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PreviousBattlestations Midway Review
Xbox 360 Review by Kristan Reed
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Just when it looked like World War II games had been done to death, Eidos goes and releases one of the most ambitious and accessible ever made and scores a chart-topping hit in the process. Whodathunkit?
Developed at Eidos' new in-house studio in Hungary (of all places) over, ooh, many years, it's the latest in a looong line of videogames to tackle the infamous Pacific Theatre portion of the second world war. Kicking off at the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, you follow the events of naval recruit Henry Walker on his rise through the ranks, culminating with the epic battle for Midway. Via planes, boats and even submarines, it's a game very keen to try a different approach - and very nearly pulls it off.
Cross pollinating the chin-stroking world of strategy gaming with white knuckle action always sounded like the improbable dream of an overexcited marketing team. "You can play it like an action game, or direct the battle like an RTS," they'd tell us. We'd nod politely at the bold claims and enthusiastic demonstrations, but could never see how it could work properly without seriously alienating both audiences at the same time.
False start
War porn: attention to detail is not lacking.
And those feelings don't go away when you first get your hands on it. For a start, the game lacks a real hook for the first few missions of the main campaign mode, making them feel bland and depressingly easy to complete. Guide this boat to that way point, point your reticule over there, shoot those targets, full steam ahead, make your escape, yawn loudly and hope that this isn't all there is to it. Not a good start.
The early flight missions are just as mundane, too, with floppy handling that made us wish that Totally Games would hurry up and make another flight combat game and show everyone how it's done (again). On the plus side, the extra development time afforded to Eidos Hungary has allowed it to produce a game that's undeniably polished and extremely impressive to look at, but the first hour or two with the game does very little to suggest that its chart topping performance was deserved.
But then the game starts handing your arse back to on a plate, almost sensing your indifference and daring to prove you wrong. Hitting this unexpected and inexplicable brick wall on the fifth mission (Raid on Balikpapan) made us realise that playing the tutorial might be a good idea after all - only to rub salt in the wounds by providing us with officially the world's longest gaming tutorial in history.
Too much information
Crispy.
Fully an hour later, the 11-part tutorial was over - at which stage you're either the most qualified battle tactician or just horribly bored and confused. Fortunately, some of it is well worth paying attention to, and actually makes the difference between being able to enjoy the game or not. Sure, being shown how to pilot aircraft, boats or submarines feels beyond pointless, but majority of the tutorial offers much-needed encouragement with the tactical side of the game.
Just as tempting as skipping the lengthy tutorial is to try and play Battlestations Midway like a standard 3D action game, mainly because a) being in direct control of ships or planes seems the more exciting thing to do. B) the dual stick movement/camera control system feels intuitive enough to fool you into thinking you can take on the Japs by yourself. C) It's a fine looking game. You didn't buy that giant flatscreen high def TV to look at a bland map screen, did you? But unless repeat failure is your idea of fun, it's not a game that allows you to be gung-ho.
So, with thoughts of the tutorial still firmly in mind, it seemed like a sensible idea to bite the bullet and attempt a more strategic approach. So with a weary heart we started switching to the boring but effective map screen more often and began experimenting with giving the AI more responsibility in battle. This more hands-off approach to the task at hand turned out to be a smart move.
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Battlestations: Midway - Cinematic trailer [0] 26 January, 2007
Battlestations: Midway - 'Who are you?' trailer [3] 17 January, 2007
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Battlestations: Midway demo [19]
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16 January, 2007 [12]
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Comments: 1-35 of 35
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BartonFink
02/03/07 @ 11:44
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Great to see the muppets rating this already with a 1.
Anyhew back to the review |
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So where batallion wars takes individual unit controls and scales up, battlestations midway takes the strategic map and scales down to individual unit controls.
And somwhere in there fits Pikmin as well. Console rts games, and by that I mean rts games designed for the console not ported to the console, are a much more interesting beast then pc rts games. Though I think they are so very, very diffirent that it's hard to compare them. Still neat to not once see the rts acronym used in the review. Probably because the genre isn't an cliché as it is on the pc. |
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@Cthulie
That there are admittedly lots of cookie cutter RTS games on the PC doesn't change the fact that there is a broad selection of entirely different games in that genre. Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, Europa Universalis and the Total War games could hardly be more different, to name a few recent examples. To say that console RTS games (all 3 of them) are a lot more interesting strikes me as a little peculiar, espcially as they're a bit light on the actual "strategy" part. I guess it depends on what you want from a strategy game. |
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groovychainsaw
02/03/07 @ 13:21
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I played the multiplayer demo and though the engine was awful, with planes lagging throughout the sky, flying underwater?!! And none of my shots seemed to connect with anything. I was distinctly unimpressed. Maybe I'll take a look when i can pick it up for £10...
