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This thread has been linked to the game 'Carrier Command: Gaea Mission'.
It’s 1988 and I’m sat looking at a bunch of crude vector graphics representing an island. The game is Carrier Command and it was responsible for many a late night’s gaming in my youth.
It was a simple idea , but very well executed; take over all the islands in the game and gather their resources to keep your carrier running and build weapons to destroy the enemy carrier, which also happens to be doing the same thing.
Actually, there’s a link between the game and this very site. The 8-bit title was released under the Rainbird label, which may be very familiar to those who know their Freeola history. But that’s an aside, if not an easy link into the present day version of the action strategy game.
This time, the honours of bringing Carrier Command back from the dead fall to Bohemia Interactive, who you may have heard from the PC military sim series ARMA. You may also have heard about them from the recent incarceration of 2 of their staff who, at the time or writing, are still sitting in a jail cell with possible charges of spying floating over their heads.
The long years away have both helped and hindered Carrier Command. It now looks much better than the late 80’s Amiga version, as you’d expect, but place it against any number of other action strategy titles and it doesn’t look so shiny. Still, graphics aren’t everything and it does the job of rendering the many islands and enemies of the game pretty well.
So far, so good, but then it goes and has a bit of an identity crisis. You see, the first mission and your introduction to the characters and vehicles, takes the form of a First Person Shooter. Yes, I know, madness! It’s a bit like the first level of a new Mass Effect game being a 2D platformer. It does, however, set a story which is, for some unknown reason, set in the fictional Gaea Universe from a trilogy of books I’ve never read and probably never will.
Once all this silliness is out of the way, though, the game gets down and dirty with the strategy elements and lets you control both the carrier and the various vehicles used to take over islands. You get the air based Manta, a sort of futuristic Harrier Jump Jet, and the Walrus, an ugly but very efficient amphibious tank. These are built, repaired and stored in the carrier until they’re needed, but for the first few missions you only have one Walrus and that’s pretty much it.
The plan is simple; drive on to an island with the Walrus, destroy the enemy defences, including turrents and some nasty weapons, and take over the main computer system with a hacking tool. After a few missions this becomes rather more complicated as the game introduces multiple switches which need to be switched off at the same time or antennas which need to be taken out to get into the main base.
More vehicles are required and the game throws you into the fray expecting you to organise them all at once, either from inside each of them or by setting waypoints and letting them do their own thing. All this would be fine if the AI was up to the task, but it isn’t. I constantly found myself having to save Walrus units from going over a cliff or sitting in the middle of a firefight doing nothing to protect themselves. It makes things very difficult while co-ordinating 4 or more vehicles at once.
But some of the fault may lay with me. Carrier Command is not meant to be played by anyone with an impatient nature. It’s a very slow paced game by default, having to wait for the carrier to reach another island while organising new resources, deliveries of which tend to take days to arrive. Taking over an island requires an equal amount of patience and planning, with limited fuel and ammo pushing you to find resources to replenish stock before you run out.
Yet, behind its many faults lies a game that has a lot of depth and a fair amount of strategy. Play through the story mode (or skip most of it once you know the basics) which is really just a tutorial, anyway, and you have the open world strategy mode which mimics the original game. This is where the strengths of the game appear and even though it’s still riddled with bad AI and inconsistencies, the game kept reminding me why I put all those hours in to the original.
So for the patient and those with similar memories of the original, Carrier Command is a bit of a blast from the past brought bang up-to-date.
7/10
It was a simple idea , but very well executed; take over all the islands in the game and gather their resources to keep your carrier running and build weapons to destroy the enemy carrier, which also happens to be doing the same thing.
Actually, there’s a link between the game and this very site. The 8-bit title was released under the Rainbird label, which may be very familiar to those who know their Freeola history. But that’s an aside, if not an easy link into the present day version of the action strategy game.
This time, the honours of bringing Carrier Command back from the dead fall to Bohemia Interactive, who you may have heard from the PC military sim series ARMA. You may also have heard about them from the recent incarceration of 2 of their staff who, at the time or writing, are still sitting in a jail cell with possible charges of spying floating over their heads.
The long years away have both helped and hindered Carrier Command. It now looks much better than the late 80’s Amiga version, as you’d expect, but place it against any number of other action strategy titles and it doesn’t look so shiny. Still, graphics aren’t everything and it does the job of rendering the many islands and enemies of the game pretty well.
