Carrier Command: Gaea Mission review

Carrier Command was one of the most ambitious games of the 1980’s so it’s only fitting a 2012 remake should aim equally high. Carrier Command: Gaea Mission puts you in command of the same huge aircraft carrier equipped with assault craft, defensive lasers and cruise missiles, and developers Bohemia Interactive have really kicked things up a notch from the original, but not always for the better.

Things don’t start well, dumping you onto an island resembling a sub-par Halo clone after an astonishingly cheesy intro sequence and some embarrassing voice acting. The clunky first-person shooter mechanics and a main character who appears to be voiced by Jason Statham’s exponentially less-talented cousin feel worlds apart from the beloved original, but stick with it and after the bizzare first 20 minutes you steal a Walrus amphibious tank and drive out to your very own aircraft carrier, recently looted from the enemy.

Your very own aircraft carrier, to do with as you wish

The carrier is in a terrible state of repair and half the systems are offline, but this serves as a useful introduction to what is actually a highly complicated game. As you move forward and take the first few islands in the campaign, systems come back on line and you’re taken through how to use them against the enemy. By the time you reach your true target, you have a fully-functional carrier and a tough and entrenched enemy to deal with.

The graphics have been updated slightly from the original

As with the original, Carrier Command is a blend of flight and tank simulators, strategy, and resource management. Your basic aim is to kick the enemy off a succession of islands, either by hacking the command centre so the island comes under your control, or by destroying it and remaking the island in your image. There are three types of island; resource, production and defence, and you need to have enough of all three to keep your carrier supplied and fuelled, and to defend against the enemy making incursions into your territory.

The carrier’s devastating prow-mounted plasma cannon

The key issue here is fuel. Your carrier drinks it, and it’s needed to refuel your assault craft and even to repair the carrier’s systems. You can refuel at any island, as long as it’s under your control and linked to your stockpile island. You’ll spend a fair bit of time ordering your islands to produce fuel and manufacture vehicles and the myriad different weapons your aircraft and tanks can carry.

A gaggle of walruses (walri? walropodes?) storm the beach

The combination of managing an economy as well as an aircraft carrier’s manifold systems at the same time as flying multiple jets and tanks in assaults on an island may seem overwhelming, but the interface, while terrifying at first, makes this fairly simple. All systems are automated until you take over yourself, and you can even play the game like a real-time strategy game in 3D, giving your vehicles orders and patrol waypoints and letting them take care of themselves as you survey the action from on high.

At least, that’s the theory. The problem is that the ground vehicles’ path finding is so abysmal it makes planning a coordinated assault almost impossible. Even before they set off from the carrier vehicles will often spend a few minutes bumping into each other before heading for their target, and even an action as simple as following each other down the road can lead to some Austin Powers-style three-point turns as they try to work out which way to go. This is a true shame, as when a coordinated assault works it’s a thing of beauty; your walrus tanks storm the beachhead, firing on all sides with a variety of weapons, as a squadron of mantas screams overhead strafing ground targets.

The manta. Don’t mess.

More often than not, though, your walruses will ignore an enemy shooting them to pieces, or be too busy bumping into walls to return fire. It’s the same problem we’ve seen in all Bohemia Interactive’s titles, from Armed Assault onwards, and it’s enough to spoil the game.

In many ways Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is an ambitious and epic title – we just feel that the unpolished game mechanics will put many players off before they even have a chance to get to grips with it.