The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific

 Xbox 360
User Score
5.9

Mixed or average reviews- based on 22 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 22
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 22
  3. Negative: 10 out of 22
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  1. JangO.
    Dec 4, 2007
    9
    It was a pretty fun game for what it was - I didn't expect a whole lot but it by and far surpassed my expectations. I agree with Cris - God Bless Activision Value!
  2. JackS.
    Nov 28, 2007
    10
    Excellent gameplay, the action kept me glued to the chair for hours. Along the wAy Some things about the war in the pacific were made clear for me as well. Edutainment at its finest.
  3. NathanC.
    Dec 20, 2007
    4
    I feel a regretable set of circumstances has arised to create this game. The graphics are choppy and too uniform, the AI is empty of intelligence, and the historical context is questionable. That's the "His Story Channel" for you. I might be coming down too hard, but WW II was a very real and serious business. Tell you what, just rent "The Thin Red Line," that is more accurate and I feel a regretable set of circumstances has arised to create this game. The graphics are choppy and too uniform, the AI is empty of intelligence, and the historical context is questionable. That's the "His Story Channel" for you. I might be coming down too hard, but WW II was a very real and serious business. Tell you what, just rent "The Thin Red Line," that is more accurate and even, if I must, Happy.… Expand
  4. DefinicjaC.
    Dec 3, 2007
    4
    The 3 previous testimonials made me laugh even more than the game. They show perfectly how everything is great in description but leaves overally a messy "experiance". I give four points for graphics only - even tough it has a familiar feeling of SoF 3: Payback, I can't say it's bad or ugly. The nextgenish effects aren't too intrusive as well. Really nice work from The 3 previous testimonials made me laugh even more than the game. They show perfectly how everything is great in description but leaves overally a messy "experiance". I give four points for graphics only - even tough it has a familiar feeling of SoF 3: Payback, I can't say it's bad or ugly. The nextgenish effects aren't too intrusive as well. Really nice work from graphicians here! As for the rest... uhm well to start... as I was playing the PC version I shouldn't really write about it, but WAIT - it's in fact the same thing as on XBOX360. Why? Let's have a few - really inaccurate mouse work (it actually floated), NONE configuration options and BAD, REALLY BAD PORTING - the framerate was dropping to 10fps on a X1900XTX Radeon GFX card which can perfectly handle better looking 'Call of Duty 4' or 'Gears of War'. Moving on to the gameplay. If you want some easy arcade fun - you can say it's average, in peaks to good. If you want a bit more like some aiming & tactics for instance, sorry - wrong adress. What's mostly distrupting is the AI or actually lack of it. Your team mates run like children with a used diaper no matter if the re is standing a pack of Japanese around the corner, they just ignore them, leaving all the shooting to you! The good side is that - gladly - Americans from the team are INVINCIBLE to enemy shots! When you finally deal with enemy soldiers (who are total MORONS by the way) your squad mates start running again shouting all the time "Move your ass", "Come on, let's go" and the best - "Soldier, you're not following orders". This gives you an idea how the levels play like - not only you're following the string, you got it tied around your neck. Once I tried to use a hill for a better shooting point - not only I was blocked by an invisible wall but also the mission ended prematurely because of my "insubordination". The next BAD thing already mentioned is enemy AI. In 3 missions I saw 1 (yes - ONE) kind of Japenese soldiers. They fight exactly how they look. They just run towards not even trying to shoot or take cover. They don't even make the famous bansai charge (History Channel, hello?!). If they actually survive the shooting (weapons in your hands are especially deadly - you can mow down even 6 troopers on one Type30 SMG mag), they can hit you a time or two, but it doesn't matter - the health regenerates fast even on hard difficulty level. There are numerous examples of funny situations which are the effect of the horrendous AI which I leave for you to discover ;) Moving on to Audio - glad that it exists. The music plays sometimes, there are some sound effects sometimes, there is also some tragic voice acting made by developers' families (no offence if this sound as an insult). Still this doesn't counts at all because all sounds are deafened by the repetetive "Follow the orders" commands from your squadmates. Concluding - this could be a really good game. The graphics are very important nowadays and Cauldron achieved a high level in this case, what they forgot about was OPTIMIZATION (or at least configuration options), SOUND, AI (the game's BIGGEST DEFECT), SCRIPTING and STEERING (of course on the PC). Also after playing some missions I don't feel more educated - Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault gave you far more interesting facts than this HC signed shooter. The only thing which will storm your brain after playing BftP will be 'why the f*** they wasted a promising potential' and 'were those Japanese really that dumb???'. My biggest congratulations to History Channel for signing this 'no-brainer' - it takes quite a valor to do such things.… Expand
  5. Steve
    Dec 4, 2007
    7
    Looks good but it's a little choppy. Haven't got that far into it to make a real good review but so far i would say it was average at best.
  6. MarkB.
    Jan 6, 2008
    3
