While the gaming world is rich with WWII-based first-person shooters, oddly, there are no flight combat action games. We chose those genre-describing words carefully, as there are many excellent WWII combat flight sims, but the learning curve is often too steep for the gamer that wants to jump in and have an instantly satisfying blast.

Heroes of the Pacific fills that void, very nicely indeed. We have been playtesting the game over the last few days, and we’re happy to report that it is an excellent game, one that’s proudly Australian-made too!

Thankfully there is loads of variety with Heroes. Too often flight sims can be dreary and monotonous. Each mission in Heroes is varied and detailed. It’s not all  dogfighting! For many missions you can even choose which flight you’ll join – whether it’s a fighter wing, dive bombers, torpedo bombers or heavy bombers. The arcade nature of the game means that while each mission is tremendously challenging, automatic savepoints mean you won’t end up stuck in an impossible mission.

Heroes is visually spectacular too, which doesn’t hurt the experience one bit. In some missions – Pearl Harbour is an excellent example, the skies are filled with flak and exploding aircraft, while jeeps scurry about the base and mighty capital ships fire relentlessly at bad guys.

Heroes is available on PC, Xbox and PS2. We played all versions and there’s nothing between them. Hats off to the developers for creating a very polished and immensely enjoyable game, filling a niche that’s been begging for years.

Look for our full review next issue!