Battlestations: Midway is an excitable little fellow - an eager and hyperactive child who spends his days oblivious to the real world, gleefully smashing his toys together while shouting noises like "Peeow, Peeow," as entire fictional armies are set ablaze and blown to smithereens. Pacific Storm: Allies meanwhile is his older, wiser brother, who views his sibling's antics with arms folded and head shaking, with great disdain at how he is distorting the facts, often quick to point out how unrealistic the action taking place is, before reiterating the real difficulties and constraints associated with the kind of war that is transpiring in front of his eyes.

It's not that Pacific Storm: Allies doesn't know how to have fun, but it is a game that takes itself very seriously. Exactly how seriously will becom apparent when you discover the opening tutorials. Usually it's the tutorials that are the first indication as to the difficulty of the rest of the game; if there's just one then chances are good that it's going to be easy enough to follow - it might even be possible to skip the tutorial altogether. Anything more and you can be assured that it's going to be a difficult game whose complexities practically make its tutorials a necessity before you start things proper. Pacific Storm: Allies has six tutorials. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, it also asks that if you still have trouble with the game you should refer to the 200 page plus manual that installs with the game. Great, thanks.

Once the training is over and you've somehow managed to remember everything, you'll likely find yourself thinking the game is a pale imitation of Battlestations: Midway. Both games are set during the Second World War around the battle for the Pacific, both require the successful management and use of large fleets of battleships and aircraft and both combine various types of different game genres into one whole. But comparisons are tentative at best, because while Battlestations opts to appeal to a larger audience with its simplistic arcade nature, Pacific Storm: Allies is a game of strategic complexity that's obviously aimed at the hardcore strategy gamer.

Being a hybrid game, you're really getting three games in one. At Pacific Storm's centre is the campaign mode that borrows, as so many strategy games do these days, the 2D campaign map concept from the Total War series. It's here that you overlook the Pacific Ocean as one of three dominant sea powers - the British, American or Japanese, with the ultimate goal of wrestling control of the region and swinging the course of the war into your favour. As with Total War, things such as diplomacy and the construction of bases, ships and fleets are all handled here, as is the need to venture forth in order to capture the various surrounding islands and coastlines to cement your presence in the region and eventually push the enemy back home. Unlike Total War though, this is a mode that can at times be a little too overly complex.

You see, Pacific Storm is a game full of stats. The interface isn't the cleanest or easiest to navigate, with numerous windows for technology upgrades, fleet building, base construction and so forth that are very fiddly and uninviting. Text tips can help in pointing you in the right direction, but they're so wordy that it can be difficult trying to remember everything, and if you're not careful, it's easy to get stuck before you actually start playing the game. Switching to arcade mode helps a great deal, as it streamlines the micro-management side of things, but even so, this is a game that requires a great deal of perseverance; it isn't something you'll just fall into.

A more welcoming sight is that of the 3D real-time strategy battles that play out once a fleet has engaged an enemy force or coastal base. Although the mildly irritating and unfriendly interface makes an appearance here, it's an easier to understand game mode with some impressively large-scale battles that require the successful use and deployment of numerous ships and aircraft. As with any other strategy game, the correct use of each unit under your command is what'll win you the battle. This is especially significant here, as you only have ships and aircraft to utilise and there's no chance of reinforcements should you lose any mid-battle. The actual battles can be a little overly tiresome though, with ship-to-ship fighting lasting longer than you'd expect and some odd collision detection where some shells fail to register when they are fired that makes it difficult to determine whether or not you've actually hit a target.

The third style of play available to you is that of direct control of some of your units. Although you can only man the gun batteries of a ship for sea based units, most of the aircraft are fully pilotable and with the use of a joystick (it's not necessary but does make flying a whole lot easier) you can shoot down enemy fighters, head in for bombing raids against enemy bases or try and sink enemy ships on torpedo runs. Of all the different game modes, this is the one you'll likely have the most fun with. It strips much of the complexities away and allows you to have a little bit of mindless fun, and the flight model is easy enough for non flight simulator enthusiasts to get to grips with the controls and get into the fighting.

But even this mode isn't entirely without its problems. Again, dubious collision detection can make for some frustrating encounters with the enemy and there was more than one occasion where I had to approach a target several times after my bullets seemed to pass through with no effect whatsoever. Oddly enough, it did manage to register a hit when I ploughed my plane into the enemy to make sure he didn't for some reason or another suddenly turn transparent.

The game lacks polish in certain areas - the graphics aren't outstanding and the music is elevator lift style irritating. Yet despite its problems and steep learning curve, it's a solidly made game whose ambitions are clearly aiming for something loftier than simply riding off of the successes of its younger multi-formatted brother. It's packed with content too, with a huge campaign, historical missions and a built in scenario editor for user-created missions, and there's also the multiplayer, although at the moment it remains depressingly quiet.

It's not a game that'll rise over the better-publicised Battlestations: Midway, but Pacific Storm: Allies is more than just a cheap copy - it's a difficult but satisfyingly fulfilling game that those who persevere may ultimately find more rewarding than the arcade action that Battlestations provides.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).