Battlestations: Midway

"A broad scope simulator brought down by arcade style gameplay."

Graphics: Eidos' Battlestations: Midway hit in 2007 with some exceptionally oxymoronic graphics. If you have the computer thats required to run this game on its maximum potential you'll be greeted with some exceptional sea scapes, lighting effects, explosions and those fantastic 2D sprite islands in the distance. Wait, what?

It seems like the core development time went towards the ship and plane models and the water and sky/sun. It is the fruit of all their labor for this length development cycle and flying a squad of 30 mustangs through real time clouds with the sun leaking through is a sometimes untouched sight, even to this day. However some painful slacking was done in terms of ship models, islands and physics. We should expect since the recent IL-2 reboots and the Silent Hunter series that an air or sea modeled simulation game should feature fully destroyable models for all of its combat vehicles. And this game does not. There is absolutely no indication that the ship or plane you are shooting is going to be destroyed besides for the console-esque health bar on your HUD. Strafing a plane will not tear off wings or leave holes. Dropping a 250lb pound on a boat will cause a torrent of water to fly OUT of the metal, and the ship will sink slowly. Torpedos leave no holes in the ship. This brings us to the next biggest problem with the game and thats damage models and realism. If you shoot the flight deck of a carrier with enough bombs that will sink the ship. But the deck will stay intact. You could drop a couple thousand bullets in strafes and eventually sink a light carrier if you wish.

So what I'm saying is there is no damage model to be seen. Its a very arcadey experience that hurts immersion and realism, as killing an enemy destroyer as a cruiser cannot be done tactically or with support. It all boils down to lowering its HP. This falls into the graphics category because physics and hit models are drastically important for a simulator game of this type. Overall though this game has aged well with a lot of filter options, AA and AF support, and resolutions up to 1680*1050 and the only "bad" looking parts of the game might be the islands viewed up close or the cutscenes on the campaign.

Sound: The battles in Midway are quite fierce and sound as such. Diving down on a Japanese Destroyer with 6 dive bombers to hear the absolute screaming of the engines, the flak exploding around your plane and the sound of machine guns and all kinds of mayhem around you happens a lot in this game and you'll be surprised at how well done it is. Even though you do not see damage done by the enemy you will hear every bullet punch through your plane or hear and feel the metal on the ship you are commanding bend and twist at a bomb blast. The most negative thing I can say about the soundscape for such a fast paced and frantic game would be the sound of all deck guns firing and the voice acting. Deck guns for some reason act, sound and look like howitzers. They make the sound of a howitzer tube when you fire and the shots even arc and must be lobbed at enemies. This makes absolutely no sense to me and almost made me quit the game at times.

Voice acting is another painful thing with laughably 50's and 60's accents acompanying the old captains, generals and soldiers you see in the real time cinematics. I hear it only gets worse in the unplayed sequel too.

Story: Its World War 2. At the start of the game the Japanese air force attacked Pearl Harbor led by Mitsuo Fuchida. You are on a u-boat in the harbor and most shoot down enemy airplanes and try to survive. It goes on from there, detailing many defense and attack missions in the Pacific Theater. There is a good amount of fiction and alternate history here, but its roots are in history.

Thats basically it for the story folks.


b>Game Play Battlestations: Midway promised a gigantic scope of vehicle warfare in the air and sea and in this sense it provided. How in depth this actually was would become a good question for critics and gamers and eventually its depth and replayability would be the overalll factor that killed the game's online member base.

The idea is you control the battle in a Meta-Map like some RTS games. Zoomed out air groups or ship fleets are represented by one icon. You can tell, for example, your carrier group to go east by just clicking on the location you want them at. Zooming in adds more icons, detailing individual ships and plane squads. This is a very slick presentation and although the original Key mapping basically sucks you can remap it yourself to suit your tastes.

I found myself enjoying micromanaging all these planes and boats during some small skirmish against 6 japanese light cruisers. I told my mustangs to circle around and protect my carriers, which I thought was a very nice feature. I went to my Carrier in real time and launched 4 dive bombers. The gimmick for this game is you can control any unit individually ala most action simulators. And so I did, I took command of a Dauntless individually. You can further micromanage this by giving commands to your wing men. Telling them to protect you, attack whats in your crosshair or to follow or to retreat.

I ordered them to attack the cruiser in my sights. I climbed up and noticed three things immediately about the game. The first is there is no cockpit view, which hurt my accuracy tremendously to the point of me not landing a single bomb for the first week of playing. The second is you have infinite machine gun ammo, and the third is the HP system. More on that later. I got to a sufficient high and dived almost straight down on my target and dropped the bomb. It flew at an insane speed into the water feet away from the ships deck, enough to still damage it. But it had no damage. When I got back into position I watched my AI squad mates dive on this cruiser as it launched thick flak and machine gun fire at them. Their bombs all hit, and water sprung out of the ship itself and it took damage on its HP bar. Bombs that hit the accurate engine, fuel tank and ammo cache respectively only damaged its HP.

Indeed this game features no damage model but an arcade or FPS style damage system. Shoot enough bullets into an enemy plane and they'll crash, drop enough bombs anywhere on a ship and they will explode. While the game features a mock repair system of assigning 3 groups of people to do various tasks (Pressing R as a ship brings up the screen. If you've taken fire damage, you can assign 1 or all 3 of them to repair it.) there is still no damage model. The fire damage does not cause an actual fire. As the battle rages around the crew they'll still idley wander around and check masts and use perriscopes. The biggest let down of all was the guns on all ships. They fire mortar rounds, lobbed at an arc over long distances with the impact roughly of inbetween a mortar shell and a flash grenade. Deck guns do not shoot straight at devastating speeds or shocking volume. They just "plop" shells into the air at an arc of your designation, dropping shells ON TOP of enemy targets.

Game Summary: So what you get is a game thats tactically sufficient with enough micro management and commands to satisfy the usual armchair general. However simulator fans and fans of realistic combat in the pacific will not be sorely disappointed, they will be furious. A hitpoint system runs the game's damage models and deck guns and rockets fire like mortar rounds.

Naval Summary: This makes most naval battles very anti climactic and just plain old strange. Circling an enemy ship and lobbing shots at them 90 degrees into the air to drop down on them was just... wrong. While there are a good amount of ships to choose from almost all of them are reskins designated to three categories. Light Cruiser, Cruiser and Destroyers. ALL three of them fire mortar rounds and for some reason have huge arsenals of torpedos.

Aircraft Summary: You'll be happy to know that the plane vs plane combat is satisfyingly frantic with enough planes and explosions on screen to really make you happy. I've had gigantic air battles over ships with mustangs covering the dauntless dive bombers, flying in and out of clouds and thick flack smoke trying to survive against the numerous japanese. The air to air is the best part of this game, despite being more aracade-like than even the Ace Combat series.

Replay: The game's online functions are all but dead, it only received a few maps as free downloadable content and no expansion or DLC was ever released. The game features no skirmish mode and only one campaign for the American side thats way too short.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/09, Updated 11/17/09

Game Release: Battlestations: Midway (US, 01/30/07)