Have you ever wanted to see giant robots fighting monsters? Sure you have! Well, if you haven’t, well you’ve came to the wrong party. Because Pacific Rim is here to make all of your giant robot/giant monster fantasies come true, well maybe not all of them, but it’ll make a dent.
Pacific Rim is an interesting fighting game that has potential to be really just as good as the movie, but due to some repeated mistakes and poor choices in controls the game falls a bit short and ends up being lost in the shuffle of this new strategy on releasing movie games into a digital distribution. Anyone remember Real Steel? I do and unfortunately this game makes all the same mistakes and more.
Starting with the controls, the game fell slow and clunky and you find yourself just button mashing trying to stay alive because the response from the Jagers are so slow and irritating you just try to make it to the end of the fight. Now I understand that they are giant robots and they may not respond as quickly as other games, but I found it to be one of the most irritating problems with the game. You find that you are standing still blocking for more time that you are anything else. With each of the Jagers having unique abilities none of them really pay off. Between worrying about shields, health and staying in the drift there does not seem to be much time to do anything else. In case you’re wondering what drift is, the game never explains it. You would only know if you seen the movie. Drift is when both operators of the Jager are “in sync” with each other. This is an important part of the game even though if yo missed the movie you never really know why.
Did I mention that there are create options for the game as well? There is a create option that allows you to take an of the Jagers or monsters from the story and customize them as your own. Sounds like a blast right? Wrong! You can level your character with XP you gain from doing story fights, but that’s all you will be able to do because if you plan on adding cool parts or color schemes you may as well get ready to drop some cash. After you buy the game if you want o customize a character you have to buy DLC just to add a color or a cool part you have unlocked.
One of the only wins for me with this title was the way it looked. It’s polished and all the environments and characters look great and have authentic sounds from the movie, but when you move past the presentation of Pacific Rim there is not much left to want. Between bad controls, forced DLC and no story build up, you may want to pass on Pacific Rim and catch it as a deal of the week or maybe not at all.
