War in the Pacific

Names, like pictures, evoke certain images in our minds; Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, Hiroshima. History, like a fire, leaves its mark, changing how we view the world around us. Likewise, certain names in the gaming industry leave their mark as well, names like Avalon Hill, John Tiller, and Gary Grigsby. Gary Grigsby has become a household name in the PC wargaming industry synonymous with detail, quality, and depth. He is the creator of the games Steel Panthers & War in Russia, both of which are long outdated and are now considered freeware but are still going strong on many a wargamer's PC today!

I first took notice of Grigsby's passion for the Pacific battles of World War II with his title Pacific War released by SSI in 1992. This MSDOS hex based game had poor graphics by today's standards but is also still being played and is available as a free download at Matrix Games. At the time of its release the scope of the game was unheard of encompassing the Pacific War from the west coast of North America to the edge of the Indian Ocean. Even today with more processing power at our fingertips then ever before, very few theater level operational wargames have been attempted.

Grigsby returned to familiar waters with Uncommon Valor in 2002. Uncommon Valor greatly reduced the scale of Pacific War to just the Solomon Island Chain, New Guinea, and the coast of Australia. Hexes represented 15 nautical miles and the game engine acted as a test program in Grigsby's effort to remake an updated version of Pacific War. Thus with the stage set, after long years of working on his expansion of the UV engine, Grigsby has unveiled his magnum opus, War in the Pacific: The Struggle Against Japan 1941-1945! Combining most of the elements of his previous games and adding many new levels of detail, Gary Grigsby has brought to the public an absolutely enormous game spanning the entire Pacific Theater.

War in the Pacific is mainly available as a direct download from Matrix Games. A few stores on-line carry a CD version of the game, and Matrix will provide you with a CD back up for an additional $10.00 dollars. Considering that the game is already $69.99 this additional $10 dollars seems a bit steep considering the low cost of CD's and basic shipping. I would consider this a much better deal and even pay a bit more if they would throw in a printed manual when you ordered the CD back up!

The CD version is formatted the same as their downloads containing only one compressed installation program. I personally do not like this format because you can't access any of the games files directly, including the cumbersome 11.7 MB PDF game manual. The size of the manual limits its portability. It is too large to email if you have dial up, and you would need a zip disk, portable hard drive, or a CD burner to get it to Kinko's if you wanted it professionally printed. Matrix Games does have a partnership with Kinko's where you can choose the manual you want printed on-line but sadly only 3 of their games are listed and War in the Pacific is not one of them. My final issue with this format is that if something were to ever happen to any of the game files or the manual you would have to reinstall the entire game to repair it.

The manual itself weighs in at 220 pages, but even this does not seem like enough at times. It covers the basic game play and is very nicely laid out with many color screen shots, but there are a few areas that are poorly explained. For example, the official game forum has a sticky thread devoted to how to start a play by email (pbem) game because the manual does not cover it in detail. Also many of the game mechanics have subtle nuances that are not easily discernable to a casual player, such as getting command to actually send certain ships to you once their release date arrives. For the questions the manual does not cover so well, you will need to rely on advice from the games official forum. Luckily the games official forum is very active and contains a wealth of hints, tips, and tech support.

The manual includes a good tutorial that provides an excellent set of exercises to get you up and running. The tutorial also delves a bit into the logic behind some of the games basic commands and functions. I found the tutorial to be a big help. Not only does it teach players how to give basic orders to their units, but it also gives a good foundation to understand how the game interacts with the user. This comes in handy when you are trying to puzzle through the more complex aspects of the game. I believe no manual is ever really complete and there always seems to be something you wish was covered in more detail, but for a game of this complexity it does a pretty good job.

The game took about 10 minutes to install, there were no surprises and I had no difficulty with it. The CD version I was given to review was version 1.21. I then downloaded the comprehensive (and recommended) version 1.03 game patch that was a whopping 73.5 MB. This took all night to download over a dial up connection but also installed without a hitch. I then downloaded the 1.04 patch which was a much more reasonable 10.4 MB download. Both patches installed easily and I experienced no problems with the process.

