Kevin C. Wong

Computer Game - Bomber Crew (2017) [/]

Bomber Crew is a cartoony WW2 bomber simulation game. In the base game (there are many DLCs) you have a Lancaster bomber with a 7-person British crew: Pilot, Bombardier, Engineer, Navigator, Radio, two Gunners. Each crew station has several functions and during a real-time mission you have to keep juggling among the crew to get them to do their tasks, though the only "click at the right time" task is bombing and photographing. All other tasks are more tagging a target or clicking a command and letting the crew do the appropriate task.

You get money and intelligence after each mission. Money to get more equipment and upgrade it. Intelligence unlocks new equipment (both the bomber and your crew have equipment). Crew gain experience and level up to improve their skills -- veteran crew can handle a secondary station which is a useful backup.

There is a main campaign of a fair number of missions. Each round you get a choice of missions and at certain points there is a required mission to move to the next phase of the campaign. There is also a challenge mode with special missions.

I played this game a little bit. Seems to play smoothly. I quickly discovered that I don't like the real-time nature of the game. Well, not so much the RT as that there is no way to pause the game. You can slow down time but that has a charge that runs out. I guess that makes it more realistic trying to handle multiple things especially a bombing run but I found it too much.

Strangely, I remember being able to do an RT bomber game with The Dam Busters but that had simple joystick controls and one-button to switch to each station. I just found it really hard to switch around the various Bomber Crew views and then issue orders. So a game that looks interesting but not for me.