Carrier Command: Gaea Mission

 PC
User Score
5.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 74 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 74
  2. Mixed: 23 out of 74
  3. Negative: 25 out of 74
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  1. Caleger88
    Oct 7, 2012
    6
    This game is quite fun when you first start off but when you collect more vehicles the AI seems to die in the ass. they don't assist you, attack enemies. The enemy AI seems to be smarter than the AI that controls your side or drive the right way.The enemy AI seems to be smarter than the AI that controls your side....its really annoying because the game in other respects it really cool loveThis game is quite fun when you first start off but when you collect more vehicles the AI seems to die in the ass. they don't assist you, attack enemies. The enemy AI seems to be smarter than the AI that controls your side or drive the right way.The enemy AI seems to be smarter than the AI that controls your side....its really annoying because the game in other respects it really cool love the aircraft the most. maybe add robotic foot troops that can deploy from the Walruses would be cool too...the score is really down due to the AI being stupid....Sorry.… Expand
  2. Kauffy
    Dec 24, 2012
    5
    I was a huge fan of the original on the Amiga and will say that this is a very faithful copy (with hugely updated graphics) of the original. The AI pathfinding issues aside (which essentially ruined the game and consigned it to history's bargain bin), being such a faithful copy of the original has its own problems.

    The game was originally released in the the 1980's. We have all learned    I was a huge fan of the original on the Amiga and will say that this is a very faithful copy (with hugely updated graphics) of the original. The AI pathfinding issues aside (which essentially ruined the game and consigned it to history's bargain bin), being such a faithful copy of the original has its own problems.

    The game was originally released in the the 1980's. We have all learned a lot about UI, game design, and pacing since then. This one, unfortunately, retains most of the pacing of the original (that is, when there isn't immediate action going, the game PLODS)-- it is very easy to find yourself (as the player) stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for your resource network to produce much-needed supplies and then to be waiting for the supplies to reach your ship and, literally, while that's going on, nothing happens. If you're (un)lucky, the enemy carrier will attack one of your islands that you will be unlikely to reach in time, so at least you get a sense that something is going on somewhere, despite that being frustrating on its own. The player-controlled flight and driving are pretty gratifying, but these are isolated experiences inside an overly ambitious metagame. It seems really weird that after 20-something years, the only problem you would see with the original was that it wasn't pretty enough and you should have more weapons. Overall, it just doesn't really work as a game, either in campaign or in strategy mode anymore-- and I ~loved~ the original. If it's available as a bargain title (    … Expand
  3. khadgar
    Oct 11, 2012
    5
    The Good:
    * Island visuals, each with a distinct theme (snowy, temperate, etc)
    * Units & carrier look really good * Easy-to-configure controls, supports 360 gamepad natively The Bad: * The beautiful visuals are constantly obscured by excessive dust, snow, fog, haze, etc. * Repetitive mission types * Uninspired story * Lack of polish all around (ex- it plays the full tutorial    The Good:
    * Island visuals, each with a distinct theme (snowy, temperate, etc)
    * Units & carrier look really good
    * Easy-to-configure controls, supports 360 gamepad natively

    The Bad:
    * The beautiful visuals are constantly obscured by excessive dust, snow, fog, haze, etc.
    * Repetitive mission types
    * Uninspired story
    * Lack of polish all around (ex- it plays the full tutorial dialogue for firewalls every time you encounter a firewall, which is many times)
    * Player unit control is mildly clunky

    The Worse
    * Poor unit path execution; the game can find a good route for the unit to take, but the unit has trouble taking the route, getting hung up on rocks, buildings, walls, lakes, trees, or even open water
    * Enemy carrier 'AI' runs away at full speed 100% of the time for no reason in both campaign & free battle mode (bug? poor design? laziness?)