So far, so good, but then it goes and has a bit of an identity crisis. You see, the first mission and your introduction to the characters and vehicles, takes the form of a First Person Shooter. Yes, I know, madness! It’s a bit like the first level of a new Mass Effect game being a 2D platformer. It does, however, set a story which is, for some unknown reason, set in the fictional Gaea Universe from a trilogy of books I’ve never read and probably never will.
Once all this silliness is out of the way, though, the game gets down and dirty with the strategy elements and lets you control both the carrier and the various vehicles used to take over islands. You get the air based Manta, a sort of futuristic Harrier Jump Jet, and the Walrus, an ugly but very efficient amphibious tank. These are built, repaired and stored in the carrier until they’re needed, but for the first few missions you only have one Walrus and that’s pretty much it.
The plan is simple; drive on to an island with the Walrus, destroy the enemy defences, including turrents and some nasty weapons, and take over the main computer system with a hacking tool. After a few missions this becomes rather more complicated as the game introduces multiple switches which need to be switched off at the same time or antennas which need to be taken out to get into the main base.
More vehicles are required and the game throws you into the fray expecting you to organise them all at once, either from inside each of them or by setting waypoints and letting them do their own thing. All this would be fine if the AI was up to the task, but it isn’t. I constantly found myself having to save Walrus units from going over a cliff or sitting in the middle of a firefight doing nothing to protect themselves. It makes things very difficult while co-ordinating 4 or more vehicles at once.
But some of the fault may lay with me. Carrier Command is not meant to be played by anyone with an impatient nature. It’s a very slow paced game by default, having to wait for the carrier to reach another island while organising new resources, deliveries of which tend to take days to arrive. Taking over an island requires an equal amount of patience and planning, with limited fuel and ammo pushing you to find resources to replenish stock before you run out.
Yet, behind its many faults lies a game that has a lot of depth and a fair amount of strategy. Play through the story mode (or skip most of it once you know the basics) which is really just a tutorial, anyway, and you have the open world strategy mode which mimics the original game. This is where the strengths of the game appear and even though it’s still riddled with bad AI and inconsistencies, the game kept reminding me why I put all those hours in to the original.
So for the patient and those with similar memories of the original, Carrier Command is a bit of a blast from the past brought bang up-to-date.
7/10
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It’s 1988 and I’m sat looking at a bunch of crude vector graphics representing an island. The game is Carrier Command and it was responsible for many a late night’s gaming in my youth.
It was a simple idea , but very well executed; take over all the islands in the game and gather their resources to keep your carrier running and build weapons to destroy the enemy carrier, which also happens to be doing the same thing.
Actually, there’s a link between the game and this very site. The 8-bit title was released under the Rainbird label, which may be very familiar to those who know their Freeola history. But that’s an aside, if not an easy link into the present day version of the action strategy game.
This time, the honours of bringing Carrier Command back from the dead fall to Bohemia Interactive, who you may have heard from the PC military sim series ARMA. You may also have heard about them from the recent incarceration of 2 of their staff who, at the time or writing, are still sitting in a jail cell with possible charges of spying floating over their heads.
The long years away have both helped and hindered Carrier Command. It now looks much better than the late 80’s Amiga version, as you’d expect, but place it against any number of other action strategy titles and it doesn’t look so shiny. Still, graphics aren’t everything and it does the job of rendering the many islands and enemies of the game pretty well.
So far, so good, but then it goes and has a bit of an identity crisis. You see, the first mission and your introduction to the characters and vehicles, takes the form of a First Person Shooter. Yes, I know, madness! It’s a bit like the first level of a new Mass Effect game being a 2D platformer. It does, however, set a story which is, for some unknown reason, set in the fictional Gaea Universe from a trilogy of books I’ve never read and probably never will.
Once all this silliness is out of the way, though, the game gets down and dirty with the strategy elements and lets you control both the carrier and the various vehicles used to take over islands. You get the air based Manta, a sort of futuristic Harrier Jump Jet, and the Walrus, an ugly but very efficient amphibious tank. These are built, repaired and stored in the carrier until they’re needed, but for the first few missions you only have one Walrus and that’s pretty much it.
The plan is simple; drive on to an island with the Walrus, destroy the enemy defences, including turrents and some nasty weapons, and take over the main computer system with a hacking tool. After a few missions this becomes rather more complicated as the game introduces multiple switches which need to be switched off at the same time or antennas which need to be taken out to get into the main base.
