Product Description

Battlestations: Midway X360 Action on an immense scale - the greatest air, sea, and undersea battles from Pearl Harbor to Midway fought like never before. Launch your fleet and then take direct control of every plane, battleship, and submarine at any time to fly the attack, fire the cannons, and launch the torpedoes. Single and online multiplayer up to 8 players (4v4). Revolutionary gameplay: Experience epic WWII combat from multiple perspectives as you jump between dozens of units, playing as a pilot, a gunner, a submarine captain or even carrier fleet commander.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4287 in Video Games
• Brand: Eidos
• Model: 788687200363
• Released on: 2007-01-30
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75" h x 5.75" w x 7.75" l, .20 pounds

Features

• Videogame Console Software XBox 360 Games

Customer Reviews

More of a multiplayer game, but fun
I'm becoming a little more critical of XBox 360 games lately, since most seem to lean towards multiplayer online platforms and I prefer single player games. Battlestations Midway marks the latest in the trend. That being said, this game is fun, (relatively) easy to get the hang of with excellent tutorials, beautiful graphics, and good replayability. However the single player campaign is relatively short-lived. The variety of controlling different ships, planes, and subs (and jumping back and forth between them) seems more confusing than it is. You can assign orders to a particular unit and the AI does a pretty good job on its own, leaving you free to focus elsewhere and not having to micromanage unless you want to. The interfaces are pretty easy, although I found flying to be more difficult than usual to do efficiently.

Much like Gears of War, Star Trek Legacy, and others, this game really shines in XBox Live online play. As a single player game, it's still fun to play the campaign, and the scenarios are a good time killer, but you may want to just rent it for a week and you can play it out.

First Look
Well, after the long wait, I did something I've never done. Bought a video game on it's first day of release. I've spent about 3 hours with it so far. And the verdict - It's just what was promised. A great looking WW2 Naval Action Shooter with some strategy. The graphics look great, the training mode, or "Naval Academy" is very thorough, and contols are pretty intuitive. You could pop it in and play, but you'd be missing some subtle tips that help the gameplay.
I like the choice of following a campaign or choosing to man a ship, plane, or sub, specifically. Not sure yet how long it will take to get through it, but it looks to be really immersive and will have high replay value for me.
So, if you are deciding to purchase, I say go for it. If you like WW2 games, this one looks to be one of the best of the bunch.

An UPDATE: After several day of play now, I am seeing some weaknesses. Far too few Single Player Missions...Switching your mindset from the individual controls for ships, planes, and subs is a challenge. Plane controls seem especially hard.. and HELP! I've been on the 2nd level of the Single Player Ship Challenge for days and cannot move on. I fail everytime. I've spent hours and tried every conceivable scenario. The enemy ships just keep coming. No game should be this difficult. Do we need to buy a guide to get through this? Still, I'm trying to love this game. I think I loved the concept more than the final design.

Great Concept but Way Too Short
Battlestations Midway lets you relive WWII as both an airplane pilot, submarine commander and naval tactician. There are a variety of ships, planes and vehicles to work with as you fight on the Pacific.

The graphics are quite nice, as you would expect from an XBox 360 generation of game. The water ripples, the clouds float lazily in the sky. The planes' flaps move as you turn, and the smoke and fire pouring from a damaged ship look convincingly real.

There could still have been improvements, though. The radar / compass is stuck at one size, which just doesn't work well for some missions.

The AI is a mixed bag. You can create a multi-stage move order for your allies, so that they take an indirect route to a target. However, they can't attack once they get there. They just sit and get sunk. If you leave a friend alone for .3 seconds, even the largest ship will somehow get destroyed by a tiny PT boat. Your enemies seem to be relatively smart - but your friends are all dunces.

This can become really challenging if you have, for example, 8 different squadrons of planes in the air that you are juggling, and if you take a moment to help one of them out of a jam, the rest all seem to completely lose their brain cells and die sudden, horrible deaths.

I'm not asking for your pals to win the war for you - but they should at least defend themselves semi-ably.

There are hidden objectives, and ribbons you earn - but they never tell you why you got the ribbon. It wouldn't be that hard for them to fill that detail in.

We didn't find the game "complicated" at all. They have an academy, a bit tedious to be sure, to teach you how to play. There's Campaign mode which walks you through a series of missions - it takes maybe 4 hours to play through them all if you're good. There are also challenges focused on ship, plane and submarine tasks, which let you play as both sides.

So the real question is, is 4 hours plus a few challenges going to make you a happy camper? Sure, you can replay those missions over and over again - but in this day and age, having a game with a main line that can be won in a single afternoon seems unreasonable to me.

A great idea - but they should have spent MUCH more time on developing a robust storyline to go with it.