As I survey the battlefield, my sole destroyer stands afloat amidst the remains of my sunken fleet. The battle has been intense and my final aerial bombing run managed to take out the enemy flagship destroyer. My repair crew are currently putting out fires on deck and the ship is taking on water. Hidden nearby within my proximity lies an enemy submarine, a stealthy harbinger of death. My engines are damaged and I unleash an array of depth charges as I limp slowly to safer waters covering my retreat.

Let's not mince words, Battlestations Midway is an intense game and with a wealth of units ranging from fighter planes, torpedo bombers and aircraft carriers to battleships and cruisers there is a great level of combat diversity at your fingertips. This diversity is the titles greatest strength, with aerial and nautical aspects combining to make a hybrid strategy/action game.

Battlestations Midway presents the Pacific campaign of World War II giving a fresh perspective to this somewhat saturated genre. There are historical events as well as cameo appearances from Roosevelt and Kennedy. The single player portion of the game opens in Pearl Harbour with the story focusing on the career of Henry Walker as he proceeds up the ladder from being a mere gunner on a PT boat to a commander of a carrier group at Midway. Initially his in game standing is reflected by being unable to control more than one unit at a time. This quickly changes and the game becomes a more frantic experience of managing a whole fleet of ships.

The game really only starts to come alive about half way through when you take control of multiple units and prepare your various strategies to defeat the Japanese fleet. However this is unfortunately the killer weakness, the length of the single player portion, comprising a mere 11 stages it is quite possible to complete the game within 6 hours. It seemed I was just starting to really get into the game when it was all but over. There is the inclusion of "bonus" missions which I found less than satisfying, especially after completing the superior single player storyline levels. These 12 ship, sub and plane challenges are difficult and will generally place you in heavily outnumbered situations, they took me a few days to complete.

Strategy certainly commands a large portion of Battlestations Midway and it is, thankfully not one of those appalling titles in which you can group select 15 units and charge headlong into the frey while still coming out on top. There is a huge amount of choice and it takes the patience of a chess player to fully ascertain how to approach a specific battle while ensuring minimal casualties. Each unit has strengths and weaknesses which you will need to fully exploit to achieve that all important victory.

Learning how to actually play the game comes in the shape of an arduous tutorial section which takes the guts of an hour to complete. After completing this, there is still plenty to learn during the game, and you will quickly learn how to send fighter plane escorts when on torpedo and dive bombing runs. Bracketing torpedo fire behind and ahead of enemy ships is another strategy to ensure a good success of causing destruction as they will do all they can to avoid taking damage. As a submarine commander you will soon learn how to dive beneath sonar range while attempting to escape a pounding from a destroyer, meanwhile watching your oxygen tanks and hull pressure.

While this wealth of diversity will sate the majority of strategic gamers there are annoying distractions such as the horrifically rendered cutscenes. These could easily be taken from a B list game circa 2000, the substandard voice acting and forced dialogue becomes a nerve grating experience.

Thankfully the units are well rendered and there are around 60 vehicles, well designed and based on their real life counterparts and as this is the meat and bones of the game, the aforementioned cut scene problems are easily overlooked. All the vehicles behave and control just like you would expect, with massive lumbering carriers seemingly taking forever to perform even a basic turn, while nimble destroyers lend cover support with AA fire and depth charges. There really are so many strategic combat combinations it would be impossible to go over them all in a single game review.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, there are aircraft in this primarily nautical based experience, and their inclusion surprisingly does not feel like an afterthought, in fact I preferred the way they moved and handled to games such as Blazing Angels. That is some feat in itself as Angels is a dedicated aerial combat oriented title.

The strategic map will play a large part especially during the larger more complex battle situations, this is accessed via the "back" button. This allows you to control all your units and organise combined attack runs or defensive maneuvers. Thankfully the in game AI is extremely sophisticated and if you so desire the game can be controlled entirely from this screen. You will never find a unit "stuck" in the water, or randomly performing some bizarre and useless strategic movement. This certainly adds to an already impressive gaming experience.

This leads me nicely into the multi player portion of the game which will pit you in the middle of some epic battles via xbox live. You will experience hundreds of units fighting across massive battlefields all inspired by historical events. There is a great diversity here as well, with certain maps featuring only planes or ships and others containing combinations of carriers, airfields and shipyards. The online configuration tailors for eight players to join a four on four, American V Japanese battles. These can range from 10 minute hit and run affairs to full on multiple hour strategic warfare, I was impressed by the online section of this game. You can also play as a one man team controlling all the units, and for this you will probably find yourself quite often in the MAP screen. I experienced no lag when playing this game online, even with literally hundreds of units on screen. Unfortunately it isn't all positive, as there is no clan support and I feel that four man clans and perhaps even a leaderboard would be a welcome addition. So while online gaming with Battlestations Midway is a highly enjoyable experience there are very few options available in the grand scheme of things.

Graphically Battlestations Midway is reasonably impressive however it is certainly not pushing the Xbox 360 anywhere near its limits, especially after playing my way through Gears Of War and Lost Planet in the last month. That is not to say it is poor, as it has clearly been coded to allow for up to 50+ units on screen with no frame rate slowdown whatsoever, and there has been attention paid to dynamic lighting, clearly seen when the sun hits the ocean and filters through little puffs of cloud and smoke. That said, the landscape and islands are less than impressive with a certain "flatness" clearly visible, even up close. A little more work could have been placed into generating higher quality texture mapping all round. There is also the issue of a lack of AA throughout the game, with the boats having a roughness to their edges, clearly seen when playing on a 52inch LCD at a rescaled 1920x1080 resolution. In conclusion, it is graphically acceptable with a constant high framerate, but those on larger screens will notice rough edges clearly in need of some AA and more work could have gone into creating higher quality textures. As I also mentioned earlier, the cutscene renders struck me as exceptionally shoddy and certainly not anything like we have seen on A list Xbox 360 titles in the last two to three months. It would have been acceptable two or three years ago, but in 2007 we all expect a little more.

Aurally, the title is a mixed bag. The in game sound is excellent with all kinds of gun fire and explosion effects being generated faithfully. The underlying cinematic score is also impressive and adds tension at key moments during heated battles, however negatively it could be said that the musical score and voice acting commentary are repeated too often mission after mission, which will add a certain feeling of irritation to the experience.

Conclusion:
Eidos have created a solid and professionally handled strategic title with Battlestations Midway. The game is both fun and rewarding to play with a steady learning curve as the single player missions develop. Patience with the game is clearly rewarded and initial frustration can quickly turn into great satisfaction when a particular strategic maneuver wins an hour long battle. The graphics can be rather bland and lifeless yet at times can be equally breathtaking when a screen full of units are battling to stay alive. The artificial intelligence is also, rather pleasantly, capable and varied during combat, leaving you in the position of being able to sit back within the strategic map and reap the rewards of your strategic genius, if you so wish. The online multi player part of the game is also extremely enjoyable and will prolong the life of the game if you are lucky enough to be able to connect to Xbox Live.

For all the faults I have mentioned with this title, specifically the rather short single player experience, it has been a game I have returned to this month several times, even after completing in single player mode. I highly recommend it to both action and strategy fans as there is definitely enough diversity to merit long term game play and value for money.