Game review: Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WW2

There’s a new flight sim in town and its redefining the word tedium.

DAMAGE INC.PACIFIC SQUADRON WW2 is the latest attempt by hardware producer MADCATZ to branch out into the games market. It promises much but delivers next to nothing.

The game itself can be bought with its own flightstick (unfortunately I didn`t receive one with the promo disc) which would have been helpful as my CYBORG F.L.Y flightstick (which is actually made by MADCATZ) wouldn`t work with this game.

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You play as Bobby, a lone pilot who bravely takes on the whole Japanese fleet in a series of missions.

The first (of many) annoying element of this game is the voiceover actors. They sound like they just couldn`t be bothered, giving it a wooden and uninspiring feel.

Gameplay isn`t too inspiring either, with drops in frame rate, bad game mechanics and poor low resolution environments similar to a 10 year old game.

All the aircraft are poorly rendered and although MADCATZ proudly boast incredible realism, none of this is evident, the only exception being the actual aircraft noises which do sound real.

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If you are using a controller, like I had to, then the nightmare continues. With a click of the right button or the left analogue stick, time slows to a blurry mess where you can get your enemy in your sights and shoot him down.

The problem is that because the left stick also controls the plane itself, I kept switching to slow motion inadvertently, which quickly became frustrating.

Head to head and co-op modes add to the variety with up to eight players with Dogfight, team dogfight, survivor, team survivor and scratch one flattop an all-out onslaught on each other’s aircraft carriers.

I would like to have experienced that to its fullest, unfortunately every time I went online no one was around to play against.

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The missions are very repetitive, basically go to point A, bomb this then go to point B and defend that. The 12 hour campaign felt like 12 weeks, at the end I felt relief not for just completing the game, but knowing I won`t have to go through the nightmare again.

DAMAGE INC offers much but delivers little. Maybe if you use the included joystick (at an extra cost) it might improve the game experience, but don`t think you can use your own joystick like I did.

I have not played a flight sim as bad as this since JANES ADVANCED STRIKE AIRCRAFT and would you believe it that was also developed by TRICKSTAR GAMES.

DAMAGE INC has potential but ends up just like all the other mediocre flight simulation games around; the ideas are there just not implemented imaginatively enough. This looks like a bargain bin game from about 10 years ago.

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Hats off to MADCATZ for trying something new, selling a joystick with a game is a good idea. There are much better and cheaper flight simulation games out there at the moment though and they work with any joystick.

Summary

DAMAGE INC. PACIFIC SQUADRON WW2 is certainly not the worst flight simulation game around but it is far from the best. Low resolution graphics, glitch game play and bad voice overs bring this game crashing to earth in a ball of flame, something I had the misfortune to do regularly due to dodgy game mechanics.

The ideas are there in this game; just everything else around it lets them down. Gameplay is OK with a controller; if you want to pay extra then there is the option of buying the game with a joystick. Whether this improves the experience I cannot say, unfortunately one was not available for this review.

Damage Inc: Pacific Squadron WW2

Developer: Trickstar Games

Publisher: Madcatz

Xbox 360®

PC

Playstation 3®

Genre: Flight Simulation

Release Date: 28th August 2012

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