Battlestations: Midway

Each mission is laid out as follows: primary objectives like guarding a key vessel and/or destroying/protecting a land installation; secondary objectives like keeping a certain amount of your own ships alive or sinking more enemy ships than required; and hidden objectives like completing tasks in a certain amount of time. Generally, the primary objectives are laid out chronologically in that you’re given another after completing one, so you aren’t constantly worrying about a time window closing on your next objective. However, there are no checkpoints, auto-saves, or even manual in-game saves. That’s right; you could be playing for as little as twenty minutes or as long as an hour, complete every objective but fail the last, and you’ll restart at the very beginning of the mission, crappy cutscene and all. This is, understandably, infuriating. It’s almost as if Eidos is trying to milk an extra couple of hours out of the short campaign, which can typically be beaten over the course of a weekend, and is overall a bad decision on their part. Nobody wants to fend off the same wave of attackers over and over just so they can get screwed again by allowing too many Japanese landing craft into your base. After one failed mission where you had your aircraft carrier sunk after forty minutes of play, you’ll simply lose the desire to experience the rest that Battlestations has to offer. It would be a shame for those who patiently plodded through the tutorial in addition to the first half of the campaign to miss out on all the other fun things Battlestations has in store.

Luckily for Battlestations: Midway, the short campaign is supplemented by side missions and an engrossing multiplayer mode. Side missions include the Plane Challenge, Ships Challenge, and Submarine Challenge. Here is where you will get a taste of the war from the Japanese’s point of view. There are only a few missions contained within each of these challenges, though, and you’ll soon find yourself moving into the online multiplayer. Multiplayer allows you to play through 9 different battles, including close struggles like the Battle of the Philippines and the Battle of the Coral Sea. You'll have a chance to change history here. While the books tell us that the Japanese technically won these battles, you and others can choose the American side, and if you’re tactical enough, you can overcome other matched players who’ve sided with the Japanese.

Graphics are adequate, although otherwise a footnote about the game. The cutscenes are gorgeous although not reflective of the actual game. The ships are detailed down crewmen walking from room to room, and the unit models change reflect damage dealt to them, but there is some pop up and the 360° camera seems to jump around instead of smoothly rotating. Regardless, you won’t be spending a great deal of time peering at your ships rather than directing squadrons from the map screen.

The musical score of Battlestations is fantastic. You’ll really feel patriotic as you march into war, and the game does a nice job of differentiating music for when you’re playing as the Americans or the Japanese. Sound effects are also spot on; the choking of aircraft engines when starting, the sound of artillery shells missing their target and exploding just under the surface of the water, and the rush of air whipping overhead in the cockpit as you reach the mid-point of a dive bombing run all sound excellent and lend to the realism of battles.

In conclusion, Battlestations: Midway delivers some solid fun… after you’ve played through half of it. It mostly fails to deliver standout action sequences, but fans of the real-time strategy genre should find their place in this game. If you’re patient enough to slog through the beginning, then you’ll definitely enjoy Battlestations. Still, the campaign mode and side missions are still short enough that you can complete them all in one rental period. Only those dedicated gamers who demand to unlock all the achievements or constantly play online should pick up this title.

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