Korneel van 't Land sent us the latest news about Carrier Command: Gaea Mission.
Bohemia Interactive has released a new trailer for their upcoming game, Carrier Command: Gaea Mission.

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Prague, Czech Republic, Thursday 30 August 2012

Bohemia Interactive has released a new trailer for their upcoming game, Carrier Command: Gaea Mission. This video, titled Xbox 360 Assault Trailer, shows bits of the story-driven Gaea Mission campaign combined with in-game footage captured from the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft.

Set on the breathtaking planetoid Taurus, Carrier Command: Gaea Mission offers a refreshing combination of vehicular combat action with real-time strategic elements. In the game, players take up the role of Lt Myrik, a battle-hardened soldier of the United Earth Coalition who has been deployed on a mission to defeat Asian Pacific Alliance forces in an area called the Dead Zone. In command of an armed vehicle carrier, players will traverse the seas to engage in free-roaming combat and establish a strategic network of island bases for mining, manufacturing and defense. The game includes the main Gaea Mission campaign, which also features on-foot FPS missions, and a mode similar to the original Carrier Command, called Strategy Game.
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission will ship for both Windows PC and Xbox 360 on 28 September in Europe and 2 October in North America.

Also, be sure to check out the E3 2012 Walkthrough Trailer to learn more about the unique blend of gameplay in Carrier Command: Gaea Mission!

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Sean Smith from godisageek.com reviewed the Xbox360 version of Carrier Command: Gaea mission.

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You may not think of it to look at the sort of stuff I usually play, but Carrier Command holds a special place in my heart. Rainbird released Realtime Games’ groundbreaking strategic vehicle sim in 1988, a game where you take control of a near-future robotic carrier in a battle for the ages with an opposing, superior, more tricked-out enemy craft, over control of a series of islands. It allowed you to play in two different ways, the full-on “Strategy” mode, or a more simple, action-oriented “Action” mode. For the time, the game had an outstanding sense of immersion, whichever way you played. Your carrier is crammed full of features, including remotely controlled vehicles that can be used to attack the enemy, colonise islands or even infect enemy-occupied isles using biological warfare to flush them out. You have to pay attention to your fuel, your shields, your weapons, your decoy flares. It is a tortuous, but rewarding affair. When it was released it received universal acclaim across the board. This was in the days before the internets existed and allowed people like me to write things like this, a time when the magazine was King. Publications I used to purchase regularly as a kid like Crash and Zzap selected it as their Game of the Year, heralding it as a classic and speaking about it in the same breath as Elite and Starglider.

I managed to save up enough pocket money to get the game for my Commodore C64. It was a terrific game, but was the version of the game without the brilliant 3D vector graphics, with the action taking place on a top-down map. Even the bloody Spectrum version had the cool 3D carriers, so I was a bit miffed in that respect. Luckily, around that time, I was spending a lot of my days staying at my Aunt & Uncle’s address. They were loaded, and my cousins had an Atari ST. I remember spending hours playing Carrier Command with my older cousin Lee, that and Wizball, and later on Ocean’s fantastic Untouchables tie-in. It is funny what you remember. Owing to the splintered nature of my family, I seldom saw my cousin in the ensuing years, until I bumped into him out of the blue in a pub eight years later. We spoke about old times, about how we used to play video games together, about family memories good and bad. We both remembered the ST and that pesky enemy carrier.
So when I learned that Bohemia Interactive’s years-in-development reboot was available for review, I decided to step outside of my comfort zone and take a look. My taste in games may have changed over the years, but this was a chance to look at what a big-name modern developer could do with what was a landmark, era-defining retro game, that I remembered so fondly.

Score: 8/10

David Jenkins from metro.co.uk reviewed the Xbox360 version of Carrier Command: Gaea mission.

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Complexity comes in many different forms of course and in terms of storytelling, and even most of the action mechanics, Carrier Command is so shallow you couldn’t even float a rowing boat on it - let alone a sci-fi aircraft carrier. But in terms of the complexity of its controls, interface, and non-linear progression Carrier Command is like something straight out of early ‘90s PC gaming.
In fact Carrier Command’s roots lay deeper even than that, since the original game was released for the Amiga and Atari ST in 1988. Back then it seemed a glimpse into the future, with a fully 3D world for you to explore - as you colonised a network of islands to create a supply chain capable of knocking out a rogue enemy carrier.

In its own way the story campaign is as ambitious as anything else in the game. But although Bohemia Interactive’s experience with ArmA (and DayZ) is useful when creating a giant open world environment their attempts at scriptwriting and pacing are painfully amateurish.

For the first hour or so you have to trot around an almost empty island shooting unthreatening robots and wandering down brown sci-fi corridors, in what to the unaware observer looks like the worst first person shooter since Daikatana.

