By John Walker on January 6th, 2009 at 10:14 pm.
Gracious, it’s been almost a year since we last mentioned Battlestations: Pacific. The sequel to Midway’s WW2-based plane-and-boat flysailing should be with us by spring, once again trying to evoke fond memories of Carrier Command (I’m told – I’ve never played it. I know! I’m unbelievable), this time in a battlefieldsea twice as big as Midway’s acreage.
Along with a new trailer (below, of course), Eidos have today announced a… well, I’ll use their words. A “new community-focused destination site.” I think that might be it for the English language. Pack it up everyone, it’s broken forever now.
The game picks up where Midway ended, letting you carry on the Pacific-based warfare, either in a historically accurate manner if playing as the Americans, or in a rather historically defiant fashion if you play as the Japanese. Of course, since Michael Bay made Pearl Harbour in 2001, it’s been legitimate to be on the Japanese side over the matter, and here you’ll get to take vicious revenge.
Investigating into the “destination site” gobdrivel, it appears to be, er, a website about the game. Eidos explain it further saying it’s,
“a feature-rich destination for information, entertainment and discussion on this anticipated sequel. News, screens and movies on the game will be accompanied by in-depth developer blogs, podcasts, exclusive website competitions and Eidos-hosted Battlestations: Midway multiplayer sessions, allowing fans of the game a chance to brush up on their skills before the launch of Battlestations: Pacific.”
It’s not working for me as I write this, but should it ever, it will be here.
Meanwhile, here’s the trailer. It’s looking pretty nifty, too.
06/01/2009 at 22:34 Pags says:
All the way through that trailer, I couldn’t shake the image of Tim Stone sitting in a shack crying.
As for the guff about their ridiculous name for a website: the thing about PR which always confused me is that they generally they pay so much attention to trying to hype up the boring aspects, ie. calling their website a “community-focused destination site” is that they end up skipping over the bits which might actually sound interesting. Not that I can think of anything which sounds all that interesting about this game, but you get my drift.
06/01/2009 at 22:47 Rave says:
Umm… Since Midway are about to go bankrupt, this might get delayed a bit.
06/01/2009 at 23:06 John Walker says:
No, Midway the publisher has nothing to do with Battlestations: Midway, the game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway
06/01/2009 at 23:07 Michael Bay says:
I think you slightly misunderstood my opus. Never-mind. I’ll buy your script for one million dollars.
06/01/2009 at 23:07 PleasingFungus says:
As far as I can tell, there’s no connection to Midway the publisher. Just the historical Midway. And the game about the historical Midway.
Erm.
So there’s no reason to expect delays.
06/01/2009 at 23:13 John Walker says:
Here’s my script, Mr Bay!
I hope you like it.
American soldier 1: AIIIEEEE! The Japanese are coming, and they’re better at war than we are!
American soldier 2: But my wife!
Japanese soldier: We will do war on you until you’re all dead.
[Explosions for 90 minutes]
Credits.
06/01/2009 at 23:17 Skurmedel says:
Me and my brother used to play the Midway-version, but we quickly abandoned it partly because it wasn’t the funniest game around and a multiplayer lobby that used GameSpy. I think the lobby ruined it for us in the end since it was so horribly crap.
Let’s hope this turns out better as the core idea is pretty good.
06/01/2009 at 23:57 Michael Bay says:
Brilliant. Spielberg is on-board to produce. He’s asked for a re-write involving a small child, a large robot, and maybe a dinosaur. They play well in emerging markets.
07/01/2009 at 00:10 Ginger Yellow says:
Are the dinosaur’s parents going through marital problems?
07/01/2009 at 00:22 Larington says:
Ooh, lookey! First contender for daft PR statement of 2009!
Them: Look at our exciting feature rich website!
Us: Oh, for the love of all things actually exciting…
07/01/2009 at 00:25 SteveHatesYou says:
The dinosaur could learn an important lesson about being a father.
07/01/2009 at 00:28 Larington says:
Don’t forget to have a comedy character, maybe a robot complaining about changing the light bulbs when they go to red alert?
07/01/2009 at 00:59 Tim P says:
The dinosaur will see men die on the beaches and then we will get 25 minutes of starry exposition about him and his son in a sandbox and how war has changed the landscape of the box. Just incase we didn’t know that war was bad.
07/01/2009 at 01:04 RichPowers says:
Why do these stories about dinosaurs and comedy robots sound more interesting than the actual game?
07/01/2009 at 01:07 Larington says:
Well, I did just rip-off, umm, I mean I did just reference Red-Dwarf with the comedy robot changing the light bulb in red alert situations.
07/01/2009 at 03:30 mejobloggs says:
Man the trailer looks good. I want to try this
07/01/2009 at 03:53 Mister Yuck says:
I tried to play the Midway one, I couldn’t get past the script to see if there was a game. God was that script awful.
07/01/2009 at 04:01 Mister Yuck says:
Also, I personally killed more Japs in the Pearl Harbor opening mission than died in the war. If developers have to do a Pearl Harbor level it should be an hour of hell and confusion where you don’t even find a gun.
Actually, I like that idea: an hour long mission where you run from objective marker to objective marker trying to find a plane (instead finding a crater) then a ship (which sinks) a carbine (which jams) and finally just a bucket of water. Then two hours of a bucket chain mini-game.
Infinity Ward could pull it off.
07/01/2009 at 06:07 Skurmedel says:
The bucket chain mini-game sure sounds funnier than watching Ben Affleck having a syringe in his buttock.
07/01/2009 at 07:55 Nick says:
If Infinity Ward made it you’d have to keep returning to the same fires in exactly the same places and put them out again and again untill an arbitrary amount of time had passed or you’d turned the game off.
07/01/2009 at 08:47 Terr says:
I’m suprised you all-ish aren’t that excited about the game.
I thought that the gameplay parts in this developer diary looked pretty cool. The ‘blah blah’ about the game being so incredibly epic is fast forwardable though.
07/01/2009 at 08:54 pepper says:
Looks nice, could be fun, il wait for the demo though.
07/01/2009 at 09:34 Pod says:
I liked the original game… but it only featured about 5 maps :( Got boring, FAST.
07/01/2009 at 10:07 phuzz says:
One of the things I like most about RPS is that you guys can go and ask questions that a gaming mag might not be able to ask. Can you guys find out who wrote that woeful excuse for English and make fun of them publicly?
After all, they’re marketing types, they deserve it.
07/01/2009 at 10:23 John Walker says:
There’s a limit, phuzz. I think it’s already been suitably mocked, and the person who wrote it might be completely lovely.
However, when we’ve mocked such things in the past
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/03/07/putting-the-daaaayyaamn-in-damnation/
the people responsible have come forward!
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/04/02/damnation-exclusive-artwork-compo-interview/
07/01/2009 at 10:32 Jerricho says:
“However, when we’ve mocked such things in the the people responsible have !”
SEE! EA have broken English. It’s borken for the rest of us too now :( Damn then and their evilness
07/01/2009 at 10:33 John Walker says:
Or I broke html.
07/01/2009 at 16:02 pepper says:
John broke the internet… someone is going to have to do some explaining tonight.
07/01/2009 at 16:51 Jerricho says:
So they’ll have to explain it without the use of the internet OR English. I recommend something with crayons.