Have you ever dreamt of being a daring combat pilot, of roaring through the skies and obliterating enemies with a hail of hot lead? Have you ever sat down with a flight sim and had your fantasy crash to earth when you ran into a dizzying array of gauges, keyboard commands, and aviation lingo? Heroes of the Pacific might be the game for you. This World War II game ditches the complexities of real-world aviation in favor of non-stop cinematic action. There's one catch, though: where hardcore flight sims might frustrate some gamers with their complexity, this arcade-action game can frustrate with its difficulty and lack of saves.

You see that from the start of the game's campaign. You play as a young American pilot stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese launch their infamous surprise attack and sink the Arizona with your brother on board. You have to scramble to beat back the hordes of Japanese planes. You have to protect this, destroy that, defend those, and generally fly around like a one-man air force, desperately trying to defeat vastly superior odds.

This mission serves as a template for things to come. As the campaign takes you across the Pacific over the course of WWII, you'll visit famed battle sites like Wake Island, Midway, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima. Each locale usually features multiple missions, each comprised of multiple primary and secondary objectives that come tumbling down on you like a pile of bricks. Just when you think you've got things under control, along comes another wave of planes. Then there might be a mini-sub to hunt down, a bunch of AA guns to obliterate, or destroyers to sink.

There's no time to breathe in Heroes of the Pacific, which is its main strength, but also becomes a problem at times. On the one hand, the action keeps you on the edge of your seat as dozens of planes fill the sky. Through the din and smoke of flak bursts, wounded planes sputter by you, and their defeated pilots parachute to the sea below. Engines roar, guns chatter, and radio traffic adds to the sense of urgency. In other words, Heroes of the Pacific makes you feel like a WWII hero right in the thick of things.


On the downside, the game tends to pile it all on too thickly. In one mission alone, you have to take down fifty planes -- more than the top US ace managed in the whole war. That sort of slaughter would be fine if the game didn't get so tough at times, even on the easier difficulty settings. In some missions, it can be a struggle to defeat the overwhelming odds, most of all when you need to escort allies beset by dozens of foes. If you can't knock out the antagonists with lighting speed, your allies die, and you lose the mission. Some of the boss battles with enemy aces are badly balanced, too. By the time they appear, your plane is often too damaged from previous encounters to stand a chance.

Worse still, Heroes of the Pacific commits the unforgivable sin of not letting you save during the long missions. You do get a few checkpoints within missions, but they're only valid during your current session. If you have to leave the mission, you'll need to restart the whole thing from scratch next time. Why not just kick the player in the teeth?

While the lack of saves and the difficulty can sap some fun out of Heroes of the Pacific, it does offer features that lighten your load. For one thing, you get unlimited ammo. The flight physics are very forgiving: it's hard to stall, and you can actually bounce off other planes. Anyone can learn how to fly the game's planes in a minute or two, so you can soar right into action. The game is playable with either a joystick or mouse/keyboard controls, though the former is preferable.