Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault moves the war series from the European battlefield to the Pacific, following a young American soldier from the attack on Pearl Harbor through amphibious landing operations on Pacific islands to hard-fought battles in dense jungles against the Japanese army. Compared to previous entries in the series, the game puts significantly greater emphasis on story and on the relationships between the members of the unit the player accompanies throughout the campaign, making the war feel more personal, more emotional, and less like a sequence of isolated combat missions without context.

In terms of gameplay it's still a linear action shooter, but with several new features, such as simplified squadmate commands, dramatic sequences of defending positions against waves of Japanese soldiers, and an intense atmosphere of fighting in dense vegetation, where the enemy attacks from hiding and is hard to spot, creating tension different from the series' European entries. Technically, the game used an improved version of the engine from earlier entries in the series and offered denser vegetation, more pronounced lighting, and more detailed environments across Pacific islands and ships. The sound design was again one of the game's strong points, with the tense atmosphere of the tropical jungle and dramatic music accompanying key battle scenes, including naval and aerial engagements.

At release the game was seen as a worthy continuation of the series, though it already had to face growing competition from a new genre rival in the form of the Call of Duty series, whose first entry had come out just a year earlier and was quickly winning over both players and reviewers. Pacific Assault is remembered today mainly as one of the last major single-player titles of the classic Medal of Honor series before its later transformation, and for fans of the Pacific front of the Second World War it still offers an engaging, emotionally told, atmosphere-laden story about the horrors of fighting in the jungle.

Why play it: For fans of the Pacific front of the Second World War, who will appreciate the emotionally told, atmosphere-laden story of one of the last major single-player entries in the classic series.