It’s the dead of night. You’re piloting a small attack submarine through the murky deep, as you stealthily trail your foes – a formation of battleships steaming across the Pacific. The periscope view gives away their silhouettes against the low moon. Drifting into position, you line up the steely hull in your sights, such that a near miss will strike the craft nearby. Squeezing the trigger, the propeller-driven bombs corkscrew deftly through the brine. The dark night is suddenly lit by boiling flames and raining shrapnel.

Battlestations Midway is a great new naval warfare game, set in the Pacific campaigns of WWII. It balances simple tactical action controls with strategic level commands and unit autonomy. In other words, you can play it however you like. You can fly your Zero or Spitfire fighter all the way into battle and shoot down the enemies with joystick control, switching between units as they are destroyed. Alternatively, you can pilot your battlecruiser or submarine and rely on your swarm of fighters to protect you as you get close enough to use your main cannons on the enemy. Finally, you can watch the entire battle from the map view and direct the action by selecting units and sending them to different locations, fine-tuning their position and approach.

This freeform collision of forces results in some of the most intense battles you will have ever faced. The skies seem to literally fill with buzzing aircraft and a hailstorm of tracer fire. It’s always interesting to see a conflict unfolding on the rather iconic map view and see it come to life in a fiery 3D conflagration on screen. Units not directly being controlled follow their own basic AI and will fight adequately according to their orders. There’s even repair controls for burning battleships, allowing you to keep them afloat with some quick thinking.

In the midst of all this depth, the graphics are not neglected. Dark, glossy waves undulate over the surface of the ocean like never before. Beams of sunlight permeate the underwater environment as you stalk your floating quarry. As most of your cameras are from an external view, you get a great box office seat for the action happening in and around your battle group’s elements.

In the end, the appeal of Battlestations is that it’s a genuinely fresh game concept, which allows you to effectively become a one-man army from Battlefield 1942.