I felt my last Task Force Admiral demo clash went rather well. No US vessels ended up at the bottom of the Coral Sea. The Yorktown’s winged minions well and truly clobbered the Shōkaku, losing just one Dauntless in the process. And, with a little help from AA gunners, my CAPering Wildcats downed fifteen enemy aircraft without loss. When the outcome screen declared this impressive feat a ‘strategic defeat’ and a ‘tactical draw’, I sulked for a good five minutes.
Yes, my small flotilla of diversionary sacrificial lambs had taken a bit of a pounding, and the Japanese flat-top may not have actually sunk, but when I last saw the Shōkaku she was much more ‘roaring crane’ than ‘soaring crane’.
If you’ve not tried the TFA trial yet, I can highly recommend it. The learning curve is a tad steep, there are a few bugs, and the game’s internal adjudicator may leave you feeling a bit hard-done-by on occasion, but persevere… experiment… watch a few of the instructional videos that have been emerging…
…and burning Japanese carriers and happy fascination are all but guaranteed.
Doubtless solely because it was advertised on a certain glorified PC gaming blog, the Kickstarter campaign that launched at the same time as the demo, is going splendidly. All but one of DDG’s ten stretch goals have been met, and with 16 days of the campaign still to go, a clean sweep looks inevitable.
Thanks to the extra injection of funds, dynamic campaigns, visible crewmen, player-mannable anti-air mounts, and an orchestral score are on the way. Eventually TFA owners will be able to WASD warships and personally pilot warbirds, and oversee scraps involving Hellcats, Corsairs, and Essex-class carriers.
Thanks for the links to the guides. As a not-very-strategy-minded gamer, but someone who is a huge fan of PTO air/naval war history, and someone who still proudly displays a few old MicroProse game boxes, I eagerly pledged for the Kickstarter.
Then I downloaded the demo. I can see I have a steep-ish curve ahead for someone like me, but I have optimism that between sitting down with the manual, some guides, and setting up some simple scenarios and just poking around, that I can get a good feel for this game before the demo period ends. My goal is to enjoy the game as more than a collectible.