    This game is not worth the money. I ignored all reviews and still purchased it because it showed promise.(what was i thinking?) Ultimately i was very disapointed. I have played a lot of first person shooters and this is the worst by far. I did not even bother to play this past the second mission. While the graphics are good - it's almost similar to Call of Duty 3 , the framerate This game is not worth the money. I ignored all reviews and still purchased it because it showed promise.(what was i thinking?) Ultimately i was very disapointed. I have played a lot of first person shooters and this is the worst by far. I did not even bother to play this past the second mission. While the graphics are good - it's almost similar to Call of Duty 3 , the framerate sometimes drops. The game is full of bugs and flaws. On the Luzon stage I thought we killed all Japanese troops. I was wondering where this single rifle firing was from. When i joined my allies i saw one Japanese soldier standing behind him and repeatedly shooting him and he was doing nothing. Another ocasion i was exploring the vicinity admiring the scenery and my unit commander was talking to - a tree. They did not bother to tweak this so that the character at least follows where you are standing. Take a lesson from Brothers in Arms! And that was not even next gen. Another problem is that the AI is just plain stupid. They all move the same. They just stand there when you shoot them. They even die the same. It's like a shooting gallery of lemmings! You can predict when the Japanese Soldiers will come out because the Allied soldiers will stop kneel and aim one second before the enemy comes out. Gameplay is linear like Call of Duty but you feel no urgency of completing the mission. The aim button feels useless since it does not bring up the sights. while your may not be shooting from the hip, you're actually shooting from your stomach. Since they had the gall to title this game "History Channel..." I would like to point out that it is not accurate. The Bataan Stage here is presented like a Snakelike or S like ridge and your running in betwen that. I guess this is in effort to make sure you go where they want you to go. Now I may not be a WWII vet but i have been it's a 5 hour drive from where i live. And guess what? I never saw any snaking ridges like the one in the game. Bataan is a Mountain near the beach! Look it up on Google earth! Sound - While the sound is average, you get turned off by yet another glitch - Soldier Chatter. It's like the programmers programmed the soldiers to say random lines. - i have no problem with that. I think it's being done by most programmers anyway but, I do mind when they don't review the dialogue to be flexible. Immagine this- While just moving from one point to another your ally starts to scream - Die you.... or Take that you... I immediately looked for cover and found that there was not even one Enemy (i don't remember the exact lines, because i was laughing so hard) This game is not a dissapointment.... It's a disaster.… Expand
  7. ThomasA.
    Dec 3, 2007
    10
    This game was incredibly realistic and historical. The amount of history that took place in World War II was enormous, and you can always count on the History Channel to present it in new and exciting ways! Now you don't just learn about the history - you experience all of the history from a first-person perspective! It's really amazing what they have done!
  8. [Anonymous]
    Jan 29, 2008
    1
    Activision should be ashamed releasing such half-baked crap for anything more than $19.99. Thank god I manage a video game store and can steer shooter fans away from this horrible game. If you are willing to subject yourself to trench level, jungle path level, then the same trench level for 10 levels, then you will complete the game in only a few hours. I bailed after 7 levels when the Activision should be ashamed releasing such half-baked crap for anything more than $19.99. Thank god I manage a video game store and can steer shooter fans away from this horrible game. If you are willing to subject yourself to trench level, jungle path level, then the same trench level for 10 levels, then you will complete the game in only a few hours. I bailed after 7 levels when the commanding officer, who leads you by the nose got stuck on the environment in a trench level. The mission fails if you are too far ahead or behind this officer. It's tempting to deny this game any points because I wouldn't buy it for $1, but there were a few stupid shooting gallery/fish in a barrel moments that felt arcade cathartic. I'd hardly call it history though. Quite possibly a new low in FPS gaming.… Expand
  9. JamesC.
    Nov 28, 2007
    10
    I've never had so much fun playing a game where I learn things at the same time! History Channel: Battle For the Pacific combines awesome game play with historical cut scenes in way thats fun for the whole family. Finally I get to shoot the Japanese, I was so bored with the standard European remake of WWII games. Keep up the good work Activision.
  10. CrisS.
    Nov 28, 2007
    10
    Seeing the visuals in this game were more magical then watching my child being born. It's a non stop action thrill ride that will go down in my books as one of the greatest experiances of my life. God Bless Activision Value and God Bless AMERICA!
  11. glenrod
    Mar 16, 2011
    9
    this game is as close as you can get to a real life world war sim, everything from the controlls to the graphics are quite simply amazing. the gameplay is absolutely phenomenal and the pace is incredible too, this has set the bar for world war 2 shooters, one that maybe can never be matched in the near future. any call of duty fans that have not played this need to trade in their copiesthis game is as close as you can get to a real life world war sim, everything from the controlls to the graphics are quite simply amazing. the gameplay is absolutely phenomenal and the pace is incredible too, this has set the bar for world war 2 shooters, one that maybe can never be matched in the near future. any call of duty fans that have not played this need to trade in their copies for this as it is an incredible piece of software.

