Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking: I have been Call Of Dutied and Medal of Honored to death, the last thing I need to play is another World War II game. However the folks at Eidos beg to differ and have released Battlestations: Midway for your gaming enjoyment. The good news is that the game does not take place in Germany or France, and instead focuses on the Pacific campaign; starting at Pearl Harbor. The bad news is that the single player is short and we sure hope you like to fight in the water.

Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking: I have been Call Of Dutied and Medal of Honored to death, the last thing I need to play is another World War II game. However the folks at Eidos beg to differ and have released Battlestations: Midway for your gaming enjoyment. The good news is that the game does not take place in Germany or France, and instead focuses on the Pacific campaign; starting at Pearl Harbor. The bad news is that the single player is short and we sure hope you like to fight in the water.

First off, you need to start at the Naval Academy, which is a euphemism for “longest tutorial ever.” Quite often I rail against a game for using too much text and too little voiceover. This game is quite the opposite – your trainer should really shut up. The tutorial goes on and on and on and on, and of course you should finish it because it’s an easy way to get Gamerscore points, but still, the designers really made it tedious. They could have made it a lot more compelling in a shorter period of time.

Anyway, once that’s out of the way you get right into missions, starting around the attack at Pearl Harbor. The missions are compelling and make sense and are a pretty good challenge at the regular level. Of course, as the one calling all the shots you can also start shooting at the enemy yourself; and nothing is quite as fulfilling as seeing your torpedoes take out a Japanese ship.

Of course, you’re only one man and you have to make sure everything runs without a hitch. You can order your men to auto attack or even auto-navigate. In later missions when your ship is under attack and takes damage you can assign men to different areas of the ship to repair damage – so maybe your ship is taking water and the navigation system is out – you need to prioritize where to start repairs (hint: stop the flooding first).

The strategy part of the game isn’t difficult, but it isn’t easy either. Unfortunately on this massive ship you only have three guys working for you to fix all these issues. The work wicked fast however, so you’ll be more concerned about your actual damage meter than you will be about taking on water (when that meter empties, you’re dead).

The action part of the game is a lot of fun, especially if you can remain focused. It can be hard maneuvering and trying to attack a ship with torpedoes at the same time – usually you’re using binoculars to find the ship to attack. And the torpedoes – let’s just say they don’t hit with the same sort of speed as gunfire does. You’ll be singing “Anticipation” as the torpedoes finally hit their destination. But when it does, the explosion is well worth watching!