Carrier Command 2... was announced on 15th Dec 2020 by MicroProse.
Now a lot of the modern kids wont know what this game is unless they played the poorly executed Carrier Command: Gaea Mission which was a remake of the original by Bohemia Interactive on the PS3/360/PC in 2008.
Carrier Command released in 1988 and was a masterpiece of gaming engineering in its day. Created on the Commodore 64, Atari ST and Amiga PCs, it was one of if not the most ambition game ever made on release. Made by Rainbird, a company no longer in existence and published by MicroProse. MicroProse sprung out of no where and announced the sequel last year. For those not knowing who MicroProse is, they were the company that started the Civilization and X-Com series and specialized in Strategy and Simulations in their prime days.
What is Carrier Command and why is it ambition and revolutionary?
In the days of limited hardware, Carrier Command pushed the envelope of open world games. You have one big open world filled with many islands that you are meant to visit and either capture or destroy. It started you out at 1 Island and your enemy Carrier at another, sitting on different sides of the map. The object is simply, destroy the enemy Carrier. Now this is a full simulation game meaning you have to deal with resources like Fuel, Repairs and building Units and supplying them etc. Traveling from Island to Island can take many minutes.
You can plant defensive mines in the water, your Carrier has a Giant Turret, a Repair system and more. You can choose to sail to an Island unmanned or go to an enemy island and expect a fight. You can create Mining, Production and Defense islands in the game. For example is you build a Defense Island, it will start off weak as you have to wait for it to be developed, once developed, its Defenses will change from Weak to Strong to Very Strong depending how long the island has developed for. All islands have to build up and nothing is instant. So attacking a undeveloped island will increase your chances. Each Carrier also has a number of compartments, like Engines, Hull, Turrets, Docking bays etc. Every square in the image below is a compartment that can be damaged.
You have a choice of Air and Sea combat vehicles. Air (Manta) is great at attacking defenses on an island and Sea (Walrus) which are the Units used to carry the Island Bombs and Base creator items, however they can also be equip with weapons if need be. Pictures below/
Reception: Carrier Command was named the 56th best computer game ever by PC Gamer UK in 1997. The editors wrote that it "packs more flight-sim, sea-sim and tank-sim action and strategy than a dozen of your so-called CD-ROM games could manage in a million or more megabytes.
For comparisons sake and for those interested, here is the original game on the Atari ST below. Keep in mind that this game was created on a 720kb floppy disk.
I could go on forever about this game, i was incredibly shocked to see it in the Steam Store waiting release. I am very excited and knowing MicroProse is behind the project has me excited. Either way, it's nice to see an old legend return.
Oh and i still own my copy.