    from bone shattering explosions to next gen set pieces, this is a game that NO first person shooter fan should avoid.    … Expand
  12. BulletPeople
    Dec 21, 2016
    8
    By no means a triple A production with cadres of designers and programmers, The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific nonetheless manages to be a great deal of fun and offers several innovative ideas and flourishes that others would do well to copy.

    Cons:You can gripe about a somewhat stuttery framerate that happens often. The sergeant and other team members you follow can get stuck    By no means a triple A production with cadres of designers and programmers, The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific nonetheless manages to be a great deal of fun and offers several innovative ideas and flourishes that others would do well to copy.

    Cons:You can gripe about a somewhat stuttery framerate that happens often. The sergeant and other team members you follow can get stuck and do nothing until you try something to wake them up like press on forward past his stationary form. There's no friendly fire on your fellow soldiers. Some others have complained that aiming is difficult but I wonder if that particular challenge is not intentional, as it gives you the feel of trying to bring the 9 lb M-1 rifle or a 31 lb Browning machine gun to bear on a target. Likewise, lack of boss battles is a net plus to me because using a video game cliche like bosses really has no place in a game based on history.

    Pros: Something about the design of this game just makes it all work to make it feel like what it must have been like for real. There are things I've never seen in any other game.
    - You are constantly chasing someone who is giving orders, who moves when you might prefer to stay because there are other objectives he has in mind, and who sometimes recklessly plows guns blazing into enemy fire. There's a saying "you can't manage people into battle, you have to lead them." It's a cliche that someone has to lead the charge, to go over the perimeter first, and rally the troops to take the hill. We see that in this game, maybe not done to perfection, but done in a way that makes you realize that's what it must have been like. You may want to stick around to get that last of 3 snipers that opened up on you but the sergeant is going around the bend yelling at you to keep up. If you lag too far behind you restart the level, so there's lots of incentive to keep up.
    - Try as you might, you won't be killing all or even most of the enemy. In fact, if you don't keep up you can enter a firefight, duck in shame, and when you finally get nerve to peek out again your comrades have already mopped up and are, once again, moving on and calling you to catch up.
    - Sometimes you're just trying to save your skin and basically ignore everything else but to follow your sergeant. So just as in real life there's no artificial goal to kill every enemy. It's good enough to make it onto the beach, past the falling artillery, through the machine gun fire, and over the embankment to safety.
    - Flanking the enemy produces the most satisfying moment in a FPS I've ever experienced. They don't scatter in 8 directions but are simply taken out by your machine gun in a line.
    - Your path through the battlefield takes twists, turns, backtracks--all of the things you'd expect in the fog of war. When your sergeant hauls off to the left fork in one of the many trenches don't be surprised if you run into a dead end and come back. And now you've finally taken the position? Good for you, but you might give it back in two minutes and have to retake it later.
    - Don't expect to take your time behind that mounted gun the sergeant asked you to take over. Before they stop coming at you he may call you off of it--time to move out.

    If you are at all willing to forgive less than state-of-the-art mechanics for a unique experience, try this game.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

82
#82 Most Discussed Xbox 360 Game of 2007

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
35

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 11 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 11
  3. Negative: 8 out of 11
  1. GameZone
    55
    The History Channel implementation, level setup and graphic selections are A+ choices; it’s the execution that tanks the experience.
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  2. GamesRadar+
    40
    There are a ton of fine shooters hitting shelves this year that are good enough to go down in history. It would be a shame to waste your money paying full price for this heap, which instead takes history down with it.
    Read full review
  3. IGN
    45
    The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific isn't necessarily an atrocious game, but it just isn't that fun and brings so very little to the table.
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