Battlestations: Midway is an intriguing and unique blend of strategy and action that challenges gamers with both directing the strategic course of a series of sea-based battles while simultaneously participating in the conflicts.
Battlestations! Battlestations!
Appropriately enough, the game starts off with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The first few missions serve as rudimentary introductions to airplane and boat controls, but the action soon begins to shift from commanding individual vehicles to directing entire naval battle groups. Over the course of the game, players will take direct control of over 60 different vehicles, from fighter jets and dive bombers to aircraft carriers and submarines.
This makes for a fairly entertaining, if chaotic, gameplay experience as you bounce between first-person action-gaming and the broader tactical map. Smart players will spend a lot of time checking the tactical map and issuing orders, and as the battles become increasingly complex, players will need to spend more time here. This tactical battle-planning element is actually much more rewarding and entertaining than the action-oriented gameplay.
You Sunk My Battleship!
Despite the numerous things you must do and keep track of, the game suffers from a lack of intensity. During World War 2, the stakes in the South Pacific were extremely high for both the United States and Japan, and the individual battles -- many of which are recreated here -- were epic, winner-take-all affairs. Battlestations fails to recreate this sense of importance and gravitas.
The tactical map, for example, should be a manic blur of radio chatter and pop-up screens that convey information. Instead, it's a fairly static affair with some icons moving around it.
Muted sound effects are another part of the problem, but perhaps the biggest shortcoming is the sluggish, basic nature of the fast-twitch action. In short, stepping into the cockpit of a dive-bomber or Destroyer-class vessel just isn't that much fun.
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