Rabbit, rabbit.

Happy new year, brochitches. I'm ringing mine in with a game that's more or less two years old! Battlestations: Midway showed up on the 31st, and I found a few minutes to at least get started. Also, I remembered another feature for reviews I was going to implement, so it's in.

Battlestations: Midway
Achievements: 22 (16 single player for 740 points, 6 multiplayer for 260 points)

Online Match Availability: Scant, but existent. It only took about thirty seconds each to find a list of six player matches and two ranked matches at 7:20 PM EST. I assume this is something of a  prime time for XBLers, at least on the east coast, since it's after dinner and homework might be done by then. A couple of the player matches even happened to be almost full! Looks like there're at least a handful of people still playing the game, even if you can't find someone you know to play.

Oh look, WWII. There's not a glut of these games or anything. In all honesty, though, I do like what Eidos was trying to do here, giving you the chance to control the primary vehicle types in a mainly naval battle. Definitely cool, I love naval tactics.

The execution, however? All of the controls for everything feel weird. They make some sense, but not enough. Whoever chose where to map buttons should be shot, because there is nothing intuitive about the layout, and only so much you can do to fix it in the options.

The graphics are all right, for early run 360 games, but fairly generic. Not wowed, not too disappointed. The soundtrack is appropriately military in nature and fits well enough, I guess.

After playing through the tutorials (free 40 points right there) and the first campaign mission, I can't say it's too terribly engaging a game. There's a bit of bollocks patriotism to it that bugs me, even though the game supposedly rolled out of Eidos' Hungary studio, and it's just not that interesting. The main character, whom I guess is supposed to be you, is just another meathead to me, and the game itself just doesn't scream "Play me!"

Sure, the training sessions showed me all this neat stuff I can do with tactical maps and hands-on control and all this other nonsense, but the first mission, at least, pretty much just yanked me from a PT boat to a dogfight without implementing even the slightest bit of that, save for a weapons change to take out a sub with said boat, so I'm left sitting there saying, "Uh, thanks for the help, then?"

I've got some hope things improve and get more hands-on as the game progresses, but I don't know if it's very well-founded hope at all. That dogfighting I mentioned? IT SUCKS. Coming out of Ace Combat 6 may have spoiled me, sure, but dammit, I died more times crashing into the ocean than I did any other way so far. And I didn't die at all in the PT boat. Argh.

Anyway, I'm still willing put in some effort, since who knows when anything else will get here given the holidays delaying mail again, and a lot of the achievements are fairly straightforward, like campaign completion, challeng completion, completion on certain difficulties, kill counts, and using certain vehicles. I honestly would have liked a little ground pounding just to round things out, but que sera.

Oh yeah, Spongebob is DONE. 200/200, bitches. The most difficult achievement would have to be the "complete quest mode with every character" one, since they don't make it clear that you have to finish every level with every character. There's an achievement for "completing quest mode" that you get after clearing one level, which is where the confusion lies.

My suggestion is just plow through with one character first for all the bronze medals (which you need on your path to the All Gold Medals achievement), then another for silvers, and finally one for golds, so you just have two characters left and no medal worries. Those last two will also help you prep for the time trials, after doing all the quest mode stuff, the only time trial I had any trouble with was Atlantis 3, and even that trouble was just stupid luck or poor judgment on my part. Licked it on the third or fourth try, regardless. And it's off my HD already, to make room for good things.

Good things like the new Rock Band content! Three songs, individually priced this week. They managed to cough up the only Skynyrd song I actually enjoy, a solid Rush tune, and Hard To Handle. MUCHAS GRACIAS. It's still no Jawbreaker, but I'll probably be campaigning for that even after they've moved on to things like Synthpop Band, Hard Listening Band, and Funk Band. The latter, of course, featuring a 72-port USB hub, peripherals for an entire brass section, and the house from PCU as an unlockable gig. Even naked guy shows up! Nice butt!

Hope anyone reading this starts off 2008 well enough, and is ready for when nothing else matters in three weeks, since Burnout Paradise is on the way.