Gaming Review

Its a mainly open world game, so vigilance is essential

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Carrier Command: Operation Gaea

A 23-year cruise comes to an end
VITAL STATISTICS
Publisher Bohemia Interactive Developer Bohemia Interactive Genre Unique Web www.carriercommand.com

RELEASE Q1 2012

WHATS THE STORY?

Pumping new life into a 23-year old game, Bohemia has brought this classic up to the modern day. You control a sci- military carrier, seeking to conquer an archipelago, in a strange mix of RTS, RPG and action.

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hose proud resurrectionists who dig through the graveyards of dead games often settle on the more player-friendly titles; simple games, often quite gun-heavy, requiring less brain-usage than Geordie Shore: Lobotomised Louts, with names like Streets of Rage or Metal Slug. Yet 1988s Carrier: Command was a hugely innovative creation, combining mobile basemanagement with a strange islandDecember 2011

colonisation metagame, a large military strategy element and location-based action game. This rarely replicated genre (save for 2001s Hostile Waters) is what Bohemia Interactive has bravely chosen to resurrect. Bohemia hasnt gone for a straight recreation, but its version isnt so different from the original, right down to the names of the units and structure of the game. Like the original, you control one of two extremely futuristic carriers, in a contest for a small archipelago of islands on a moon called Taurus. Each carrier is a combined military platform, aircraft carrier and amphibious vehicle deployment unit and mobile factory; yours is the more primitive one, of course. The aim is to navigate the carrier between the islands, capturing them back from the opposition, to ultimately dominate the archipelago. An overlay map, which can be accessed from anywhere, can be viewed to navigate

around and avoid the enemy carrier until youre ready to take it on; the map takes maybe half an hour to drive over, assuming youre not deviating to avoid enemies and island defences.

Air, sea and land

The carrier packs two types of unit; four of the Manta VTOL aircraft, useful for dog-ghting and scouting, and four of the amphibious Walrus, which handles both sea-based combat and island assaults. The player can directly control these and the carrier, but as soon as you change units they revert to a basic AI system where theyll defend themselves but little else. They can be set patrol routes and paths to follow, which theyll do religiously, so a substantial portion of gameplay is that of Space Hulk, spinning plates. To capture islands, the carrier can use its longer-range guns to destroy shore-defences, but to actually seize the island, you need to capture a central

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Carrier Command: Operation Gaea

The Resurrection Mambo

Seeing Carrier Command brought back to life makes us get all nostalgic about the games wed most want remade. With X-Com, Thief and Syndicate on the way (in modern forms), what other franchises or genres do we most want to have a comeback? The space-sim is certainly due a comeback, having failed as a genre completely in the pressured days before Steam. Freespace, Elite, Homeworld, Freelancer, or even X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter could bear a remake. In terms of strategy, rst-person strategy-action game Battlezone is probably also deserving of an update, as are Kohan, Z and Total Annihilation (Supreme Commander never recaptured the glory). The daddies of the strategy genre, though, are the ancestors M.U.L.E. and Herzog Zwei, revolutionary franchises with strange rulesets. Stretching to other genres, Twisted Metal and Carmaggeddon are begging for remakes, as are strange wizardyadventures Nox, Anachronox and Phantasmagoria. Finally, if EA is reading, a huge range of titles it owns from Bullfrog (Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park, Magic Carpet) and Origin (Bioforge, Crusader: No Remorse, System Shock) are due a revival.

Separate campaign and strategy modes promise a wealth of gameplay options

Fight your enemies on air, sea and land

The action takes place on the moon of Taurus

The climate changes dramatically from island to island

Vehicles are customisable

X-Wing: ripe for a remake?

facility hidden away in its interior This means deploying your vehicles and aircraft, to subjugate then hack internal defences in a mini-RTS, whilst keeping a sea eye on your carrier, to watch out for sneak attacks. Because this is mainly an open world game rather than a series of levels (except in the more arcadey modes), vigilance is essential to avoid being anked. Some missions may also involve purely rstperson shooter elements, which is ne, considering how solid the combat is. While this is going on, youre also getting resources from your captured islands, which youre using to manufacture the components for your various craft, weapons, facilities and island defences. You can also customise your vehicles for different functions a touch closer to X-Com than anything else, as you learn new tricks from the captured islands and upgrade your existing ships slowly. Watching it all on screen makes

it seem like secondnature, so simply and beautifully its implemented. Meanwhile, the enemy carrier is also trying to capture islands, so you have to choose how to customise your domain as defensive strongholds, as factories, as mines or as storehouses. As the islands are linked into a limited network structure that does have bottlenecks, its important that you dont lose key islands; youll get cut off from resources and your repairs and production will become impossible, creating a vicious circle. Different island types are better for certain types of facility and the climate can change substantially between them, from frozen tundra to steamy jungle islands, soggy marshes to volcanic mountains. The control system for ipping between the various units at your disposal Carrier, Walrus, Manta is beautifully seamless. Even the research, customisation and manufacturing inside

the Carrier is part of the main graphics engine, so you can segue effortlessly from that to the outside of the ship. You can follow a craft from basic resources to design to deployment to combat to death; a Tolstoyian vision of a crafts life. With simply enjoyable combat that rewards you taking personal control, its a strategy buffs dream, reminiscent of Battlezone or Dungeon Keeper 2. Were excited by Carrier Command because its a agship idea; a perfect reimagining of an alien but obviously compelling gameplay structure; the separate campaign and strategy modes promise a wealth of gameplay options. If Bohemia can just make it polished enough, and put some multiplayer magic in there too, this will be a welcome resurrection. Lets hope we can set sail soon. Dan Griliopoulos Carry on
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