Mad Catz fly in Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII
Mad Catz, the company more often associated with bits and pieces that you jam into your computers (no, not bits of sandwich), is turning publisher for Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII. Amazingly, that clumsy title is what they changed the name to (from previous effort War Wings: Hell Catz).
Anyway, name awkwardness aside, Pacific Squadron will be a fighter plane combat title set during WWII (obviously). Starting off at the ever-popular Pearl Harbor, you’ll fly through a 20 mission campaign that can also be attempted in co-op. Multiplayer will be present and correct to, allowing you to blow up your friends mid-flight.
As you might expect from Mad Catz, there’s an accompanying bit of kit that’ll be compatible with the game: the Pacific AV8R FlightStick. If you pick up the Collector’s Edition, you’ll get one of those included.
Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this summer. Trailer and more screenshots follow the end of these words.
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There’s a common thread running through most of these points, perhaps most obvious in the contrast between leveling up vs. collecting gold. Stealing and spending gold is a simple mechanic that directly rewards good play, while most RPG elements are designed to help players progress by giving them an alternative path to improve their character’s abilities.
What’s really lacking in most modern single-player games is the idea of mastery, the notion that games are systems to be learned and mastered, that this process is in itself entertaining. Instead they focus much more heavily on presenting a bunch of “content”.
Which isn’t to say that games should be hard, not at all. Just that to be truly engaging, they need to require a little more thought and exploration than blindly following a quest marker to the next objective.
Yeah a mastery system or feel sounds better.