When I installed the game it's total Size on Disk was 963 MB, with the patches this jumped up a bit to 1.05 GB.

While my processor just meets the recommended specification, my RAM exceeds the minimum by 128 MB. I found the game to be a little slow to respond in the full map campaign games. Button clicks would take a second or two before taking effect and the longer I would play the longer it would take to process information. It was certainly playable and never crashed but I think it would be more enjoyable with a faster CPU and more RAM. I also noticed a minor issue during the combat animations where the sound effects would step on each other making it sound a bit choppy. Some of the smoke animations were also a bit slow and choppy looking as well. I am not sure if this was due to the limitations of my hardware or if the programmers need to smooth out this part of the game more.

Once installed, War in the Pacific has an auto-play menu where you can play the game or access several different web sites. The menu provides links to Matrix forums, support and registry along with a few extra links to Armchair General Magazine, The Wargamer, and Alienware's web sites. For those of you who are like me and do not care for these menus the game also comes with a quick start option and plays without the CD which is one of the true benefits of the download format!

The game also comes with a scenario & database editor allowing a person to tweak existing scenarios to their personal taste.

Over all I was very satisfied with the installation and fairly satisfied with the games performance on my PC but as mentioned above there is still some room for improvement.

War in the Pacific is a game that is as deep as the ocean and as broad as the subject matter it portrays. If one is not prepared for this they can easily find themselves adrift in its enormity. For those who love the subject matter though, there is no game that I know of that better lets you explore the strategic options for the Pacific War in such fine detail. This is definitely not a casual play kind of wargame or a beginner’s wargame. Some serious interest in the Pacific campaign will be necessary before the average player will commit themselves to the time it takes to learn the system. Even for experienced wargamers much patience will be required from them to issue orders to the many units you have at your disposal.

The game ships with 15 scenarios, 6 of which are played out on smaller maps, plus the tutorial. The smaller scenarios cover most of the major engagements of the war including Manchuria 1945, the South Pacific campaign, Coral Sea, and Guadalcanal (redone from Uncommon Valor), and the Marianas in 1944.

The main campaign runs from December 7, 1941 to March 31, 1946 on a very large map measuring 148 x 148 hexes, with each hex representing 60 nautical miles. You can play the Main Campaign in its entirety or in several full map scenarios that cover about 1-1.5 years of the war at a time.

The game uses a IGOUGO system where each side issues their commands during an orders phase, then both players watch as the turn is played out simultaneously. The turn length can be set to either 1-3 days or continuous. The continuous play function is great for campaigns allowing you to issue orders then watch the turns play out until you interrupt the game, at which time it returns to the orders phase.

If you are a veteran of Uncommon Valor and wonder if you will get something new for your money, there is no need to worry, you will! The game is packed with new features. The Japanese player in the large scenarios can control their production, and must capture vital resources to fuel their war machine. Japanese players can now control which units to upgrade and which upgrades factories will produce. Also many refinements have been made to the types of orders that can be given. You can finally choose not to unload when a task force stops in port to take on fuel, set the speed of your task force, set up dedicated ASW task forces, send your bombers on city attack missions, and as the allies you can even drop the big one! For a full list of features in War in the Pacific check out the games' web site.

The game begins with a grainy audio recording of President Roosevelt as he informed the public that the United States had been attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. The credits then play out to a montage of newsreel footage.

Once the credits are done the game takes you to the main menu. From here you can choose the type of game you want to play, adjust game preferences and go to scenarios and saved games. The game allows you to play the AI as either side, play hot seat, play by email, or if your curious how a battle might play out you can set the AI to play both sides. Playing by email is a blast that is much different from your traditional land based wargames. Instead of the action happening across an established front line, War in the Pacific is much more a grand game of cat and mouse. You know which bases the enemy occupies but you have no idea where his fleets are unless they are spotted. This can make for wonderful tension and some terrifically surprising encounters forcing you to use your recon assets to your greatest advantage. Submarines hunt the waters and ports, patrol planes report with varying degrees of accuracy, naval vessels bombard ground units and hunt the oceans, your soldiers defend your airfields, rooting out the enemy through steaming jungles, while your air craft carriers extend your dominance of the skies into enemy territory! An offensive campaign can turn suddenly into a defensive holding action in an instant if you lose your carriers so you will have to carefully consider your strategy and tactics.

