Battlestations Midway – Xbox360 – Eidos
The Game:
Set in the Pacific during World War II, the single player campaign follows the career of Henry Walker who is a US Navy officer. Starting with the initial Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor with the aforementioned Mr Walker as a mere low level officer, through various promotions where he is made Captain of the USS Yorktown. Although the game only really uses the career of Henry very loosely as a vessel to take us through 11 progressively harder missions in order to break up what would otherwise be mission after mission. I do hope that the fictional Henry Walker has more luck than the original Yorktown Captain at the real Battle of Midway as that Carrier was actually sunk during the battle.
Although the initial few battles are quite limiting in terms of what you do they do introduce you to the varying controls and the tactical map so that you can find your way around, which will hold you in good stead for the later levels. After each level you get a breakdown of what you have achieved and then a cut scene that progresses the overall story forward.
The missions themselves are fairly straightforward affairs, you will need to destroy all merchant ships, or sink a battleship for example and you will get varying units with which to achieve that task, it is here that I found the game interesting. You could, by pressing the back key on the controller open up the tactical map and direct your unit/s from there, giving them either waypoints to follow or enemy units to attack but the real beauty is that you can then jump into separate units and take them over, and additionally with those separate units you can control various weapons, torpedoes, main and anti aircraft guns on a destroyer for example.
As you go through the levels and you have more and more units under your control you will find that you spend more and more time using the tactical screen. It takes a little time to get used to this screen, but the AI is of pretty good so you don’t have to worry about every little nuance the game throws at you, and it is easy to flick between tactical and taking control of the unit yourself. After each mission it tells you the difficulty you used, mission time, score and best score, including a list of objectives and hidden objectives that you completed or failed. It also tells you of any losses suffered on both sides, and some other mission specific statistics.
During the course of these ship battles you will take damage. You can then assign “men” to repair the damage and make the ship seaworthy again, if you fail to repair the ship the damage becomes more severe, the repairs themselves do not take too long and are not handled in a massively realistic way, but then this game is not a simulation so that can be forgiven.
There is an online version of the game which I have not played although I have read up on. There are nine maps which are taken from the single player game and you can play up to 7 other people, each player controls one unit and you need to work as a team to win. If you’re set up with people that want to go it alone then your enjoyment will suffer.
Review:
I managed to get into the game quite quickly. I really enjoyed the cut scenes telling the story of Henry and the detail used was quite impressive I did feel though that these scenes were mainly put in to break up the various missions which could, on their own have become fairly mundane.
I felt that the longevity of the game was increased as you could jump in at any point into almost any allied weapon platform on the screen. I do think that the game would have become pretty boring very quickly had the game consisted just of the tactical sides, and likewise there is only so much firing og the main guns into enemy ships that will hold a great amount of interest, it’s a little of the different ship, similar battle syndrome, so the mixture of the two breaks up the game in a nice way, leaving you to direct and take part in a battle and jump in and take over when you want to.
One other aspect of the game I did enjoy was the aircraft. Particularly the dive and torpedo bombers, coming in to drop a torpedo on a Japanese battleship gave oodles of satisfaction although I rarely seem to be able to get into a position to see it explode which was disappointing. I never could quite get used to the fighters where the dogfights always resulted me in getting shot to pieces whilst turning in an endless circle without actually seeing who was shooting me, but blowing aircraft out of the sky from the AA guns on a boat was enormously satisfying.
Graphics:
I have seen better on the 360 and I would say that the graphics do not push the 360 to its limits, however the weapon platform are still nicely detailed, a nice touch with the aircraft for example is that the flaps move when you use the directional joystick. The cut scenes as well are particularly well done.
Sound:
The score is a typical WWII rousing piece that compliments the game well, explosions and gun fire are meaty as are when the shells find their target, the torpedoes hits are a bit disappointing though.
Overall:
I couldn’t say that this is the best game that I have played on the 360 but it is fun to play and a superior game within its genre, I think that because you can jump into various units it has increased the lifetime of the game and the multiplayer for those with the live connection will prolong it even further. As I write this the price for the Xbox 360 version is £39.95 which I think maybe a little steep as you can pick up the PC version for £17.99. For the PC price it is a bargain, I’m not so sure, however about the 360 pricing structure.
Battlestations Midway - Xbox 360
Battlestations Midway - PC
Battlestations Midway - Strategy Guide
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