So by the time you fight through the whole US campaign to find yourself at the battle of Midway itself, it’s the most entertaining action/strategy game in years. All engines are firing, and it’s full steam ahead. It’s so good, you wish it could go on forever. So what’s next? Nothing’s next. You get to Midway, thinking it’s midway, and it’s not midway at all. It’s the end.

By the time the campaign has introduced you to all the assorted hardware, you’re halfway through it, which leaves all too few missions where you’re actually seeing the game at its best. Replaying at a higher difficulty level is an option, thankfully, and the ability to play any individual mission at whatever setting you like means you don’t have to repeat the more tedious early ones. There are also solo single-vehicle missions, based around planes, ships and subs, but these are the least appealing of the game. (Actually, we’ll have an honorable exception for submarines; while not Silent Hunter, the stealth-assassinations of the subs are perfect solo fare.) After the solo missions, it’s time to turn to skirmish and multiplayer.

Except you just turn to the multiplayer, because they haven’t bothered with any kind of AI bots, which is just shocking. The multiplayer levels feature two balanced sides clashing, with up to four players taking control of each fleet. The multiplayer game shows Midway at its best, clearly, but even with all nine provided scenarios you can’t help but consider it to be tragically under-developed.

What excuse is there for the absence of standard multiplayer features in a skirmish mode - such as a points-based unit-selection option, where you choose a fleet up to a total value? If it had the ability to set up your own sides and play them against another side of bots, the game would gain huge replay value.