    Overall, I am giving this game 5/10, because that is approximately how much of the game I thought was good. I had a ton of fun in the first couple of missions of the story,but a little less than a quarter of the way through the campaign things started getting very repetitious. I kept playing to see what new technologies I would find, but nothing ever surpassed the basic laser I got early on. However, it's not a bad game by a long shot. One of my favorite things about the game was the ability to see, from first person view, the units inside of your carrier. They didn't just magically vanish and reappear when docking and undocking, you can see the space they occupy within the carrier which was really brilliant.    … Expand
  4. Ofca
    Sep 29, 2012
    7
    This game is good. With terrible AI and dated graphics amongst the largest low-points, it still managed to pin me for hours, with more to come. If you liked games like Homeworld for their management side, where you keep your units from mission to mission and have a mother-ship to upgrade, repair and keep alive, you'll feel right at home here and stay for hours.
  5. light487
    Oct 4, 2012
    5
    This is a really great concept that has been reborn in the current gen. The concept is inspiring and makes me want to love this game. I remember the original on the Amiga 500, so having this with new graphics, easier controls and generally everything upgraded was what made me buy it despite some mixed reviews. On the surface it is everything I wanted it to be but then as you get around 2This is a really great concept that has been reborn in the current gen. The concept is inspiring and makes me want to love this game. I remember the original on the Amiga 500, so having this with new graphics, easier controls and generally everything upgraded was what made me buy it despite some mixed reviews. On the surface it is everything I wanted it to be but then as you get around 2 or 3 hours into the game you lose interest very quickly as the vast amount of bugs, most notably the ground-unit pathfinding, keep rearing their heads. It gets to the point where you have to hand-hold and coddle the units; micromanaging every tiny little movement across the map.

    I gave this game a 5 because everything else about it seems really well done.. and has a lot of potential.. it just feels like I am playing an early Beta version of the game that it could be in another 6 to 12 months. So my recommendation would be to wait until the pathfinding and generally the entire AI system is overhauled. Don't bother wasting your money or time until that happens.    … Expand
  6. JerryYeh
    Oct 2, 2012
    5
    So, this game is made by Bohemia Interactive, the creator of ARMA. Since ARMA is a very realistic military shooter, as a player you would expect the developer would bring some of that realism to this game, right? But no, I was wrong

    At the start of the game you play as a infantry, as soon as you assume control of the main character, something doesn't felt right. The walking speed for    So, this game is made by Bohemia Interactive, the creator of ARMA. Since ARMA is a very realistic military shooter, as a player you would expect the developer would bring some of that realism to this game, right? But no, I was wrong

    At the start of the game you play as a infantry, as soon as you assume control of the main character, something doesn't felt right. The walking speed for instance, is like a unreal tournament crazy jumping character. It doesn't felt like a actual military character, more like a floating camera. It's hard to describe that feeling, but you get the ideal. So, when I encounter that first enemy, I realized I cannot aim down sight. Yes, I cannot aim down sight, even when the gun model clearly shown a red dot like aiming sight on it, I cannot use it, I can only zoom in like some older shooter do.

    Later on, you get the carrier, that pretty cool by the way. And launching vehicles and planes from it is quite awesome. But everything else fell apart when the first fight broke out. You can control up to 4 land vehicle at a time, like a RTS game. You can drag and select your unit, and right click on your target to attack, simple, right? No, If you rely on the Artificial intelligence to control your own units, they will be slaughtered, or they would get stuck on some most obvious terrain and cannot get out for some reason. These vehicles seems to be able to get stuck on anything, even on a totally flat surface. Or when a bunch of vehicles trying to group up to attack a target, they would keep bumping into each other and failed to get to my designated location after 5 minutes of struggle, and I have to assume manual control to get these cars out of each others way in order to allow them to reach their target.

    Weapons effects are not very solid, they don't have that kind of "X" mark in battlefield to let you know if you hit your targets or not, and texture are very ugly, i guess it' due to it needs to run on 360, so the textures been heavily compressed, but it looks pretty awful in some parts.

    Overall, I think this game has some potential, but wait until it drops to like 20$, I don't believe it worth the price as it is now.    … Expand
  7. TheBadGamer
    Oct 23, 2012
    7
    This is actually a remake of a 1988 PC game. At the time, Carrier Command was a pretty groundbreaking game. It was pretty (for 1988, of course) and very deep. This remake is a faithful update to that original formula.

    The game looks amazing. The carrier itself is very detailed, with tons of ports, bays and guns. The futuristic jets and tanks it launches are quite impressive as well. The    This is actually a remake of a 1988 PC game. At the time, Carrier Command was a pretty groundbreaking game. It was pretty (for 1988, of course) and very deep. This remake is a faithful update to that original formula.

