E3 06: Battlestations: Midway Preshow Impressions

Battlestations: Midway has been on our radar (if you'll pardon the pun) since the game was announced by its original publisher, European house SCi, at E3 two years ago. The game has since come under the auspices of Eidos in the States, after the two companies struck close business ties, and now Eidos and developer Mithis have done us one better, moving Midway from its last-generation roots into the now with a new Xbox 360 version, which we recently got to take a good look at. If you've had enough with the glut of World War II games in past years, we can say with some confidence that this one ought to offer a new perspective on the most massive of history's conflicts.

You could describe Battlestations: Midway as "Battlefield 1942 in the Navy" (or at least, that's how Eidos reps described it to us), and that's a pretty accurate description. Well, but for one important difference: There's no on-foot gameplay in Midway whatsoever. This is an entirely vehicle-based game, and while you'll spend plenty of time at the controls of your many instruments of war, you'll spend just as much time strategizing over things like how many units to produce and where to deploy them. And then, once you're in the full swing of battle, you'll be able to grab the controls of literally any of the units you've got deployed at a given time. This mixture of action and strategy looks like it should provide for some intense, prolonged battles.

As we've reported previously, you'll have a number of facilities at your disposal from which you can produce and deploy a variety of airborne and naval units (purportedly more than 60 in all). These range from fighter planes to all manner of ships and even submersibles (like submarines, natch). Once you're out and doing battle, you'll still have some control over the operation of your craft beyond the core shooting mechanics. For instance, if one of your larger ships takes damage, you can switch to a resource-allotment screen and transfer a number of crewmen to repair duty in order to fix some of the damage and stay afloat. You'll also be able to switch to a quick map screen that shows the real-time position of all friendly and enemy forces, and you can issue commands from this perspective for easy strategizing.

We only got a chance to try out one action sequence from the initial Japanese air invasion of Pearl Harbor, but even this brief sequence gave us a pretty good feel for the way the action component will play. We were in both the driver's and gunner's seats of a small, PT-style boat as waves of Japanese Zero fighter planes came roaring in, and we had to navigate around the tumult of the attack while shooting down as many planes as we could. Later in the mission, a submarine came in, and we had to deftly maneuver over it and drop a depth charge to neutralize it before it could do any serious damage. Later in the game, once you take control of some of the bigger battleships, you will be given some combat assistance. For instance, your crosshair will feature a display that shows how many of your deck guns can actually fire within range of the particular target you've got lined up in your sights.

So what's the Xbox 360 bringing to the table? As you could probably guess, the graphics are a whole lot nicer on the new platform, with more-detailed vehicles and terrain than in the old versions of the game. Midway also features one of the nicer water effects we've seen, which is fortunate since you'll be seeing so much of it as you wage war across the Pacific. The game is also being retooled to take full advantage of the Xbox 360 version of Xbox Live, with four-versus-four multiplayer support and a full implementation of messaging and friends-list features. In addition to the game's 11 single-player missions and 12 side missions, 10 competitive maps will be included to keep armchair admirals battling it out for some time.

We're glad to see Battlestations: Midway getting with the times on the latest generation of game hardware, and it has become a real treat to look at. Luckily, it looks like there's a lot going on under the hood, too, with a mix of gameplay styles that will hopefully satisfy a wide range of players. We'll find out more when the game ships this this Fall, so be sure to stay tuned.