Taka-Haradin puolipeikko
Filthy Kalinite
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2015
- Messages
- 20,619
http://bombercrewgame.com/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/09/08/the-flare-path-museum-piece/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/09/08/the-flare-path-museum-piece/
Bomber Crew is warming its engines and waggling its flight control surfaces. On Oct 19th, if all goes to plan, a green Very light will fizz heavenward and anyone with £TBA to spare will get the chance to find out whether Runner Duck’s 3D-FTL-with-Lancasters is W for Wizard or S for Shite. The evening I’ve just spent with the single-mission sliver of preview code suggests the game will generate far more compliments than complaints, but won’t fully satisfy fans of No Moon Tonight and B-17: Queen of the Skies.
...
Tweaking everything from crew headgear to the armour thicknesses on specific fuselage sections in order to achieve double-edged, ahistorical performance gains? I guess some will enjoy the faffing, but to me it’s simply a tiresome illusion eroder, a cheap, discordant way of adding interest to inter-mission intermissions.
Things start improving when tyres leave tarmac. The dumpy 3D Lanc is a dear, the bobbleheaded crew hard to dislike. Moody lighting and clotted cream clouds encourage camera twirling and daydreaming.
Initial decisions are few, altitude choice determining flak and fighter vulnerability, crew comfort (higher = colder) and bombing, recon, and navigation efficiency.
You don’t actually ‘fly’ the plane or operate the turrets yourself. Your heading is set by switching to a zoomed ‘tag mode’ and placing a nav marker in an appropriate sector of sky. Combat is handled in a similar manner. When bogey blips appear on the GUI radar it’s up to you to quickly switch to tag mode, scour the sky, and centre each bandit in your reticule for a few seconds. Once tagged, Luftwaffe interceptors are automatically peppered by turret gunners…
…assuming those turret gunners are still conscious, and haven’t quit their battlestations to wield spanners or syringes.
Like FTL, Bomber Crew really blossoms when crewmen start keeling over and things start catching fire and spewing sparks. The preview mission is no cakewalk and a dramatically condensed map mean difficult choices aren’t slow in arriving. One minute you’re admiring a Lincolnshire sunset, the next you’re looking aghast at a cutaway bomber riddled with holes and awash with calamity. Should Woods try to staunch Taylor’s wounds or stay in the mid-upper turret just in case those Bf-109s return? Should hard-pressed Henderson repair the hydraulics or oxygen system first? If I order Walker to fly a corkscrew manoeuvre in order to shake-off that horribly persistent enemy ace, will Mackay, currently out on the wing fighting an engine fire, be able to hang on?
It will probably suck