    The game looks amazing. The carrier itself is very detailed, with tons of ports, bays and guns. The futuristic jets and tanks it launches are quite impressive as well. The only downside is that the gameplay takes place exclusively on islands, so the scenery can get kind of repetitive. The islands do have different climates and terrain features, however it feels more like a theme park than dynamic scenery.

    Unfortunately, a game's looks can only take it so far. The gameplay has to be compelling and sadly I found myself pretty bored after just a few hours.

    In story mode, you start out on foot with your squad invading an enemy island base. You traverse your way through some winding island paths and rust covered indoor facilities. Nothing about this first person on foot experience feels right. The gun feels lifeless in your characters hands because it has no recoil. You just point at an enemy, spam your fire button and they go down. And with no real visual indicators, you can barely tell if you are actually hitting your target until they fall over dead.

    This takes about 30 minutes to complete. Which is good, because the on foot first person gameplay never comes up again. You find your carrier and add a ground vehicle. From there you go from island to island, defeating enemies and gaining more vehicles. This should only take you a few hours and will get real boring, real fast.

    The RTS portion of the carrier is decent You queue up ground and air vehicles, and upgrade which attachments they get sent out with. And the transition from RTS to FPS is seamless. You deploy your units from the carrier, issue them commands via the minimap, then click on any of their icons to instantly gain a first person view of that vehicle.

    You will be commanding your vehicles quite often, because the AI pathing is just dumb. They will drive into the walls of an island base over and over again while being shot at. They will get stuck on rocks. They will fly in circles instead of getting to their waypoints. If you don't micromanage every vehicle almost all of the time they will get themselves killed. Which is unfortunate, because that is the most challenging part of the game.

    The enemy AI isn't much smarter. They seem to have set zones where they will patrol, so it doesn't take much to find a spot where you can destroy them without taking any damage yourself.

    Everything about this game has the potential to be great like its 1988 predecessor. It just isn't strong enough in either its RTS or FPS portions to be anything more than mediocre, which is just a shame.    … Expand
  8. Want2Game
    Oct 3, 2012
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This game is based on an old game-title from the 80's called Carrier Command. And as a kid I played it on the Amiga, Spectrum (emulator) and PC. The idea; to conquer islands of different kinds and build up a supply-chain, are an extremely fun addicting one so it was one of my favourite games of all times. So came the day, another remake came out so I had to buy it. Since I never buy and play bad games, I don't have time for the bad ones really, the start rating is 10. It is no exaggeration to say that I expected this game to be better, meaner and so fourth, on every level than its 'predecessors'. First out is the graphics. I found it to be very pleasing to look at (on my mid-range-computer). No doubt this is an enormous improvement (haha). People these days are so spoiled with good graphics so no tears there. No change in score. It is still 10.

    So how is the gameplay? Well, even here there are huge improvements of course compared with the old variants. One must know that there were no AI, except for a "go-to-waypoint"-AIs without pathfinding for the player available in these days so the walruses and mantas could die any time you looked away.

    Sadly enough the first thing that strikes me is the bad AI available for the player. First the path-finding doesn't work very well, so you need to babysit the walruses so they don't get stuck or do some really silly manoeuvres. Second, I had trouble cancel orders, like the assist-order. It wouldn't stop until it docked so to speak. This means that you need to babysit your walruses and mantas just like in the old game (but OK AI are still much better). Walruses can do neat things like hack, or resupply themselves (on an island) if you order them to.

    But overall AI feel incomplete so there goes two point down to 8.

    The campaign is quite fun, you start out as a soldier and advance to be a "Carrier Commander" and let you into the game quite smoothly. The campaign let you to familiarize yourself with the different controls and weapons while telling a default kind of we-have-heard-it-before-story. One time I fought an Island in the beginning of the campaign for hours and wasted a lot of resources.. You better pick you fights! Since some parts are FPS-mode, some missions are on different islands and in buildings. This is an OK element, and you notice that they have put a lot more effort on the rest.

    The missions in themselves are fun, you can do so much more now on the islands than in the distant past and there exists different environments you must take in consideration.

