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Pacific Storm has its advantages as a PC game and I enjoyed playing it, in spite of the bugs.

Enter Battlestations: Midway (BSM). BSM integrates intense 3rd person action with a touch of large-scale naval strategy thrown in. The game takes players through the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor through one of the largest battles of the Pacific war in Midway. You’ll take control of over 60 ships, planes and submarines all in glorious, fully detailed 3D. You control your vehicles most of the time from a 3rd person perspective. In some instances, you’ll control certain elements through a 1st person perspective, such as looking through a bombsite or a periscope to launch torpedoes. You’ll spend a lot of time switching between being a pilot, gunner or ship’s captain. You’ll be in complete control of damage control and other ship’s systems.

Before you do all of this, you’ll have to (well you don’t have to), but you should go through the game’s 11 tutorials. They do a great job of getting you through the basics. Such as map control, formations, dive bombing, underwater operations and so on. Combine this with the excellent manual that comes with the game (truly one of the best I’ve seen for a console game) and you’ll be ready to take on Admiral Yamamoto himself. After the tutorials, you can either try your hand at the included fictional missions, of which there are four of them for each type of platform, i.e. underwater, sea surface and air. Those players used to the “wave” system of playing, i.e. enemies coming in waves against you, will be familiar with this type of gameplay.



Once you’re done with that, you can play the single-player campaign as Ensign Henry Walker (not related to anyone involved in the Walker naval spy ring), in the game’s 11 campaign missions. The missions will vary. You’ll start small and work your way up to commanding large task forces. It’s obvious that the campaign is designed to wean your way up the command chain. It definitely makes sense, because once the guns start firing, things can get hectic. Fortunately, the game’s AI is excellent.



You don’t have to micromanage every single detail. Unattended ships can pretty much take care of themselves, though you might want to jump in to fine tune the battle. You won’t be fighting a war of attrition. The battles usually have you protecting some type of asset, be it a ship, airfield, bomber, etc. So you can’t just go charging in, hoping to “get them before they get you”. As in almost all console games, you’ll also have to contend with secondary and secret objectives during the missions. As it stands, there is no Japanese single player campaign.