Grumpygamer

Battlestations Pacific is a celebration classic gameplay over the current crop of me-too shooters. It recalls the glory days of sim-lite games from Microprose and Digital Image Design. This isn't like the same old crap we're peddled every week by publishers who target the same idiotic demographic again and again. This isn't a game designed for bigoted ten year old boys from Ohio.

What Battlestations Pacific delivers is something that is all too rare these days. This is a game that's fun and action-packed without treating the customer like a fool. The blend of realism and arcade fun is beautifully balanced - think of this as the warfare equivalent of Project Gotham Racing.

This game is packed with variety and more fun than anything I've played this year so far. There are tweaks I would make here or there but on the whole Pacific delivers big time. You owe it to your Xbox 360 to feed it this disk.

You can read my full review over at Boomtown.net.

It's quite a while since I've been this disappointed by a high profile release. There are so many bad design decisions in this game it almost seems the developer is trying to alienate people who like flight games. I've always thought that in designing a game you should please your core audience and add features to appeal to all, not fill a game full of stupid ideas that are bound to annoy the very people this game should appeal to.

Take for example the cockpit view. It's rubbish. You can't actually see the HUD within it, which negates it to some extend. Secondly you can't move the view around completely as you can with the chase view. This is really irritating as you can't look down. Well done with that one.

Then there's the issue of speed. Everything is too quick, the aircraft fly at stupid speeds. And despite the pre-release FAQs saying the player would have full control over speed this isn't true.

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I wanted to join the Royal Air Force and be a fighter pilot. But at the age of fifteen I discovered my eyesight wasn't up the job. That was a pretty demoralising discovery.

But my love of blasting through the skies remains and I've been messing around with flight simulators and flight games since my very first computer gaming experience.

Alas this is not a popular genre within gaming anymore, yet one title remains hugely popular - Microsoft Flight Simulator. Not only does the simulator allow you to fly many different planes and helicopters right out of the box, it also models the whole world.

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Go and read this piece of nonense at the Daily Mail.

Read it?

Good.

Do you know what that image actually is? No it's not created by Al Qaeda.

It's promotional artwork from a Role Playing Game called Fallout 3.

Yes the Daily Mail should be ground into dust.