Bomber Crew: Take Off

Bomber Crew:

Time Played: 14 Hours, plus 2 Hours of USA AF expansion

Bomber Crew, the first game designed by two person indie studio Runner Duck, (and released in 2017) is a RPG-ish squad game, where the player controls the crew of a British bomber through the campaign of World War II.

At the beginning of Bomber Crew, the player selects seven crew member from a scenario akin to a prison lineup, but where all the characters have the same attributes, except those which are irrelevant to the game (gender, skin color, career). The one type of Bomber available holds seven crew members; a pilot, an engineer, a radio operator, a navigator, a bombardier, and two gunners. Each performs their own unique function. Crew members are a combination of skill level, a natural armor, a natural resistance to cold, and a natural speed. A surviving character's skill improves after each mission, while the other three attributes are altered, not by experience, but by equipment.
Aside from the Crew, the most essential piece of equipment is the plane. An Avro Lancaster, it contains a station for the pilot, engineer, navigator, radio operator, and bombardier, and also a front, back, top, and bottom turret. The two gunners are automatically stationed at the rear and top turret. One limitation of Bomber Crew is the player is not allowed to choose the starting location of each crew member. If the player prefers a different setup, they must reset the crew manually at the beginning of every mission, by ordering them to move around on the runway every mission. Therefore if the player would prefer their superior Gunner to be in a particular turret, they may have to rearrange them before each mission. There is nothing preventing the player from performing this task, except that it is prohibitively tiresome.

Over the corse of Bomber Crew, both the plane and the crew can be improved. A plane's upgrades includes weapons, armor, engines, systems (oxygen, electric, hydraulics, radar), equipment (first aid, parachutes, fire extinguisher), fuselage, and survival equipment (raft, homing pigeon). A crew member can be equipped with headgear, body armor, boots, gloves, oxygen tank, and outfit. These objects require two resources, FP and cash, both of which are earned on successful missions.
The Lancaster's improvements and the crew's equipment are limited at first. To unlock them one must acquire FP (which I assume stands for Flight Points). FP isn't spent to unlock items. Upon reaching a certain FP all objects that require the amount are unlocked, but the player's FP amount remains the same. For example, if one earns 500 FP, all 500 FP items are unlocked, but no FP disappears. After unlocking an item, its implementation must be purchased with cash. Cash, of course, is spent with each purchase. One of the strangest features of the game is related to FP. While objects are unlocked by FP, all objects aren't visible at the beginning of the game. Objects seem to appear randomly, when one approaches the necessary FP value. Therefore it is impossible to know how many upgrades there are prior to finishing the game, or how close one is to the next improvement.

After all one's cash is exhausted on crew and craft, the player enters the briefing room, where they have three missions to choose from. Each mission displays a limited amount of information, such as the distance, difficulty, objective, and possible enemy Aces. After selecting the mission, the plane appears on the runway, ready to go. A proper lift-off requires following a precise checklist. Start the engines, retract landing gear, activate the Engineer's Lean ability to use less fuel, and choose the correct heading. After that it's a slow cruise over London and toward the target. Since Bomber Crew takes place during WWII after the fall of France, the target can be anywhere from the Channel, to France, to deep in Nazi Germany. But the player can't travel wherever they wish, because they have limited control over their flight path.
The core mechanic of Bomber Crew is Tagging (also called targeting). Instead of choosing where to go, the game offers a destination, with a target above it. By pressing the space bar, the player enters tagging mode. Hovering over a target tags it, and the pilot flies towards it. Combat functions in the same manner. Gunners will not fire at enemy Junkers, unless the player tags them by the same method. Once tagged, gunners fire away. Targets on the ground need to be tagged to fly over them. Even though some missions have multiple targets, this mode of travel is incredibly restrictive, but Bomber Crew offers an alternative.

Upon reaching a certain level the radio operator learns how to auto-tag enemy planes, though there is a cool down, so the ability can't be used continuously. More importantly, the navigator unlocks the ability to set their own destination. This ability has no down time, and the player can continuously set new headings. But there are still more limits to travel. In Bomber Crew the pilot can fly the Lancaster at low, medium, or high altitude. To locate the direction of travel, the navigator must be able to see the ground. As one flies higher, visibility decreases, and when the navigator can't see sufficiently, no more location target will appear. With no visibility, the player can't set their own target either. Even flying at a medium altitude, surprisingly, reduces one's visibility quickly.
Travel also requires managing one's most valuable resource: fuel. It's almost unnecessary to explain, but without this, the plane stops flying. Remembering to retract the landing gear is the easiest, most effective technique to converse fuel. Activating the Engineer's Lean ability reduces the Lancaster's fuel consumption further. Even still, some missions require traveling quite a distance. More than once I was forced to make an emergency landing on British soil, short of the airfield. I'd hoped that upgraded engines would hold more fuel, but they merely improve the armor. These protect the fuel better because the tanks are less likely to leak when shot, but fuel remains a constant worry.
To wrap up, let's return to personal equipment. Bomber Crew contains an overabundance of items. There are too many to pick through, and the developers believe I care which are from the vanilla version, and which are packaged in the expansion. I really don't care! Bomber Crew tries to streamline the experience by offering presets for each crew member, but it doesn't allow the player to create their own presets.

More, next week, with a 2nd article about Bomber Crew.

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