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The opening training tutorial mission is almost void of any kind of storyline, just tossing you in the driver seat and a quick “there’s the gas, there’s the break, have fun” sort of explanation. The landscapes are reasonably rendered but the camera is very stiff and hard to control. There’s no zooming accelerations, the only views available seem to be “I can see your nose hairs” close, and “I can see my house from here” far. They’ve even gone as far as to claim that this game can also double as a flight simulator.

Well I suppose we can claim anything we want, just like you can paint a dog yellow and call it a duck… but that doesn’t exactly make it true.

When it comes to RTS fans I know we all crave depth and the ability to micro-manage units, equipment and production, but when should micro-managing become a laborious chore? There’s definitely a fine line between the two and Pacific Storm: Allies seems to dive head first over the line. The game seems to go from mind-numbingly boring, to orgiastically violent at the flick of a switch.

When the action kicks off things really get entertaining and chaotic. With so much happening on the screen at once you find yourself in panic mode trying to make each move count, and at the same time your graphics card seems to grind down to roughly 3 frames per second. Of course you can make adjustments in the video settings to optimize performance, but what is the point of playing a war game if the explosions look like the sad ‘pop’ of a firecracker rather than the loud ‘Ker-boom!’ of a 500lb bomb?

There always is the option of manning the controls of one of the planes yourself but that leaves the rest of your massive army to its own devices, and when you give 50,000 sailors a little wiggle room, there’s bound to be very poor, and often regrettable choices made. Being at the helm is a novelty that you won’t find yourself doing often simply because it leaves no commander to make rational decisions.

I think that we have a game that was supposed to end up looking like a Company of Heroes Big Brother but ended up becoming Company of Heroes’ weird little cousin that pokes dead things with a stick and talks in the third person a lot. I credit Pacific Storm for making the valiant effort it has, and I think that with a bit of tinkering they may be able to make something that resembles a mediocre war game, but just not at this time.

That is all soldiers. Dismissed!