It’s an inauspicious beginning, but as you commandeer an amphibious Walrus vehicle and steal a broken down carrier it still manages to convey an impressive scale to the impending action. Before long you’re making use of the overhead map to plot your course around the island archipelago and eventually controlling up to four Walruses and four Manta aircraft at once.

The story mode helps you out with objectives and strategic suggestions, only fully taking off the stabilisers halfway through, but the game is still more than happy to let you full flat on your face long before that.
Once you’re up and running properly the idea is that everyone stays at home in the carrier and the vehicles are all run by remote control, so that if they crash and burn you don’t. Since you can have eight active at once, all with their own complex waypoint systems and artificial intelligence routines, the overhead map ends up looking like an air traffic controller’s nightmare.

The interface is as intuitive as it can be, given what it has to do and the limitations of an Xbox controller, but that’s still not very intuitive at all. But that is kind of the point. If you can’t be bothered to learn how to play it then the game’s simply not for you, with Bohemia unwilling to dumb it down to reach a wider audience.

We haven’t even mentioned the huge freedom you have to customise the vehicles, turning them into fighters, infiltrators, anti-aircraft platforms, decoys, and transports. You have to manage the resources each island provides too, ensuring your carrier has enough fuel and that there are enough raw materials to build new vehicles and parts.

Hopefully by now it should very obvious whether this is the game for you or not. If all the talk of complex controls, open-ended gameplay, and unforgiving penalties doesn’t put you off then you’re in for a rare treat… literally. This is a game almost unique on consoles, and indeed on modern PCs. It’s a game that has no interest in mollycoddling its players, and one that dares you to learn its intricacies and tackle its seemingly impossible goals.

Score: 7/10

Here is another Xbox360 review for Carrier Command: Gaea mission (I promise, some PC versions are up next) this time by Martyn from popbucket.co.uk

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Carrier Command splits itself between a real-time action and strategy game, where the overarching objective is to conquer and control islands. In this game you get two modes; the strategy game which is very similar in style and mechanics to the original game and you’ve got the campaign, which is story-driven and essentially a one long drawn out tutorial. And believe me, you will need to play the campaign first. With the huge amount of information to absorb, from customising your units, ways to fight the enemy and how to build up resources, production lines and defense, you’ll need to understand all of this if you’re to win.
Sadly they decided to start this mode with a horrid FPS section which gives off an incredibly bad first impression. The controls are very stilted and way off the smooth and tight controls that we’re used to. The soldiers’ AI is poor, the reticule doesn’t change colour to indicate enemy or friendly units, the interaction and direction prompts are pretty much non-existent and you can’t sprint or jump. Quite simply, any progress that’s been made over the past decade in the FPS genre has been ignored here. Thankfully this doesn’t last for long before you’re stepping into the aircraft carrier and start commanding units. This mode generally plays the same as the strategy mode but easing you in with the controls and you’re just directed more in what island to take over next, therefore I’ll skip onto the meat and bones of this game.

With a 33-island archipelago to battle over, the central point of this game is your carrier, from which you can deploy and dock up to four aerial units and four amphibious units. With full control over any vehicle at any time, you systematically work your way through each island’s mission to take them under your control. But you do need to plan what island you want to take as each has various perks and benefits that will help you build up your strength. These come in three forms: islands containing resources which in turn will help the islands with the factories build units. These production line islands will then be protected by the islands that offer defense. What you don’t want to do is take just take over factory islands, as with no resources you’re not going to be able to replenish your lost units and you’ll fail.
You also get to make decisions about your development priorities, for example, do you focus on improving your units weaponry or armour? What supplies do you give your units; something to the hack enemy command structure or perhaps a scanner to detect enemy forces? What will most effectively dispatch the enemy; rockets or lazers? You have a huge array of options available to you, almost overwhelming actually.

Score: 7/10

Korneel van 't Land informed us Bohemia Interactive have released the Xbox 360 demo for Carrier Command: Gaea Mission.

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Prague, Czech Republic, Tuesday 11 December 2012
Sea trial - Bohemia Interactive has released a demo of Carrier Command: Gaea Mission on the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. By leading two exclusive assaults on the islands of Thermopylae and Granite, players are able to experience the refreshing blend of action and strategy firsthand.

Narrated by one of the developers, the demo kicks off with an action-packed sequence in which players control one of the amphibious Walruses. Once they complete their first objective, the demo fast forwards to another island. Here, the gameplay opens up and players will be able to switch between driving Walruses, flying Mantas and ordering units via the tactical map. Overall it takes about 45 minutes to complete.

Carrier Command: Gaea Mission features vehicular combat with tactical and strategic elements. In a massive open world - consisting of 33 unique islands hosting 6 distinct climatic zones - players are put in command of a futuristic military carrier holding multiple remotely controllable and customizable units. By traversing the seas and establishing a strategic network of island bases for mining, production and defense, players set out to conquer the archipelago.

The demo for Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is now available on Xbox LIVE (UK). The Windows PC version of the demo has already been made available and can be downloaded from here.