Eidos reassumes Battlestations

Last year, Eidos' Battlestations: Midway let gamers take tactical command of US Pacific forces in a campaign mode that followed World War II from Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 through the June 1942 Battle of Midway. The publisher is clearly ready to take gamers through the rest of the war, because today it announced Battlestations: Pacific for the Xbox 360 and PC.

Picking up where the last game left off, Battlestations: Pacific will again put players in charge of the Pacific theater of operations to take control of conflicts up through the battles for control of Okinawa in the dying days of World War II. However, Eidos is also giving players a chance to see the conflict from another point of view--and change history in the process--with two single-player campaigns, one American and one Japanese.

GameSpot met with Battlestations: Pacific lead designer Botond Szalacsi at the recent Game Developers Conference to find out more about the upcoming game. He said that while the American campaign will accurately portray the period after the crucial Battle of Midway, the Japanese campaign will cover a lengthier period of time and will allow players to rewrite history as if Japan had gained victory in specific engagements throughout the latter half of the war.

In missions, players will be able to use paratroopers and new naval landing craft to capture and hold island territories, and then use their gun emplacements for strategic defense. Pacific's campaign maps are said to be up to twice as big as those found in Midway, and maps in multiplayer will now scale to the number of players in a given match. Five new multiplayer modes will be included, though specifics on those modes were unavailable at press time. Lastly, Salaczy said the team had scouted historical locations and gained access to blueprints for World War II-era vehicles and machinery during its initial design process.

For more on the series, check out GameSpot's review of Battlestations: Midway.