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I have mixed feelings on this game. I did enjoy it but found myself spending most of my time in the 2d map and barely getting to control individual units. This just became more and more the case as I played through the campaign.
The challenge missions do allow you to get more hands on but the difficulty level on these is a little extreme. Overall I think I give it a 6/10. I am glad it seems to have been commercially successful though as hopefully it will encourage development of more diverse titles for consoles. |
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silver jon
02/03/07 @ 13:39
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"being left with no choice but to start over is hellishly annoying - especially when similar games of this ilk have long since implemented such frustration-reducing mechanics. Poor show, Eidos."
+1 to that. Somewhere someone made the decision. Fool. |
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IIt is because RTS games are one of the three viable genres on the pc that I meant that it was a cliche to make an rts for a pc.
And because there's about only a few rts games made for the console in the entire history of the platform, it makes it less of a cliche to do make an actual console rts. It's a genre thing, not down to the specific games. Making a console rts broadens the genre types on the console, but making a pc rts won't broaden the genre types on the pc. Also, console rts games definatly have a long way to go to match the grandness of the pc counterparts and EA's attempts to figure out a formula to be able to port pc rts games to the console isn't helping. Don't compare them directly when it comes to standards of mechanics though. They seem to be very diffirent beasts when done right. It'd be like comparing apples and oranges. Both of them are fruit, and round, but that's it. |
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The lack of single player length for people who don't play online stops this being a purchase, despite the interesting splice of 2 genres. Sounds like the single player is basically a training scenario to prepare you for the multiplayer game.
Games need to get this balance right or not bother trying to release a game that is aimed at both single and multiplayer. |
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repairmanjack
02/03/07 @ 14:07
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Needs a skirmish mode!
Had my first online game last night. It's where the longevity is. With folk on your friends list, of course. More people quit out of this game at the first sign of a loss than anything else on Live. For how long the SP game is, that DLC should be given away for nothing. |
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This is a game you'll either love or hate. Luckily it seems to have turned out that the demographic most prepared to give the game a chance are 18-30 year old European males, which means you don't get so many lippy pre-pubescent Americans online.
For me the game is a 85%-er. I can totally see how others would hate it though. Seven out of ten seems about right given that fact. |
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I've read up on more reviews now and it's not been slated as much as I thought it had - probably reading the poor review in 360 magazine most recently gave me that impression.
I must say, having read half a dozen reviews now, people really do seem to struggle with the action/strategy concept. I know it's likely that anything pitched this way will tend to fall between the two camps but it also strikes me that perhaps the reviewers simply aren't up to the job of appreciating the blend. I got the distinct impression many times that the reviewer was struggling purely because this was something 'new' and had difficulty relating to, particularly, the strategic aspects and I'm sorry but complaints about having to 'endure' a one-hour training session aren't fair for something that offers so much depth-of-gameplay and which clearly requires you to be able to *think* as well as act especially in the later stages. It's lack of perspective like this that kills anything original at birth and it'd be sad to see this game sell poorly given the 'bravery' of the concept and the decent job they seem to have done to push it through. It's particularly unfortunate as its a 360 game, a format that's desperately in need of major portfolio-broadening ... Less than 10 hours of SP gametime though is definitely unacceptable and I suspect the (equally unacceptable) lack of checkpoints was used to try and lengthen this somewhat. MP sounds like an outstanding experience though, with the right person of course. Perhaps they can take on board some of the criticism (tho I suspect some of it is just inherent discomfort with the blend of two gaming styles and can't be 'fixed') and double/triple the SP gametime to knock out a good sequel around Xmas time ... Finally, how does a game that's midway between good and brilliant only get a 7? I'd have stacked the numbers up something like 7-decent, 8-good, 9-great, 10-brilliant which should have it in at a 9 or at least an 8??? Unless 4=good on Eurogamer? :)
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 04/03/07 @ 13:24
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BremXJones
05/03/07 @ 14:16
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Talking as someone who's loved the real classic action strategy games - Hostile Waters, Sacrifice, et al - I'd have given it a 7/10 too. The game's fine. The problem is there's simply not enough of it.
KG |
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floppylobster
06/03/07 @ 13:28
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I love it. But I love this sort of game. I like Action AND I like strategy. It's made for me!
However, they definately could have worked on making the missions consistantly more engaging and interesting. The game does have a brilliant game engine and it looks damn fine. But it looks as though it's been designed with sequels in mind. (Hence the 'Midway' part of the title). I'm really look forward to more. The gameplay, sound design and graphics are all in place. It's all just waiting for some better level design. |
Comments: 1-35 of 35
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