Carrier Command: Gaea Mission. A game that claims to be, and I quote ‘a breathtaking combination of action game and strategy elements in a vast and detailed world’. Now, I’m having visions of Command and Conquer crossed with Halo after seeing a small amount of the build up to the game. How wrong could I be? I wouldn’t normally do this, but I’m going to steal a line from OXM (Official Xbox Magazine), because they put it so aptly. “This game is a soul-crushing farce”.
Gaea Mission, is a remake of a 1988 computer game ‘Carrier Command’. The game takes place on the planet Taurus, where the general objective is to conquer and control the planets 33 islands. And if you can look past the clumsiness of the game as a whole, you may well reach that objective.
What we have, in theory, is massive potential. A blend of strategy game with FPS and action elements sounds like a winning formula. Unfortunately all the potential makes for an even bigger fall of its arse. Within the first 30 minutes of the game, its limitations are clearly shown. You begin in a FPS setting. But boy does it seem dated and generally terrible. Even some of the features of modern FPS’ are absent – no changing weapons, no jumping, no sprinting, no reloading, no decent zoom of the weapon. All in all, it’s very poor. Added to this is the linearity of the first section, for a ‘vast detailed world’ I thought I’d at least be able to jump off a smallish ledge to get to my objective quicker, but no, thou shall not pass!
But it’s ok, because there is strategy coming up! If I could get away with putting a sad face emoticon in an article I probably would at this point. There seems to be too many fiddly options for a console strategy game. Had they been laid out differently, or stripped down slightly, it may have been more accessible to a control pad. As it stands, it’s much more suited to the mouse and keyboard of the PC user. Once you get going, you realise that path-finding hasn’t ‘found’ itself into the game, as the AI controlled units may aswell be sitting in the corner with their dunce caps on. It’s like watching a fly trying to get out of a window while observing the units trying to get past a rock to their objective point. They know where they have to go, but there is something in the way, I’m sure if they keep bashing into though, they’ll definitely get through. What’s that? It won’t? Because it’s a solid object? So I need to take control and thus essentially take the strategy element out of the game? Yes that’s right folks, if you thought you could play the game as strategy, you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. And so you are plunged once more into the action side of things. And vehicle units come with their own set of clumsy controls. It would have made sense to introduce Halo/Borderlands type controls to the vehicle movement, utilising both of the analog sticks for speed and direction. But using LS to determine both and RS just for the gun turret, makes you become as blundering as the AI.
I keep trying to find redeeming features for Carrier Command but I just can’t. There are so many downfalls to the game. Drab graphics are evident throughout. The cutscenes which I keep thinking are meant to be showing something dramatic, fall flat on their face with poor audio and voiceovers, some are even mostly silent. The strange decision to put an underwhelming English guy as the leader of a group of Americans. Falls of complete silence when vehicles are still for a few moments, leaving the island feeling even more lifeless than they already are. Unbalanced weapons, which are also inconsistent, sometimes your weapons seem far too powerful, and then the next moment it will be the enemies. I could go on and on.
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission stumbles at almost every hurdle. Unless you want an all around poor game then stay away. 3/10