different colors and easy to use menus for options and the like. I did have a bit trouble getting my X-45 Joystick set up quickly, I had to back out several times to reset the calibration and even then I had to manually tweak it so I wouldn’t fall like a stone during combat. The x-45 is a nice joystick too; besides the knob to look around it has a small throttle control to the left for easy acceleration/deceleration- in the heat of combat you don’t want to stumble around on the keyboard.

However, the long, uneventful travel times are major drawbacks, even with the variable time acceleration, you will still be on autopilot for a good while in some battles. So grab a book or get your TV close as you wait for the action. Also, people new to the genre may feel a bit under whelmed by the sim aspects, such as 40min travel time to a target to drop one bomb and return home, or spend 15min tailing a Zero only to land glancing shots within your .50 cals-this is not for the impatient gamer.

Fans of IL-2 will be quite familiar with the damage effects as well, as planes take hits they resemble Swiss cheese, seeing your airframe and bits of stuff falling off adds to the drama. The ground isn’t extremely detailed however, with few variations on landscape other than green and blue. Of course the latter doesn’t matter very much when the real battles are in the skies.

My rig had a bit of a hard time on max detail (1.53ghz, 1gb DDR ram, Geforce 4 Ti4200 128mb), thus I had to drop down the details to low across the board, though I kept it at 1024x768 and it ran smoother. You should be fine if you have anything similar to mine, my PC probably needs a good defrag anyways.

At times though, the constant droning of your aircraft gets on your nerves and can drown out the rest of the sounds, best to experiment with the setups until you find the right balance.

I popped into Multiplayer for a bit, and, Ubisoft has this element of the game covered with their standard and well-known Ubi.com online browser. Connections are pretty solid, although I had a few lag hiccups from time to time, thankfully nothing during an intense dogfight. You can find a live game using the Ubisoft service, or you can play via your home LAN. Also you have the ability to install Pacific Fighters into IL-2 Forgotten Battles and Aces Expansion Pack or as a standalone game to play with others that have either set-up. Be known that if you just install the standalone Pac Fighters, then that is your only option to play via multiplayer, not the other extensions.

The IL-2 community is one of the strongest out there, with numerous sites and skinning services offered, as well as numerous player made add-ons/tweaks. You can assign different loads outs, skins and a host of other customizable options to your combat aircraft. (My good friend actually made the vast majority of the skins for Il-2; name is JerseyD for those in the know)