Fanciful flight modeling aside, Trickstar did an admirable job with the individual aircraft renders, and when things blow up, they do so spectacularly. The lengthy and sometimes meandering campaign missions could use a rewrite, but Damage's diverting pyrotechnics and shallow learning curve should earn it solid points with the plug-and-play arcade crowd.
If you're looking for a decent multi-purpose joystick, buying one with this game isn't an entirely bad idea. The game's not as good as, well, any other flight sim on the platform, but it does have its own charm.
Even at its best, when using the AV8R stick, Damage Inc feels clumsy, badly implemented and lacking in imagination. Mad Catz is unlikely to drive sales of its peripherals with a game in which every flight feels like work and every kill is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory in a tedious war.
The massive kill counts and lack of any allied AI once again leaves you as 'the one guy who can defeat an entire nation'. The war was won because of team work, not one single person. I realise that this can never truly be conveyed through a video game, but for that notion to be so crudely thrown to one side is very disappointing. Their lack of understanding extends to their apparent obliviousness to such facts as the US Air Force not even being in existence when you supposedly join up in the story, to the addition of missiles, that were barely on the drawing board by the end of the war. It seems that the developers have taken on a 'that'll do' approach to Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII, well I can tell you now, that simply won't do.
SummaryDamage Inc.: Pacific Squadron WWII is a flight-combat simulation game in which players pilot military aircraft across the Pacific Theater during World War II.