Attack on Pearl Harbour Review (PC)

Fun in a flight sim? Never.

Having previewed this a few months ago, I was really excited to see the final version arrive on my door step!

This is an out and out arcade shooter!

Attack on Pearl Harbour gives you the chance to recreate one of World War IIs most famous air conflicts. You can take the role of an American pilot (?gunner-turned-pilot? Douglas Knox) trying to protect Pearl Harbour from a surprise attack from the Japanese, or play as a Japanese bomber pilot (Zenji Yamada) as you try to destroy Pearl Harbour for the glory of the empire.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. This is not a flight sim. It is a pure out and out arcade shooter!

Legendo have done away with many flight sim basics. Take offs are automatic. There is no need to navigate to conflict, it is always right where you are! There is no cockpit view, this is third person all the way!

Following the story of a single pilot, each mission is preceded by a comic book style story line. This for me was a fantastic way of getting you into the spirit of it all. The story is totally unbiased, which again is a nice change! Watch out for brilliantly over the top voice acting!

At the start you only have the choice of one plane to fly your mission with. This will increase as you complete missions, giving you a range of planes. The use of these will depend on the type of mission, be it air defence to bombing raids. Planes include the P-40 Warhawk, Nakajima J1N1-S Gekko, F4U Corsair, A6M1 Zero and more! You only have a set number of each, so getting killed in a mission is not final, but you need to take care not to use up all your planes!

Controls are a breeze if you are using a joy pad or a flight yoke. It is disappointingly there is no keyboard only method, as keyboard and mouse is really hard to use! As mentioned, there is no flight sim here, just fly and shoot to your hearts content! Air to air combat is forgiving, unlike most WWII flight games, you will find shooting down the enemy pretty easy after a while.

The graphics are bright and detailed, with a nice realistic feel to them. The south Pacific is mapped out for you to fly over, in some beautifully modelled and rendered planes . Explosions are plentiful and generally it all looks good! Strangely the third person view work a treat here. I have to admit at first I wanted to be in the cockpit, but after 15 minutes it all felt so natural, I didn’t think twice about it!