The two new maps share a volcanic theme, hence the name of the downloadable pack, available tomorrow on Xbox Live and June 25th for Games for Windows Live players. The Volcano Map, which is playable in the game's Island Capture, Competitive and Duel modes, features a Hawaiian-style (with pineapple and ham?) island setting, with Duel mode taking place around a partially submerged volcano.

The second map, Choke Point, is set in a narrow channel surrounded by two volcanic outcroppings, where players can participate in Escort, Siege and Duel modes.

Both maps will be available tomorrow for the Xbox 360 at a price of 560 Microsoft points, with the price carrying over to the Games for Windows version later on this month.

Originally used as a method to mark friendly aircraft, nose-art eventually became a way for pilots to express their individuality, evoking memories of a more peaceful time to help cut the stress of fighting in a war. If anyone fits that bill, it's UK burlesque model Miss Polly Rae. The front woman of Britain's award-winning burlesque troupe, Hurly Burly, Miss Rae certainly looks to embody everything World War II pilots miss about being back home, and then some.

Polly will be featured as one of the many pieces of nose art available in Battlestations: Pacific, which should go great lengths to making sure players avoid getting the front of their plane shot off. Check out the gallery below for screens of Polly heating up the heat of battle.

The game features both a U.S. And Japanese campaign in the game, both built around historically authentic archived missions.

"Authenticity and historical accuracy we take quite seriously, for the U.S. campaign that's fine and well, but for the Japanese campaign we didn't want the player to lose no mater how well they do," said Alastair Cornish, a designer working on the game for Eidos. "So they based the Japanese campaign on the real war plans, but with Japan winning."

The developers also had to figure out how best to illustrate the briefings. Each of the U.S. missions kick off with a bit of actual historical footage from the engagement players are about to take place in.

"With the Japanese briefings we had to pick historical footage that shows similar engagements," he said.

The Japanese campaign of Battlestations: Pacific starts with the country's attack on Pearl Harbor and finishes with the "conclusion of the war for Japan."

Cornish declined to say how specifically the campaign ends for Japan.

The U.S. campaign starts with the conclusion of the Battle of Midway to the conclusion of the war. Players will be able to play either campaign first or jump between them as much as they want to at checkpoints.

Cornish said the game doesn't have intersecting missions between the two campaigns.

"We wanted to avoid intersecting missions," he said. "It's the wrong approach to have the same 14 missions played from the different sides. It would feel like reused content. Every mission is completely distinct."

The developers went through all of the forums for Battlestations: Midway and got all of the fan feedback for this sequel, said Alastair Cornish, a designer at Eidos.

"We have a very vocal, articulate group of fans," he said. "We were able to take into account most fan feedback. THat ranges from smaller things like the inclusion of a cockpit view, which fans really wanted, to larger things like skirmish mode. And everything in between."

In Pacific's skirmish mode, players can access the multiplayer maps for singleplayer gaming.

Gamers will have five different modes to choose from, each with eight scenarios.

In Escort players have to protect or attack a unit or squadron. In Siege, players assist a landing operation or a fleet defense. In Competitive, players try to achieve the highest score by attacking hostile units. Duel is essentially a unit-specific deathmatch. And Island Capture has players fighting for control of a large area with different bases and outposts.

And all of the skirmish modes mirror the mulitplayer functions, Cornish said. so you can turn on or off AI bots, you can chance the difficulty settings for each. You can tweak the weather.

Cornish said you can even set it up so that a team of players take on an AI-controlled team.

Battlestations: Pacific is one of those games you need an instruction manual to operate. Those little plastic control cheat sheets for games journalists don’t cut it. Between controlling battleships and navigating a half dozen airplanes, there’s just so much to keep track of, you can’t hope to handle it in your first fight.

Actually, I couldn’t get the hang of it in my first four fights.

Battlestations: Pacific is slated for release on April 29, 2009 for Xbox 360 and PC. There are five multiplayer modes with eight maps apiece and a series of objectives and classes you can pick for each for multiple scenarios. Escort mode is like Saving the Shoho. Siege mode has you battling over a base. Competitive mode is where you’re trying to gun down the most AI units in the time allotted. Duel mode puts players head-to-head in a single unit type. And Island Capture mode is a lot like an RTS where you’re bulking up your own bases while capturing neutral ones to earn a set number of victory points. All matches are for up to eight players – four on four – and each player is ranked individually at the end of a match.

