Carrier Command: Gaea Mission Review (360)

What is it?
A RTS/Shooter cross-over, with elements of both in gameplay, but with neither being a requirement to complete the game.

Is it fun?
… Arguably? It’s very slow-paced, and takes a while to adapt to the controls, but after a few hours you do get into the flow. Fun in a chilled out, relaxed way.

Is it worth the money? £32.99
I’m afraid, unless you’re a fan of EVE Online or have always wanted a slow-paced RTS/Shooter hybrid to chill out with, probably not.

Why?
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission has what is debatably the simplest RTS/action game currently on the market as far as set up goes. You have control of three vehicles, The Walrus – the ground unit, The Mantis – the air unit, and The Carrier – the battleship where you dock them. Outside of that you can customise them as much or as little as you want as you unlock equipment, add ons, weapons and the such. The fate of the planet is at stake and your leadership may well be your only hope. You can’t beat the simplicity of the setup.

To quote myself from my own preview of the game a few weeks back: “The game is based around the same idea as the 1980?s original. You captain a naval carrier loaded with vehicles, which you then use to seize islands, and attack until the enemy has been erased from the face of the planet. What Carrier Command does differently however is that it blends Real Time Strategy (RTS) elements with more action-orientated gameplay.” Now, I feel it’s worth stating that at the preview I was quite excited about Carrier Command: Gaea Mission. It seemed to have great potential and seeing it in person made the gameplay look fantastic. It wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped.

I spent hours with Carrier Command – many hours – but I failed to complete the campaign. Not because it was too difficult, or because it was so terrible that I hated it, but because it took so long to do anything. It was relaxing, bizarrely, nearer the end to kick back after organising my troopers to go to their selected destinations and drink a cold Monster Energy beverage, but it wasn’t efficient in any sense of the word. It took me a solid 3 hours to adapt and learn the controls of all the vehicles. Single joystick controls for vehicle movement is not recommended to anybody ever.

There are a few key faults which are apparent within the first hour of playing: clunky controls, confusing mission objectives, long waits between islands and objectives, and absolutely shameful AI. Not to mention a totally-out-of-left-field FPS opening hour with no jump button, which really bogged the game’s opening down. The FPS elements return a few times but never again to that extent. I want to note that I take no pleasure in these descriptions because the idea and intentions behind the game I really enjoyed. I liked flicking back and forth between the map and my unit of choice during battles, doing multiple commands across the map, leaping from air to ground at a moment’s notice – all of those are terrific and I enjoyed those aspects.

However, when I am sat watching the AI headbutt each other because they’re going opposite directions on the same road until one explodes, getting stuck on trees, driving into ditches while heading down the wrong road, shooting allied units, refusing to shoot enemy units, and constant issues of stopping and starting it’s just painful to watch. The objectives are already difficult enough to find as they don’t appear on the map screen unless you’ve already been to the area they’re in. Aerial reconnaissance is a skill you have to use unless you plan to spend 30 minutes finding the mission objective.

I actually had to call in a mediator to watch me play just to clarify it wasn’t me being stupid because I didn’t believe that any AI in 2012 would sit spooning a rock over and over again while heading in the wrong direction to the objective. Especially in a game where AI is almost mandatory in doing 50% of the workload to complete a mission. At first it was laughable, but as the missions got longer and harder it became flat-out shameful. You need the AI in this game to be able to pull its weight, or at the very least not hinder you at every ditch by the side of the road, because trying to simultaneously control 8 vehicles would be insane. Plus, a lot of missions require you to do more than one objective at the same time so you’re left with little recourse but to trust the AI in one form or another.

Carrier Command isn’t bad. The core of the idea is still enjoyable, slow-paced, strategic, large scale action-orientated warfare is a great one. There are just some large, unforgivable faults to have to take into consideration. If the AI’s path finding was patched, and the mission objectives more clearly labelled, I think I’d be giving this a recommendation. As it currently stands though, with AI this broken, I can’t honestly say this is worth it unless you can find it cheap or want to see the spectacle for yourself.

Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is out now on Xbox 360 and PC.