![]() Bomber Crew's user interface has a few weaknesses that make the job a little harder than it probably should be. If something goes wrong, you can try again with a different build or take on a different mission first. Most of the missions are fun, win or lose, and every action you take offers tangible feedback for how to improve or unlocks new upgrades. Fortunately, most of the missions balance the challenge well and at the very least I was always engaged with keeping my bomber in the air, so I was never bored.Still, it rarely feels unfair because there are so many options for different approaches. With Bomber Crew, once you're in the air over Europe you're likely to face constant flak fire and enemy fighters until it’s over, so if something goes wrong it can feel like there's rest and no way out. Games like FTL are great because even though a whole run ends if you die, individual encounters are much shorter, and some locations are completely peaceful. A crash means restarting, rebuilding your bomber, and replaying the first half of what can be a tough 20-minute mission, and doing that a few times in a row is frustrating. ![]() ![]() In hindsight it’s clear, but it takes some trial and error to figure out.īut because the missions take place in real-time and you can’t save mid-mission, failure can feel like a major setback. Maybe if I had sent the engineer to revive a downed crewman instead, that crewman could have fixed the hydraulics, allowing the turrets to defend the bomber and preventing the engineer from dying long enough to fix the engine, and keeping the plane aloft. Gravity then took its natural course, and my bomber crashed shortly after, leaving me to consider what I’d done wrong. I sent my engineer to repair the engines, but he fell to his death when the next attack blew a hole in the plane. In one mission, my hydraulic systems broke, which meant my turrets couldn't aim at enemies, who promptly took advantage of that fact and set fire to my engines. Higher-level missions are daunting because a single mistake can doom your crew. Victory is a matter of experimenting with combinations of upgrades or running easier alternative missions that can make the challenging ones easier. Slow, piston-engined fighters are eventually replaced by rocket-powered enemies that are much harder to hit and can chew up a poorly defended bomber in a matter of seconds. After the training missions the difficulty ramps up considerably, and some missions will seem impossible when you first try them. “You’ll need them, because Bomber Crew won’t go easy on you. You have to make that decision while you’re juggling other tasks like lining up the plane for a run, extinguishing engine fires, and resuscitating downed crewmates. It requires careful coordination: you can’t drop your bombs without opening the bay doors, but opening them too soon slows down your bomber and wastes precious fuel. Targeting enemy fighters, picking destinations, and lining up bombing runs all work the same way: press the middle mouse button to zoom out into targeting mode, find your target, and hold your sights on it until the circle is filled. That’s mainly because you can’t pause to give orders, so the challenge comes from performing all the duties of a bomber crew, from gunnery to navigation to bombardment, at the same time. Its frantic real-time gameplay sets it apart from other ship sims, and there are lots of interesting options for tackling its tough levels.Like the classic roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light, Bomber Crew puts you in charge of a vehicle which you must staff and manage as it goes on missions, but the comparisons end there. Beneath Bomber Crew’s cutesy exterior is a tough-as-nails World War II aircraft simulation with an eye toward historical accuracy.
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