Customer Reviews

Battlestations Midway

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

i love naval simulation games, and ive been waiting for another good one since the original battle stations for PS1. i was counting down the days for this one.
first, ive heard some complaints about the complexity of it and the learning curve. i dont know why. the naval academy feature is a little tedious, but it takes an hour tops and teaches you all you need to know. its not that complicated-actually its a near perfect balance of simple controls with an in-depth experience.
the one problem with the game is there's only a campaign thats like 10 scenarios then 10 more challenge scenarios. once you beat it all thats it. there is no melee/arena type option like the original PS1 game. all you can do is just replay old missions. this gets pretty old pretty quick.
id buy it-graphics are great, gameplay is great. i just wish they had a more open, repeatable portion to the game

This is an innovative game in many ways, and most missions are a lot of fun. Especially cool is the ability to go from armchair admiral to the thick of the fighting with the press of a button, and back again.

However this game has a serious flaw. There are NO save points or check points. You die and you start the entire mission over from the very beginning, and some of the missions and ship/submarine challenge missions are very LONG and very hard.

Therefore the game can get frustrating especially on the hardest "veteran" level. After your ship/sub/plane goes down a few seconds before victory, you end up asking yourself "do I really want to spend another 20 minutes setting up my approach? or go to a GAME THAT HAS SAVE POINTS."

Don't confuse these critiques with criticisms. This is one of the best games I have played in years. While the graphics are not on par with some of the better FPS games this is still a solid game. The story line is a little lame but the game play is great once you master the tactics. I love the ship and fleet actions. You can play the same mission 100 times and you are never guaranteed the same outcome. Your actions and tactics are never the same therefore the outcome of the mission is never the same. The golden BB to your engine at the wrong time will make you crazy. The airplane and sub missions can be difficult as the same control often is used for more than one action. This is especially true during combat when you are trying to fire the guns and steer. The sub missions are made overly hard by the difficult to read dive plane indicator. Defending against air attack is a realistic nightmare. WOW! It's like watching old WWII footage. Wave after wave of enemy aircraft stacked up for attack on your ships. Your ship AAA and AA are surprisingly realistic. Trying to hit a small fast moving object at long range with a 2 inch bullet or explosive shell is not easy. Overall the graphics are really good. The explosions and crisp images are a pleasure. The sound is clear and life like. The action is fun and intense.
Just try to engage enemy capital ships while fending off those pesky fast tin cans and their swarms of torpedoes. You MUST manage the Damage Control Parties (DCP) or you will not last long. (Fire aboard a ship which carries high explosives is not a good thing...) Swapping broadsides with enemy Battleships is literally a blast. Holy Molly! Watch what happens to a Destroyer when you have it bracketed with 12 (16 inch) guns. You will feel sorry for the enemy when it happens and desperate to get the hell away when you are on the receiving end. The sight of an enemy ship slipping under the water after an engagement is also realistic. Thank goodness the designers decided not to have sailors abandoning ship and adrift at the mercy of the ocean.
I've gone on enough. Buy this game and you won't be sorry. Suitable for all ages.

While other reviews constantly bring up the complexity, I have to disagree. First, most people who would buy this game are used to handling and switching between different troops. Second, they bring you along slowly, so you have time to get acclimated to the commands. Finally, the most important thing is: you don't HAVE to switch between every unit in action in every battle. The computer will do a decent job. However, your level of fun (and success) will increase the more you are involved in your units' actions.

The fact the game does not pause when you are accessing repair, launch, and command options only adds to how cool this game really is. The battles get to become very large, the graphics are beautiful, and even the AI character banter doesn't make you cringe. Overall, this is a fantastic game, and one to make 360 owners proud they have one. My only complaint is that it seems fairly short. However, there is an awful lot in this game, so it is to be expected. Highly recommended.

I bought this game for cheap on eBay...and wasn't expecting much. It looked like a 90's computer game, but I decided to give it a chance since was for the XBOX 360. I got so much more than I bargained for! This game is extremely realistic - all the way down to controlling how the crew attends to damage control. I'm very impressed with the realism and how fun it is to control the navy ships.

I had a very hard time getting into this game. It sounds cool, got good reviews, but just didnt work for me. I think they tried to do too much with this and it ends up being a mosh of controls and a strange mix between tactical execution and strategic planning.

I'm into turn-based strategy games like Civilization, Axis & Allies, and Chess. Real time strategy games like Warcraft tend to overwhelm me with micromanagement. Battlestations Midway is real time strategy, but most of the game involves the management of fairly slow naval units, so I thought I could handle it.

Everything was going fine for the first few hours. Compelling story, nice graphics, I felt like I was learning quite a bit about the Japanese and US Pacific Fleets in 1942, until I hit a mission in which I took control of the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier. Turns out that if you give multiple aircraft squadrons orders to land at the same time, none of them land, they just circle the carrier. By the time I figured out how to remedy the situation, the Lexington was on her way to the murky depths. Not fun.