Carrier Command: Gaea Mission review

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.