More vehicles are required and the game throws you into the fray expecting you to organise them all at once, either from inside each of them or by setting waypoints and letting them do their own thing. All this would be fine if the AI was up to the task, but it isn’t. I constantly found myself having to save Walrus units from going over a cliff or sitting in the middle of a firefight doing nothing to protect themselves. It makes things very difficult while co-ordinating 4 or more vehicles at once.
But some of the fault may lay with me. Carrier Command is not meant to be played by anyone with an impatient nature. It’s a very slow paced game by default, having to wait for the carrier to reach another island while organising new resources, deliveries of which tend to take days to arrive. Taking over an island requires an equal amount of patience and planning, with limited fuel and ammo pushing you to find resources to replenish stock before you run out.
Yet, behind its many faults lies a game that has a lot of depth and a fair amount of strategy. Play through the story mode (or skip most of it once you know the basics) which is really just a tutorial, anyway, and you have the open world strategy mode which mimics the original game. This is where the strengths of the game appear and even though it’s still riddled with bad AI and inconsistencies, the game kept reminding me why I put all those hours in to the original.
So for the patient and those with similar memories of the original, Carrier Command is a bit of a blast from the past brought bang up-to-date.
7/10
It was a simple idea , but very well executed; take over all the islands in the game and gather their resources to keep your carrier running and build weapons to destroy the enemy carrier, which also happens to be doing the same thing.
Actually, there’s a link between the game and this very site. The 8-bit title was released under the Rainbird label, which may be very familiar to those who know their Freeola history. But that’s an aside, if not an easy link into the present day version of the action strategy game.
This time, the honours of bringing Carrier Command back from the dead fall to Bohemia Interactive, who you may have heard from the PC military sim series ARMA. You may also have heard about them from the recent incarceration of 2 of their staff who, at the time or writing, are still sitting in a jail cell with possible charges of spying floating over their heads.
The long years away have both helped and hindered Carrier Command. It now looks much better than the late 80’s Amiga version, as you’d expect, but place it against any number of other action strategy titles and it doesn’t look so shiny. Still, graphics aren’t everything and it does the job of rendering the many islands and enemies of the game pretty well.
So far, so good, but then it goes and has a bit of an identity crisis. You see, the first mission and your introduction to the characters and vehicles, takes the form of a First Person Shooter. Yes, I know, madness! It’s a bit like the first level of a new Mass Effect game being a 2D platformer. It does, however, set a story which is, for some unknown reason, set in the fictional Gaea Universe from a trilogy of books I’ve never read and probably never will.
Once all this silliness is out of the way, though, the game gets down and dirty with the strategy elements and lets you control both the carrier and the various vehicles used to take over islands. You get the air based Manta, a sort of futuristic Harrier Jump Jet, and the Walrus, an ugly but very efficient amphibious tank. These are built, repaired and stored in the carrier until they’re needed, but for the first few missions you only have one Walrus and that’s pretty much it.
The plan is simple; drive on to an island with the Walrus, destroy the enemy defences, including turrents and some nasty weapons, and take over the main computer system with a hacking tool. After a few missions this becomes rather more complicated as the game introduces multiple switches which need to be switched off at the same time or antennas which need to be taken out to get into the main base.
More vehicles are required and the game throws you into the fray expecting you to organise them all at once, either from inside each of them or by setting waypoints and letting them do their own thing. All this would be fine if the AI was up to the task, but it isn’t. I constantly found myself having to save Walrus units from going over a cliff or sitting in the middle of a firefight doing nothing to protect themselves. It makes things very difficult while co-ordinating 4 or more vehicles at once.
But some of the fault may lay with me. Carrier Command is not meant to be played by anyone with an impatient nature. It’s a very slow paced game by default, having to wait for the carrier to reach another island while organising new resources, deliveries of which tend to take days to arrive. Taking over an island requires an equal amount of patience and planning, with limited fuel and ammo pushing you to find resources to replenish stock before you run out.
Yet, behind its many faults lies a game that has a lot of depth and a fair amount of strategy. Play through the story mode (or skip most of it once you know the basics) which is really just a tutorial, anyway, and you have the open world strategy mode which mimics the original game. This is where the strengths of the game appear and even though it’s still riddled with bad AI and inconsistencies, the game kept reminding me why I put all those hours in to the original.
So for the patient and those with similar memories of the original, Carrier Command is a bit of a blast from the past brought bang up-to-date.
7/10