Attack on Pearl Harbor is a simple action game, a thinly disguised shooter set in the skies of the Pacific Theatre of World War II; with a shooter's mentality of blowing stuff up without getting shot to ribbons. If you're looking for a realistic combat sim, where just getting your plane off the ground can involve memorizing half the keyboard, and taking down enemy aircraft involves careful, cat-and-mouse maneuvering, keep on looking. But if you're in the mood for a game where the takeoff procedure is handled simply by hitting the spacebar and where you bounce off other aircraft if you hit them, then have a seat. This is your game.
Your plane is easily controlled with a mouse and keyboard (or a game pad). The game is devoid of any hardcore sim elements, and soaring through the not-so-friendly skies while you pump enemy aircraft full of lead or obliterate ground targets and ships with bombs and torpedoes is an endeavor that's far more twitch-based than mentally taxing. Tactics generally aren't any more complicated than shooting at something when it's in front of you, and trying to avoid the hail of bullets that are frequently heading your way.
Combat almost always starts moments after take-off. Battles are generally fast and furious, with numerous squad mates and enemy aircraft streaking through the sky all around you, blowing each other to smithereens, while naval vessels attempt to knock you out of the sky with flak, at least until a few well placed torpedoes or bombs send them below the waves. With all this carnage to witness, it's thankfully a pretty game. Terrain is a bit unremarkable, but the planes and ships look good, the water and its associated effects look great, and everything blows up quite nicely.
Action junkies may initially find Attack on Pearl Harbor to be a blast. But its attempts to be accessible and easy to play go too far; it's too simple, too limited, and unless you really dig its core gameplay, it quickly becomes monotonous and likely won't hold your interest beyond a few sessions. There's little variety amongst the missions, and once you've played four or five of them, there's really nothing new to see the rest of the way.
Counting both the American and Japanese models, there are only about nine different types of planes included in the game, and while there are three different categories of aircraft (fighter, dive bomber, and torpedo bomber), they differ only in their secondary weaponry. While to some extent the three types of aircraft do serve different purposes, they're similar enough in performance and appearance that you may feel like you're flying the same plane throughout the entire game.
The game is very short as well, with missions lasting only five to ten minutes each (and often ending rather abruptly), and an entire campaign clocking in at less than five hours. The game includes customizable instant-action dog fighting against AI opponents, but it's just more of the same. And there's a multiplayer component, which could potentially extend your playtime, but the servers are pretty barren.
The game advertises two American and two Japanese campaigns, although that's stretching it a bit, as the second campaign on each side is just a continuation of the first, and is not noticeably different in any way. Each campaign opens and closes with a brief, colorful comic book "cinematic” that features over-the-top but competent voice acting, and provides the barest thread of a background story. Campaigns consist of a series of loosely connected missions that don't provide much sense of progress, accomplishment, or continuity.
The campaign design has its ups and downs. You can skip any mission you want with no ill effect other than lowering your score at the end of the campaign. You can also repeatedly retry failed missions, but you can't change your plane for subsequent attempts, so if you made an error in judgment and chose the fighter when you would have been better off with the dive bomber, there's nothing you can do about it. You also can't save from the failed mission screen, so if you're frustrated with a particular mission and want to give the game a rest for a while and try again later, you're out of luck - in order to save and exit, you'll either need to pass the mission, or skip it entirely.
