Attack on Pearl Harbor

Rating ESRB: Teen Genre action Publisher CDV Software External Links Official CDV Software Website

Move over flight sims, here comes Attack on Pearl Harbor, a dry bones arcade flight shooter for the PC. As in many arcade style games it’s you versus the world as you play through two differing campaign modes, either as the Japanese or the Americans. The campaigns are set loosely around the military campaigns in the oceans on Hawaii, Australia, and the Asian islands during World War II; however, instead of you leading a air squadron, it’s pretty much up to you and your flying tin can to save the world.

Depending on the missions you are allowed to choose from a fighter plane with the ability to fire rockets, a torpedo bomber, or a dive-bomber. The missions are all fairly short, some taking ten minutes, others taking as little as two depending on how well you can aim. The enemy planes can act very oddly at times, either ignoring you completely as you gun them down, or they may all form a huge swarm at your tail that can fire a hail of hot lead large enough to take you down within mere seconds. Fortunately you cannot take damage from striking other planes so you can usually just cut your throttle and let them awkwardly fly by so you can blast them out of the sky.

The game does pay good attention to detail on the planes and boats that are often your targets. When it comes to other models though, there seems to be a lack of detail. In missions when you are required to destroy ground units, it can become frustrating to distinguish targets from terrain. The sounds are what is to be expected from a flight game. Machine gun fire, bomb whistles, engine noise, and good old fashion explosions are ever present as you blaze through the game. The controls are simplistic and only require a two-button mouse with a mouse wheel to play, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what players are looking for. There is a severe lack of stunts you can pull because of this. No barrel rolls. None.

Besides the campaign modes there are two other modes. A Dog Fight mode, which is, well, a Dog Fight, where you set the amount of kills required to win, the number of opponents, and how tough they are. There is also a multiplayer mode that is fairly fun, but it is incredibly hard to find anyone playing. If you are interested in this more than the campaign, be prepared to wait around in the main menu hitting the refresh button.