Matrix Games Forums

We all know about Pacific War and Carrier Strike, Microprose's not-half-bad Task Force 1942, Koei's wonderfull strategy game PTO 2 (and the okay RTS game PTO 4), and the recent crop of 'action games' like Pearl Harbor and Deadly Dozen, not to mention the submarine games like Silent Service and Silent Hunter, but are there any OTHER games out there that deal with the Pacific Theratre?

Personaly, I'd love to see a detailed strategy game where you could control all aspects or delegate what you wanted, have some kind of 'political influence' system in order to get what you wanted, with the option to take control of ships or planes for the naval battles if the player desires, maybe even have a role playing aspect thrown in where you can start as a young and promising commander and work up through the ranks.

Maybe with more and more powerfull computers coming each year it won't be much longer until we get a true 'open ended' WWII game. I've been waiting for one set in the Star Trek universe for over ten years now also.

Great Naval Battles had a pacific theater version ... can't for the life of me remember which one it was ... more tatical then UV, with a higher slant towards the naval aspect.

Yep, Burning Steel-Great Naval Battles Part II and III deal with the Pacific. Part II -Guadalcanal 1942-43- was my very first PC game - actually I sold my Amiga and bought me a PC just to play GNBII. It's great. Part III - Fury in the Pacific 1941-1944- is fun, too. Scenarios include battleship brawls a la War Plan Orange and the Turkey Shoot.
GNB is indeed more tactical and predominantly naval - you can asume the roles of theater commander, TF commander, skipper/flight ops/gunnery/torpedo/damage control officer of individual ships and even control individual guns if you want - but you could also leave all that to computer control. Still, you could decide which base to attack/defend and had to deal with the logistical aspects. Land battles were simple, but air strikes allowed for player-controlled targeting of TFs. Those games are now almost 10 years old, but for the time graphics were ok. I still own them, but I haven't tried yet if they will run on my XP system - all my time gets invested in UV...

does anyone know about victory at sea?

I don't. Tell me about it.

Victory at Sea was by Three Sixty Pacific. The pc version was
never completed but the Mac version was. It was so buggy on release that it would hardly run. Three Sixty went out of business before the pc version was completed.

Ric

Three Sixty Pacific? They put out some other games. Didn't they do Harpoon?

They did Harpoon 2 and it suffered from many bugs also. The Admirals edition patch had very poor documentation and you really had to work to get all the things in the patch to work right. In all fairness the system did work reasonably well once the patch was in place.

VIS was designed by James F. Dunnigan, and it was not completed to a proper state. But the notes he collected WERE published in a book of that name, and it is a useful reference. VIS reached the point you could "pre-order it" but it never came, for the PC, and the Mac version was, by all reports, a disaster.

It was unplayable and buggy.

No WONDER I never heard of the game when I read the preface for that book!

Not everything in the book is correct but it's a handy reference source and filled with interesting info.

A game for a Mac only? (shudder)

I really wish PTO4 had been a proper evolution of PTO2. The two big problems I had with PTO2 were the limited size of task forces and the fact that enemy carriers never attacked my task forces. I could attack them but they never attacked me.
Until I read the reviews for PTO4 I was close to going out and buying a PS2 just so I could purchase the game. I'm glad I waited and did some research on that decision.

I too have been circling around the PS2 kiosk wondering whether or not to buy one "just" for PTO IV. For the moment, I guess I just can't pull the trigger for only one game.

Tactical Games:

There is Fighting Steel, which is supported by web page and quite a few pacific scenarios.

Also there is Destroyer Command and Silent Hunter II. They can be combined and played over the internet.

Mithis are working on this title, release date September 2003.

Apparently the same graphics engine that is being used for what was Imperium Galatica 3 and is now Galaxy Andromeda or similar.

Posters on the IG3 forum are talking up the graphics so should at least look very pretty.:rolleyes:

Here's the link:

http://www.pcgameworld.com/story.php/id/538

Originally posted by Heeward
Tactical Games:

There is Fighting Steel, which is supported by web page and quite a few pacific scenarios.

Also there is Destroyer Command and Silent Hunter II. They can be combined and played over the internet.

Hi!

And there is Pacific General which is a part of Panzer general series.

Is Fighting Steel any good? There is a software project in www.navalwarfare.org where they still develop that game.

There are lot of other stuff also. They do addenums Janes Fleet commad game, but the game's main problem is really lousy AI. Even after improvements.

Arto

A long time ago I used to play 1942 the pacific air war. It was a great concept. You control the task forces very similar to UV but if you wanted to, after a carrier strike was launched, you could "jump" into one of the planes as pilot or rear gunner and go along on the bombing/fighter mission. Very cool. You could also jump into say a battleship and control it's guns and such.

Nothing like flying a dauntless and diving down on the Kaga!

There were some glitches in the game which made it very unstable. I actualy still have the game but could never get it to run on newer computer hardware. I can't remember who made the game but I think it was microprose.