For my first shot at the game I loaded into an American mission – something with an air carrier near the island of Guadalcanal – and took a stab at aerial combat. The goal was to sink the Musashi, a Yamato-class battleship. Near as I could tell, I had two planes to get the job done: a dogfighter-class, one with badass rockets (I think this is the new FU4 Corsair unit mentioned in the press release). I blew all the rockets in the Corsair without hitting a single thing, then did a nifty barrel roll right into the side of the island.

I switched to another plane by pressing the D-pad. This one was easier for me to handle since all I had to do was train my reticule on the yellow target leading the planes I wanted to shoot at and hold R1 to spray fire. I think I only managed to shoot down one unit myself. Oh, I hit plenty of them, but my wingmates kept swooping in to kill-steal. I tried ordering them off by holding X and choosing the “land” option – but as soon as I did, a boat blew up and a cut scene informed me that I’d destroyed the Musashi.

Um, okay. Go team me…? I reloaded the mission to see if I could make more sense of it a second time. There were some very pretty cut scenes that went on entirely too long (you can skip them by pressing Y), and then I was back in the rocket plane of awesome, trying to blow up the Musashi. I toggled the map on and looked for the red ships – those were the bad guys, right? – and spend towards them by mashing forward on the L stick.

The controls in Pacific felt clunky enough to convince me they were realistic. A slight tap left or right and you could tilt wildly and stall out, causing you to plummet toward the ocean a la Top Gun. Toggle the cockpit view with X and for all I know you really are seeing what a World War II era fighter pilot would be looking at. After stalling out in cockpit mode and winding up in the ocean, I switched to another unit and steered again for the red icon on the map.

I shot at it and felt very proud of myself when it blew up. But then the world “friendly” popped up over the burning wreckage and I got the mission failed screen. Whoops, guess that was my battleship.

For my third stab at Pacific, I tried a Japanese mission called Saving the Shoho. This battle started me out on the boat itself, controlling the deck guns and the deployment order for planes. I found the battleship way easier to handle than the plane (because it can only go forward and back). It was also more satisfying to shoot stuff and the other ships in the fleet can’t kill-steal.

I could have sat on the Shoho and shot down planes all day, but the game insisted I send out a recon plane to look for submarines. I spent about five minutes trying to figure out how to do this (the control map wasn’t too clear), ran the Shoho into the side of another boat and then spent another three minutes putting out deck flames by clicking in on the left stick.

Somewhere in all of that button mashing, I hit the correct thing and sent a recon plane out. (The control maps clams it was X, but I’m not so sure…). The recon plane glided right past the oncoming American planes, toward an island I hadn’t noticed before, where it found not only two enemy submarines but also a radio station tucked into the mountains on the island.

At this point, there was some weird in-game dialog between the Japanese recon pilots. It went like this: "Remember Ichi, America is a land of industry. And... *sigh* forget it." I guess this is characterization, but since Pacific doesn’t have a main plot the way that Midway did, I can’t understand why the game needs to dump it on me.

Two seconds after the exchange, I ran the plane into the radio station to blow both of them up. I switched units to a plane equipped with depth charges and desperately tried to figure out how to deploy them without exploding the shells on contact with the water. You’re supposed to fly level at your target and drop the charge so that it slides into the water at an angle instead of falling straight down – something that sounds and looks way easier than it actually is in the game. I guess somewhere along the way I got it right because a cut scene showed a submarine exploding and I got the mission success screen.

Still not satisfied that I had grasped this game, I loaded the mission again and tried sending out the recon plane before the mission prompt told me to. I was halfway to the island, right in the middle of that American industry dialog, when the Shoho’s tiny green life bar dropped to red and the ship exploded. Mission failed.

So, what did I learn? Stuff blows up and I win, stuff blows up and I lose. It really would have helped if I’d known which color ships I needed to worry about before I was halfway through a battle. A tutorial mode would have been ever better.

