Carrier Command (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
58Carrier Command is a futuristic military Carrier, Aircraft and Assault Tank simulator. Developed by Realtime Games and released by Rainbird in 1988. This game was years ahead of its time, and really shows off the early 3D which the Amiga could do very quickly. Let's take a look.
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Recorded: 24th Dec 2023
Edit Started: 28th Dec 2023
Narrated: 6th May 2024
Uploaded: 2nd Sept 2024
This game always seemed a bit too intimating as a kid, as I had it on copy, but never played it. A friend showed me how to fly around and do stuff, but I always thought it was a bit too deep and technical. Looking back, this is nowhere near as deep as you might imagine. Having watched the Lukozer video on the game, things began to look a lot easier. So I started the recorder and tried to take it on seriously.
The footage was a learning experience, as I knew what to do, but not how to do it - especially when it came to ordering new stocks. This is the furthest I ever got with it. Although the pro's suggest to lure the enemy carrier to one of your islands, and simply use targetable huge missiles from your ship to blow it up while it is occupied. So I guess the game does not have to last for hours playing the long game.
As usual, half of the long and slow time wasted travelling around the game world has been cut from the video. On the PC version, there is an option to speed this up, but on the Amiga, there is not much which can be done. The final assault on the enemy base was really a fairly feeble attack, and I didn't know that you can plant a base down to take over the old one.
Narration for this game was difficult because I've gone mostly deaf. I tried to speak how I used to speak, but it came out sounding very loud, like I am shouting. So please turn down the volume to avoid being shouted at.
Endless rendering issues, but it eventually uploaded correctly when set to 4K and 50fps. The footage was all recorded in QHD (2K) at 60fps.
Danscore:
Commanding an Aircraft Carrier had never really been done as a simulator before, especially not with filled in vector polygons, and a fast arcade flight and battle mode to play with, in a Real Time Strategy game. Just like Indianapolis 500, this game was ahead of it's time in every way. It was back-ported to the 8-bits, but for me this will always be a 16-bit experience. This showcased what could be done inside of an open world 3D landscape - something which is a minimum requirement today. It features limited A.I in the form of missiles, aircraft, and enemy attacks from a huge super-powered version of your own carrier. For me it goes into the same bracket as Hunter, Knights of the Sky and Elite 2, for it's futuristic real-time open-world butterfly-effect environment and physics.
And yet, attacking islands in the same way can get repetitive, and long journeys between objectives can seem like kicking around on a cruise ship, rather than planning to take on an enemy in a real-time war. I guess you could leave some of your tanks and aircraft parked up on islands, to manually defend them, but most times it's just up to the computer to do it all behind your back. If one of your vital islands falls, you are probably going to be several islands away by this time, and with no way to zip back and restore the breach. Unless you build military bases, each island will eventually fall, which makes supplies difficult to build and maintain support.
Air combat is rudimentary. Tanks and jets are very weak. And having a maximum load of just a few missiles means sorties are all or nothing. By far the easiest way to take over an island is simply use the deck gun, and take out enough of the base to drop down your own bunker, and it's job done. So the game robs itself of being enough to appeal to Arcade Action fans. And yet the interface when building and ordering supplies is not intuitive, with no ETAs to indicate development, or arrival, or stocks of raw materials. The enemy carrier is not even shown on the map. So Carrier Command fails to be deep enough appeal to most RTS fans, and seems a bit convoluted. I think there is a game here, and there is atmosphere, massive scope, and many lost opportunities, but this is without doubt a AAA game for 1988, and deserves at least 8.5 out of 10.