The basics of the game are pretty simple. When you enter a
new sector, you'll activate the magnet on your home container to attract a wave
of new containers filled with all manner of items. Using your drill, hammer
fist, and a few weapons, you'll work you way through the various containers,
drilling out obstacles or making your own holes in the hulls (don't worry,
apparently the vacuum of space isn't that strong), finding special cargo boxes
that you'll need to return to your home container to increase your score, and
generally hopping that the next box you break or cargo you pick up won't
trigger a massive mutant invasion.
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| On popular levels you'll see where other commanders have died. So if you find an otherwise empty container with lots of bodies, well you just might want to have a few exits lined up before you grab that sweet looking piece of cargo. |
Some containers have special characteristics, like low
gravity, no gravity, or they rotate, making navigation harder. Then there are
some with special rooms that, because each level is seeded by the name it's
given, and thus a certain degree of random, are inaccessible due to the internal
structure of the container, meaning the only way to get the goodies inside is
to wait until the container collapses, which happens at the end of each wave
when a wormhole opens up and you must make it back to your protected home
container, because all the other ones will begin to fall apart.
You can never be certain what you'll find in a container,
and the contents will be hidden until you crack the hull open and peak inside.
You might find anything from an empty space, lots of boxes that you can search
through, or a deathtrap crawling with mutants that it might be better off to
pass over all together. You can fly around in space for a bit, either using
your natural movement or increasing your momentum by firing one of this game's
weapons in the opposite direction, in order to either skip a container or find
another entry point to your current one. However, spending time out in space
isn't really advisable, for a reason beyond that there is no air to breath -
spending too much time in space causes certain enemies to spawn, and the more
waves you survive, the more that will show up to spear you.
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| One strategy is to inspect the first container or two, then bypass the rest and fly to the last container, working backwards from there, since the containers don't all come in at once, and they disintegrate in reverse order. |
You do have options when dealing with your enemies though,
which can range from tiny little guys you can kill in one hit with your fist
attack, to fat ones that explode when they take too much damage or get close
enough to you, to monster guys that are only vulnerable to several explosive
charges. There are a total of 4 weapons in the game. You'll always start with
he Nailgun, which is a semiautomatic low damage weapon that begins to lose it's
usefulness as you face some of the tougher enemies in the game. It's at that
point that you'll really want to have found a Six shooter or a Blaster. The
Blaster is a double barrel shotgun that packs a punch, while the Six shooter is
a revolver like weapon that I tended to prefer for it's ability to pass through
enemies, effectively hitting several if they were lined up just right. The
final weapon you can unlock is the Magbomb, which fires a sticky bomb. You can
either detonate one individually by hovering the cursor over it and right
clicking, or holding down the fire button to detonate all deployed bombs at
once. Also be aware of the environmental means of defeating enemies, like drilling holes in the hull so they fall out, or shooting explosive boxes.
Both the character and the weapons can be upgraded, adding
things like a more powerful drill, more health, larger clips on your weapons,
or immunity to your own magbomb explosions. You do this by going to the upgrade
bench and spending caps (as in ball, not bottle). You'll get caps in a number
of ways, from finding them on the bodies of other commanders, to picking them
up when some of your enemies drop them on death, to hopefully finding a few
crates that carry a half dozen of 'em. Having the right upgrades, or using the
upgrade bench to purchase supplies like healing can-o-apples or ammo is
critical to surviving the work day in Cargo Commander.
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| Upgrades get expensive for the good stuff, like the final health upgrade, which takes your base of 3 apples all the way up to 5. It costs 20 caps. |
Unfortunately, you won't have access to the upgrade bench
when you start out because you need to unlock it first. You see, there are several ranks in this game, and the only
way to level up isn't from killing monsters and gaining experience, but by
finding new cargo. With 88 different pieces of cargo and only 6 or so types per
sector, you are encouraged to find new sectors to explore, provided you have an
available sector pass saved up - acquired by defeating a special container
between waves 4 and 5. As you rank up you'll also gain other bonuses, such as
starting with certain upgrades already installed or having a few extra caps to
spend from the start. All of these things increase the likelihood that you'll
actually complete a level, which means you've survived wave 12 or so, and have
a chance at setting a high score.
There are several things that I didn't like about this game
though - flaws ranging from the underlying mechanics to the lack of certain
keybind options. Several times I'd come across two containers where their
localized gravities were opposite, and since there was a hole drilled in each's
floor, I would basically yo-yo back and forth between the two, ending up somewhat stuck. Similarly, since, when you enter a container from space, the
character and screen rotate to match up with that container's gravity, at times
the screen would spin the wrong way, and I will fall right back into space,
rather than do a faceplant in the container. When you're on wave 12 and you get
5 space squids spawning every time you set foot outside, that get's to be an
issue. Other problems surround the weapon lockers where you find new guns
autoswitching your equiped gun, since you can only have two, even if you
already have that one unlocked, meaning that you would click on a locker with a
magbomb in it for the extra ammo it would give you, and then not realized that
your weapons had been switched on you, and wondering why your six shooter isn't
doing any damage to the wave of enemies that spawned. Still on the magbomb
launcher, the idea of holding down fire to detonate all bombs, rather than the
same button you use to detonate individual ones, was also not cool,
particularly since you cannot change that setting anywhere. Then there is a
problem with the high score nature of the game, in that the leaderboards only
records the top 50 scores, but only shows the top 15, and that it does nothing
to save your personal best. Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention the mutant
spawning crystals, which can be destroyed for points, and a bit of breathing
room, that sometimes would seem to be on steroids, churning out enemies by the
dozen, like this:
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| I actually made it out of here alive, although auto of ammo. Thankfully the container started to break up shortly after I took this screenshot. |
Initially I was pretty excited about Cargo Commander, after
I picked it up as part of an indie bundle. The game seemed pretty cool, from
the bundle video, and I did have a good amount of fun for the first bit. Unfortunately,
that's when it set in just what a grind this game ends up being. Put it this
way, to collect all 88 pieces of cargo, and even get all the achievements, it
took me 27 hours, and the game never really regained that initial sense of
enjoyment it had when I first picked it up. This could be a cool game if you
were interested in setting high scores with friends, naming sectors and seeing
how you fare against each other. Journey mode isn't too bad either, a special
mode you unlock at rank 6 that is simply about surviving for as far as you can
make it through a maze of containers, rather than bringing back cargo for a
high score. While I was initially more interested in this game, attempting a
100% completion, since, you know, that kind of part of what I do before I
review anything, really wore me down, and made me realize that this is just an
average short of highscore fest worth
$2.50 or so - 5 out of 10.
So, the final breakdown:
Score: 5/10.
Suggested Price: $2.50
*****
For more Cargo Commander, check out this collection of
various screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click any one for a full
sized image.
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