The big thing that bugs me about this game is the balance between action and strategy. As far as I can tell, there isn’t one. Just when I’d get the hang of shooting something, I’d need to switch back to the map and decide where to put the boat – and when I was on the boat, putting out deck fires and figuring out what to deploy, I was getting shot at constantly. Maybe this imbalance will work for somebody, but it sure didn’t work for me.

The second thing that bugs me is the part where you can win the war with Japan. I guess it doesn’t make sense to play an entire campaign with a side and then be told that you “lost” at the end. But if you’re making a World War II game, shouldn’t the game actually recreate World War II?

The embargo for my impressions expires on Monday morning, so check back then for the full rundown. In the meantime, I present you party pics and a swag report:

Pictured: One “medium” t-shirt that fits like a large and two zippo lighters with Betty Page-esque models on them.

This week, I’m off to a Battlestations: Pacific multiplayer event on the USS Hornet anchored in Alameda, CA. The game is an action RTS for the PC and 360, featuring “28 major battles, 100 units including 21 new units, five new innovative multi-player modes: island capture, kamikaze attacks, and an improved easy-to-use interface.” Hm…gotta make sure I pack my Dramamine.

After that is the third installment in the Street Fighter IV Fight Club, and since I missed the first two, this’ll be interesting.

"Bring your A game because there are bound to be a few pros in the crowd if our last two events are any indication," says the invite. It all goes down in San Francisco from 8pm to midnight. Gotta make sure I pack my Starbucks.

Next week, I’m hitting up a Spore 2009 Line-up Reveal at the Varnish Fine Art Gallery in San Francisco. I have no idea what to pack for this one, since the dress code at the last Spore event was sort of… weird.

I have even less of an idea of what to expect from Sporein 2009 beyond the Spore Galactic Adventures expansion. Maybe a firebreathing patch so I can make my winged pink phallic creatures into dragons?

Last, but not least, D3 is hosting a gamer’s day called "Game Fest: Dorks, Dealers and Double-Ds." I can only imagine what they’re hoping I’ll pack. Insert eye roll here. The games on the list for this event include Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers, Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and Texas Cheat ‘Em.

Stay tuned for impressions as embargoes expire. A drop be a comment to say which game(s) you're most excited about.

The Battlestations.net website will play host to new screenshots, movies, developer blogs, podcasts, and just about everything Battlestations: Pacific you can imagine. Fans will be able to chat with other fans about the series, offer the developers their helpful input, and even participate in Eidos-hosted Battlestations: Midway competitions in order to polish their skills for the sequel, due out this spring.

While I'm not a big fan of Battlestations' particular brand of strategy, I have friends who swear the first game was the best thing since World War II. Not going to argue, as they're a bit off-balance, and armed. Check out the latest screens and the new trailer below.

Battlestations.net Weighs Anchor

Battlestations: PacificTM community-focused website launches today

Tuesday 6th January/... Eidos Interactive, creator of some of the world’s leading video game properties, today announced the launch of a new community-focused destination site for Battlestations: Pacific™.

Sequel to 2007’s critically acclaimed Battlestations: Midway™, Battlestations: Pacific™ picks up where its predecessor left off. Pitching players into the might of World War II’s Pacific conflict, the game delivers intense, action-packed combat and strategic warfare on an extraordinary scale and features two distinctly different single-player campaigns. A historically accurate US Campaign puts players in command of the US fleet through The Battle of Midway to Okinawa as they try to secure peace in the Pacific. Or play as the Japanese and take control of the Imperial Japanese fleet with the unique chance to fight at Pearl Harbor before attempting to change the course of history and take full control of the Pacific Ocean. Players can also take the battle online with an enhanced multiplayer, offering five new and innovative co-op and team-based modes.

“Battlestations offers a blend of action and strategy unlike any other videogame on the market and as such has a dedicated and committed community of fans,” said Lee Singleton, General Manager of Eidos Game Studios. “The launch of Battlestations.net as a destination site for both information and discussion on the game comes as a direct result of listening and interacting with our communities.”

Launched today, the new Battlestations.net site offers 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™.

Those interested in enlisting can join the discussions at www.battlestations.net.

Battlestations: Pacific™ is set for release on Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Games for Windows® in spring 2009.