    If you play this game for hours in a session, like I did, you might get CTD's. This is because the current version of date of this message have numerous and obvious bugs in it. Here is a sample list: * Missing sounds on different Islands. One Island may have thunder and rain sounds, but is missing on the next.
    * Graphical bugs. Textures may go missing (memory leak?) after a long session.
    * CTD's Transitions between game-modes, from an area to the next (like entering a building as soldier) may cause random CTD's. * AI is also buggy, hard to cancel orders like assist.
    * Campaign got bugs in it. For instance you might trigger an old mission if you take back an island you lost.
    Due to the bugs and the feel of "incompleteness" I slash away 3 points more to 5.

    So after a while you get used to avoid the bugs and it really feels like Carrier Command! I really do like the game so I hope they fix the bugs.    … Expand
  9. Vas
    Aug 6, 2013
    6
    Currently I rate this as a 6, as I think they have done great so far. The problems people stress out as being unplayable are not fully true. The game is playable, the AI may be bad at times but it doesn't completely ruin the game. AI have had improvements since most of the reviews I have seen as well. I will edit my review of this game after the next planned update but for right now,Currently I rate this as a 6, as I think they have done great so far. The problems people stress out as being unplayable are not fully true. The game is playable, the AI may be bad at times but it doesn't completely ruin the game. AI have had improvements since most of the reviews I have seen as well. I will edit my review of this game after the next planned update but for right now, as it stands;

    Pros:
    Amazing graphics. Just the most beautiful graphics I've ever seen.
    Long interesting campaign, though sometimes seems unfair but it is fun overcoming the overpowered enemy.
    Strategy mode makes it so no play through is the same and you can customize it to be more fun for you.
    RTS or FPS, it's your choice. I choose FPS 90% of the time.
    Manual Saves, these saves save everything to the last detail. Most games now days make you use save points so you can't just click save and run off, you have to get to a checkpoint and or quit and redo everything from that previous checkpoint which can sometimes suck.

    Cons:
    Buggy, has plenty of bugs that you may discover such as AI.
    Random crashes, Every once in a while, the game will crash or freeze. Luckily the game auto saves each time you visit an island even in strategy mode.
    Slow to be fixed, the devs have much larger projects on hand most of the time so updates to fix the game are slow but as I discovered, are still happening.

    I would like to give this game a positive review, but I'll wait and see if they fix some of the bigger bugs before I amend my review. As it stands, I would definitely recommend this game to a friend. It's definitely worth the look if you are curious about the game. Try to get it though when it's on sale though if you are afraid you may not like it.    … Expand
  10. NLS
    Jan 21, 2014
    7
    it's not bad. I still gives you the feeling the original CC had (like Mass Effect and unlike X:Rebirth - but let's get back on topic), that your ship is your home. Graphics are ok. Pathfinding could be better. The mechanics work though. Could be better, but it's still more than "ok". Would love to see a II based on this, though unlikely because I doubt the sales went too well. Get it forit's not bad. I still gives you the feeling the original CC had (like Mass Effect and unlike X:Rebirth - but let's get back on topic), that your ship is your home. Graphics are ok. Pathfinding could be better. The mechanics work though. Could be better, but it's still more than "ok". Would love to see a II based on this, though unlikely because I doubt the sales went too well. Get it for very few bucks in Humble Weekly Sales (if you read this the last week of January 2014 that is).… Expand

Awards & Rankings

71
#71 Most Shared PC Game of 2012

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
60

Mixed or average reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 23
  3. Negative: 3 out of 23
  1. PC Master (Greece)
    Feb 6, 2013
    76
    A.I. problems and hollow FPS segments aside, CC:GM offers a kind of gameplay that we don’t see that much these days. It remains faithful to the original Carrier Command, modernizing the basic recipe with an improved interface and meticulous tutorial, and grants complete freedom to the player, in game-changing decisions. [November 2012]
  2. Pelit (Finland)
    Jan 23, 2013
    75
    The patch fixed the awful route AI, and now the game is OK'ish, but somewhat bland. What it still most needs is more speed, both for the game and vehicles, and much less waiting. The FPS parts are as awful as Mr. Myrik's nasal British accent. [Jan 2013]
  3. Hyper Magazine
    Dec 17, 2012
    40
    Terrible AI, poor controls and questionable design decisions. [Jan 2013, p.66]
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