Battlestations: Midway

Battlestations: Midway

Battlestations: Midway is pretty much the most complete game that was released on the 360 in 2007. Lots of games did some of the stuff in it better, and some games did everything it did, but not as well. But Midway is the pinnacle of 3rd-person action blended with overarcing strategy and oh hey, howzabout some kickass multiplayer with a community that's as tight-knit as it is skilled. It says something when the demo for a game two years old still has lobbys filling up almost instantly.

There's a lot to like here. For the historical buffs, there's tons of pages of information about how the Pacific theater war was actually fought. For the strategists, plotting courses and commissioning your fleet's deployments just right is very rewarding. And of course the dogfighting/bombing runs are pure adrenaline. At its core, Midway is a strategy game; realistically the computer is as good or better than you at actually executing the attacks you request, but eff dat noize, bombing runs, bitches. The sparse, Horner-esque soundtrack lets the big war machines make their mark, and it's great fun listening to something as big as the Yamato rumble into life and start firing those big guns.

It isn't all nose art and sneak attacks, though. The learning curve can best be described as "up a greased brick wall," and the tutorial is well over two hours long - and necessary - as the sheer number of options weighs down on you. Skilled micromanaging players from days of Starcraft yore will have the full scale of choices baffling them with the sheer variety available. The controls, once you are used to them, never really feel comfortable, though they are more than servicable, and as noted earlier, the computer really is better than you at basic actions.

The controls aside, you really can't ask for more from a game. It's ambitious, unique and competent. If you're a history buff, the most famous battles are faithfully recreated for you to either win again or change the tide of history as the other side. I can't recommend it enough for anyone who has the patience for its difficult-to-master control scheme.

Graphics: The ships look great, though the water and skybox aren't the lush eye-candy you'd get from a true AAA title. Given the scope, that's acceptable. 3.
Sound: Great rumbles from engines, budda-buddas from guns and booms from bombs. 5.
Controls: They try and do a lot with just an XBox Controller, and succeed - but it isn't pretty. 3.
Tilt: Great fun, populous multiplayer, but the single-player campaign is quite short. 4.
Overall (not an average): 4

Iron Man

Iron Man

Movie Tie-In games are always a crapshoot; many times they get rushed out the door in a terrible, unplayable mess. Iron Man dodges this ignoble fate - barely. If you were jazzed about the movie (and let's face it, it was a pretty awesome movie), this game does a great job recreating several scenes from it, completely with original Robert Downey Jr. voice-over work (which is pretty classy for a tie-in game), while being a servicable mission-based beat-em-up.

The graphics are uneven - Shellhead looks great, but the backgrounds and enemies are repetitive, nondescript and brown. There's a lot of space to explore, and some locations are reasonably unique, but to capitalize on the game's strongest asset (flying), the stages are huge, and thus either bland and empty or just uninteresting as you go hurtling past them.

The music in the game is present pretty much only in the menus, and then is just a score, but the explosions seem resounding enough. The complete voice-over preformance by Robert Downey Jr is something I can't stress enough. There is almost no excuse in this day and age not to have the best voice-acting talent available. Mass Effect managed to have full voice-overs for a giant, branching RPG for both a male and a female character; no game should aspire to less.

It's clear that one concept was emphasized throughout: "How Awesome would it be to fly around like Iron Man?" The team at Secret Level took that idea and absolutely ran with it, and flying feels great, although the controls do have a steep learning curve, but the aim-assist mitigates the difficulty involved in moving in three dimensions. But when the After-burners kick in and the Bronze Bombshell flies in to save the day, there's really nothing like it. Unfortunately, the missions he participates in do drag on pretty quickly, being barely interesting as it becomes checkpoint blasting at its finest. A little structure is never a bad thing, but this game takes it just far enough to be restricting, but not as far as, say, The Club, where the missions are tight enough to be endlessly replayable in search of a high score.

There's a lot to like about Iron Man, but it is in the end just shy of being a great game.

Graphics: Iron Man looks fantastic and his movement is slick. Still, the environments he plays in are lacking. 3.
Sound: Great voice-over work by Downey; everything else is so-so. 4.
Controls: Steep learning curve to getting Shellhead to do what you want, but flying feels great. 3.
Tilt: If it were a T-shirt, it would be sized "Extra Medium." 3.
Overall (not an average): 3.