I loved the original so curious how this one goes so many years later. For the time it was a great game, and a RTS that felt more real and first person. The map and the AI were good (back then) as well.
Bohemia had a go at a remake but it sort of felt empty and like a lot of things from them they dropped it when they lost interest.
Demo for the reboot here
A quick AAR, although the tutorial is fun, so abandon ship now if you want to see it yourself.
Ok, going into this cold. Hmm, we’re in a vehicle, sort of looking a bit minecraft in terms of graphics…
Ok, it is a sort of minecraftian renderer. Everything turned up so it’s meant to look this way. Let’s look for Steve I guess?
So we’re on the bridge of Carrier, and can walk around and look at all the various stations. I think they want me to deploy this thing.
I hope there’s no crafting.
Deployed. Steady as she goes. 3 knots.
Checking out the map, looks like some enemy islands. Love the Talking Heads, so lets head to Byrne Island first.
Ah, objectives - fine I’ll do that instead.
The ship lurches in the sea swell. Not sure I like that brown foam effect - what have the whales been eating?
There’s all sorts of buttons to press. Regular readers will know how much I love that. Some sort of CIWS? Also, Evil Island ahead Captain!
Feeling seasick, but the Big Chair looks good right now.
You can run around all over the Carrier, and ignore the things to do.
There’s Deck Guns! You can take full control of the boom. Evil land vehicles spotted.
Fire?
That works.
Ok, being told to launch Seals, which I think are amphibs from the dock at the back of the boat. You give them orders from the map.
You can take FULL CONTROL™ or just watch through their cameras as well.
I run outside to see if I can spot my autobot army heading out. Unfortunately it’s getting dark. Here’s the deck gun though:
I drive one of my amphibs tank bots around, using its gun to shoot similar looking vehicles in red.
You can first person or direct them from the bridge stations using this crappy looking pixel map:
I find the deck lights and launch an aerial drone, far too early in the tutorial (sort of breaking it, oops)
I now have air traffic! I do like the bridge - looks good at night
Oops, my drones get shot down pretty quick. Out of order tutorial…
So my actual orders are to ‘drop a virus bomb to take over the island’. I send out a Seal vehicle with those loaded and drive to what looks like a radar station.
I change station to ‘Virus Bombs’ and skillfully hit mouse1 to drop them here. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Ok, that was lucky - the wee fellas crawled over to the building and it seems like I am taking over the island now.
Yay, David Byrne is now in the Blue team!
Fancy holo map for the Captain
And on that note it starts to get light, on to the next island (if the tutorial wasn’t broken by me launching the drones and getting them killed…)
Kind of interesting. Almost ironic the graphics sort of look like an old game, given how it used to look. Perhaps I’ll get my Amiga dev kit out from the attic.
I’m interested, but I’m afraid there’s too much micromanagement for a lonely player. Is Co-Op planned/Implemented?
EDIT: Checking the Steam page yes! That’s good!
The key thing about Carrier Command, back from 1988 (good grief, I now feel old), was that you could pretty much decide how you wanted to play it. You could just give vague top-level orders or you could get right down to actually sitting in a Walrus amphib tank. As well as all that, it was a pretty decent strategy map game as well, amazing for the time. The ZX Spectrum 48K port was a miracle of miniaturization, but the Amiga/Atari ST version were the best.
The new one sort of seems similar, but I really hope they nail that part of the legacy - being able to choose how you play and at what level.
Here’s an older review, and apart from the ‘walk around the bridge’ part is almost a screen for screen remake of the original.
It’s been released
That looks pretty sweet.
Loved the original one on Amiga.
It looks positively amazing but also like something it takes 5 or 10 players to use correctly…
Dang…this is another one I missed while I was out in training. That looks awesome. I’m gonna pick it up and give it a whirl in VR. Probably do a review on it…
I’m really curious about how they made the VR implementation…
Hmm… this game looks quite tempting! Looks like a recurrent theme on the reviews is the numerous bugs…
So I see Carrier Command 2 is on sale for $39.99 - a $10.00 savings… It sure looks intriguing. You still dabbling in it?
Nope, it sort of looked a bit disappointing on release. Hopefully they fixed a bunch of things as the demo was pretty raw.