Players have a wide range of preferences to help fine-tune their playing experience. You can adjust the delays for various types of messages, turn on/off combat reports, combat animations, and adjust the sound. These may also be readjusted as needed throughout the course of play giving you a lot of flexibility in controlling turn length. These options really help to speed things up and cut down on the number of pop up messages that occur throughout a turn.

The designers provide even more control over the game by providing several “realism" adjustments. These include the option for a historic first turn where the AI will play out turn one for both the Japanese and the Allies. You can vary the set up each time you play which gives the scenarios nice replay-ability. Sub doctrine may be specified for both sides and reinforcement levels may be adjusted.

Finally there is a Game Options menu from which you can designate the turn cycle, set the AI difficulty to easy, historical, hard and very hard. There are also some display options and automation options.

Once you have set your options and chosen your scenario the game takes you to the tactical screen. This is where you will spend 99 percent of your game time. One port is generally designated as the entrance point for replacement ships. Ships that arrive in port then need to be assigned to a task force. Task forces are groupings of ships by task that allows them to function within the game.

To play you scroll around the map clicking on bases and units that you want to review or issue orders to or you can bring up one of the many lists and choose your units from there. Not sure where your CV (aircraft carrier) task force is? Bring up the All Task Forces List and sort it by Mission! Not only is it easy to find, it will center the map on its location and highlight it for you if you want. To issue orders you click on the unit and the units dialogue box opens up. This is the command center of your unit. From here you can see the Name of the unit, its mission, HQ, commanders info, ammo summary, and a list of ships that are assigned to the TF. From this screen you can set the TF's destination, speed and mission, or review each individual ship in the Task Force. You can even specify the number of hex radius that the task force will react to enemy threats.

Clicking on the “Carrier Aircraft" text in the upper left takes you to a similar screen for each squadron in the TF where you can set missions, targets, and altitude. You can even view the pilot's stats for each squadron and an airplane detail screen. The same level of detail can be found in your ground units as well. As you can see the interface is pretty simple. The challenge is learning the nuances of what each order and option does.

During the combat sequence if you have combat animations turned on you will see a pop up box that shows diagrams of your ships or your planes facing off. Little puffs of smoke from flak and muzzle flashes accompany the sounds of battle. While this is not very cutting edge in terms of graphics or animations it is a very efficient way to convey what is happening for those who like to have a visual cue as to what is going on. It can also be very nerve wracking to see the visual representation and waiting to see the effect of each shot. It keeps you on the edge of your seat wondering if your carriers will receive a direct hit! If you tire of the combat sequence the escape key will take you directly to the combat results report. If you turn off the combat animations the game will only show you the combat report. If you turn off the combat reports you can access it from the tool bar. Once you advance the turn though the report is overwritten by the current turn.

War in the Pacific offers some of the deepest strategy I have seen in a PC game especially with the full campaign. To win at a game that encompasses 5 years of game time one must learn to command with the big picture in mind! Like your historical counterparts you will be at the mercy of production and logistics limitations trying to keep your men fed, fueled and equipped across vast distances. You will have to understand the synergy between land, sea and air units and how to bring them together effectively to force a decisive battle. You will need to realize that a defeat today may actually sow the seeds of a victory several years of game time later! The enormity of the game is both its greatest strength and its most trying weakness. On the plus side it gives you strategic options that no other game even comes close to, but on the downside the game enormity will prove a daunting obstacle for all but the most committed players.

The AI and game balance is a mixed bag with War in the Pacific. On the one hand it does what it is supposed to do by occupying as many bases as possible, which is the key to winning the game. On the other hand the AI's ability to supply these bases and make effective use of its navy is questionable. This leads to many of the smaller scenarios against the Japanese AI play like a land grabbing race. Often one side or the other is at a disadvantage, not having enough warships, ground units or both to effectively block and occupy vital victory locations. This results in the AI or other human opponent often being able to take ground uncontested with the opposing player unable to retake it. This may be historically accurate for the battle in question, but makes for lousy scenario balance. Not all of the scenarios have this issue, and the large campaigns give both sides advantages and disadvantages as the year's come and go.

