Carrier Command: Gaea Mission
Review
Remake of a Classic
by Marko Susimetsä
reviewed on PC
Simple and Slow (cntd)
As you move from island to island, your Carrier will also need energy both to move around as well as repair any damaged systems along the way. And you will need to replace destroyed Mantises and Walruses by building new ones. As you capture more islands, your production capabilities increase and you can more easily replace lost craft, although you will always have to keep an eye on your remaining resources that come from the mining islands. When you produce more fuel or mods that you want to send to your Carrier, you have to put them on your barque and send them over in small patches. As the game fails to tell you how to do this (and some other things), you’d better play the game with a browser open in the background so that you can access Youtube instruction videos as you play.
That Creeping Feeling
Overall, the gameplay is so simple that you quickly begin to think that “is this all there is?” and, unfortunately, as the game progresses, it becomes clear that the answer to that question is affirmative. Even though the challenge increases with each island, requiring you to alter your tactics a little for each of them, there is very little variety to the basic routine. Admittedly, the game is a remake and the simplicity of the gameplay certainly hearkens back to the 1980’s, but a modern gamer will likely hope for a fuller experience. As it is, the occasional (embarrassingly bad) dialogue between the protagonist and the other characters attempts to make the campaign story interesting, but it quickly becomes clear that the story is merely a stitching to keep you moving from one island to the other.
The graphics are certainly an improvement to what they were in the 1988, but they still seem archaic to the modern eye. Certainly, we get a day-night cycle and some nice sunsets with it, but mostly the graphics are unimpressive. The vehicle animations are mostly acceptable, but when you encounter one of the FPS sections in the game (yup, there are more later on in the story), the experience deteriorates, as you will have to suffer the sight of half-floating soldiers “running” with their weapons.
And even if you are willing to forgive the above points on the basis that this is a remake of a classic, you will start getting annoyed when you realise that the AI is really bad and cannot be relied to do anything important – or even half-important. You want to lead your Walruses over a bridge crossing a deep ditch? You better control each vehicle yourself and take them over one by one, or the AI will simply miss the bridge and drive straight into the abyss. Want to send one of the Walruses back to the Carrier for refitting? You’d better check the route the AI intends to take, in case it decides that the “best” route is not the direct line that you just followed, but the roundabout that goes right past the enemy stronghold. And even when the other Walruses are following your own on a wide road, they often get lost or tangled up hopelessly in the trees or on top of rocks or low walls at the sides of the road, requiring you to take another Walrus and practically ram them to free them of the obstacles.
Mediocre at Best
I freely admit that I’m one of those old-timers who often says that “I wish there was a remake of [add the name of a classic] that I could play”. Thus, I would dearly have wanted to like Carrier Command: Gaea Mission and recommend it to the younger generation with that wistful smile that the old-timers often have on their faces when they recall their youth. But, unfortunately, I cannot do it this time. Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is a simple game and it could very well be decently entertaining with a better, more in-depth storyline and without all the bugs and problems that it is riddled with. I’d advise you to take a look at the demo to try it out.
4.7
fun score
Pros
It works, The Mantis is quite fun to fly around with.
Cons
Buggy AI, dated looks, bad voice-acting, repetitive gameplay.
