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.
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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