Units, task forces, convoys, and entire regions of the map can be placed under friendly AI control to take some of the burden off of the player. On the surface this sounds great, but after watching your convoys blunder into enemy controlled waters, or wondering why all of your patrol ships are either in port or halfway across the map patrolling an insignificant region, you will realize if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. In a game where long-term objectives are most important, it is impossible to coordinate your strategy with an unthinking machine.

One of the many challenges the designers must have faced was how to convey the vast quantity of information to the player in the most efficient and effective way. The interface is very straightforward utilizing buttons, tool bars, & hot keys. At the top of the tactical screen is a tool bar from which you can save the game, access the naval and aircraft databases, view various kinds of intelligence reports and open lists showing all of your bases, air craft, ships, and task forces under your control. Since the tool bar is used for items that you do not need to access every turn it works great.

The hot keys on the other hand could use some work. For the most part the keyboard commands correspond to the options on the toolbar making them redundant and somewhat unnecessary. Unfortunately many functions that you do have to use all of the time like giving orders to individual units and task forces do not seem to have any hot keys, creating a tedious amount of button clicking with the mouse. Creating task forces and issuing orders can feel like a chore at times due to the sheer volume of units you have to deal with and for me this is the weakest part of the game. This issue cuts right to the heart of the game being an integral part of play and I think this will considerably affect a person's enjoyment of the game. One of the most useful hot keys I found does not even seem to be listed in the manual. If you push "p" during the execution of the turn it speeds up the game considerably as the computer cycles through the many phases of a turn at a much faster rate. This feature is a blessing when play back can take 10 minutes to several hours if you watch the combat animations.

If War in the Pacific seems dull when it comes to interacting with your units, it really shines at displaying large quantities of information providing the player with many options to sort and filter it. Just about every list in the game is dynamic and allows you to sort each one by numerous different categories. For example, when viewing a naval task force you can sort the list of ships by ship type, ship name, endurance, speed, ops, capacity, damage by systems, flotation, and fires, and lastly cargo by supply, fuel and troops.

Another helpful feature that is well implemented appears when you put the mouse cursor over objects like bases or task forces, a rollover box appears containing useful information like victory point values, types and numbers of ships or planes present, etc.

The designers did a superb job implementing the data reporting features, but at times I think it inadvertently makes the game feel kind of spread sheet-like and bookish. I noticed that this feeling would set in after playing the full map scenarios for long periods of time. I think a certain amount of this is to be expected with a game set at this scale. You are acting as theater commander and not a task force commander after all, and I think you will find this feeling will vary depending on how much capacity you have for taking in information. I don't consider this a bad thing necessarily, just that the game is easier for me to digest a little at a time rather than playing through all night gaming sessions. Another good feature that helps manage the game is that you can save at any point during the orders phase and come back to it later. Once you hit the end turn button though you will have to watch the entire turn play out before you can save again.

While the graphics are pretty standard wargame fare they are very nicely rendered. The map and various report screens are very colorful and contain some nice artwork and vintage photos arranged in collage layouts. Information is conveyed very clearly and cleanly.

The music is very good for a video game and does a superb job of setting the mood. Like most game music though it eventually becomes repetitive and will likely end up getting turned off. The quality of the sound effects is also pretty good if limited in selection. One sound issue of note is that sound effects tended to get cut off by the next sound effect during the combat animations.

I love detail oriented games, love the strategic scope of this game, and really think I could love this game with time, but for now I am left with mixed feelings. On the one hand I love the hide and seek style of play, the clean graphic design, and its depth. It is refreshing and very exciting! On the other hand having to deal with so many units is a bit overwhelming. There are also still numerous bugs that need to be addressed although you probably will not notice them in the small scenarios. While none were showstoppers there are still issues with reporting, replacement pools, and leaders. Many of these are being addressed in patch v1.05 that will be released soon and I am glad to see the development team is still supporting the project. Only time will tell how much more patching the game will get, but patches won't solve the issues associated with the games size, each individual will have to come to their own conclusion here.