I always knew that Task Force Admiral was going to be something special when I first talked to Amiral Crapaud, some years ago, and we did a massive, 3 part interview on how Task Force Admiral came to be, and how the development of the game was going. In 2023, a “playable” vertical slice impressed everyone with the attention to detail shown to accurately simulate the carrier battles of World War 2 and its majestic graphics.
I was delighted when an invitation arrived in my inbox to give Task Force Admiral a proper, hands-on for the first time ever. After playing it for 6 hours, I have a lot I would like to share. There’s only one mission available, but it can take you quite a while before it’s over, so I think I got a good grasp on how the game is going to play and feel when it comes out. But let’s start with those who aren’t aware of what TFA is.
Task Force Admiral is a single-player strategy/wargame set in World War 2, during 1942, where you take the role of a Task Force Admiral, and must lead the American carrier task forces to victory. The game plays in real-time (with pause), and controls easily, very similar to something like an RTS. I would like to pick up on that.
After taking a read at the quick-start guide sent by the TFA team, I jumped into the game feeling a bit concerned about how much of a struggle it would be to control everything that was going on. Fortunately, those fears dissipated quite rapidly, as TFA does quite an admirable job of keeping everything simple and easy to control. Moving the fleet around can be done with a couple of clicks, setting up plane patrols is as simple as selecting them and setting some parameters, and dispatching strike forces is equally as simple. Now, keep in mind that you’re the admiral of this Task Force, so once your orders have been laid out to your strike forces, you won’t be able to control them, or micromanagement individual planes in any way. I personally enjoy that lack of control, since it allows me to sit back and see my plans unfold, for better or worse, and even appreciate the unique graphics.
This isn’t the same as saying that there’s not a lot going on, no. Not at all. The whole afternoon I spent playing the sole mission available, seldom were the moments when nothing was happening, and the constant tension of never knowing where the enemy is will always keep you on your toes at every moment. The first few moments of a battle will be spent looking over your forces and the map, comparing it to the briefing and trying to predict where the enemy is. You’ll then ready your flight decks to dispatch scouting planes, assigning them their slice of map that needs scouting, and waiting for them to report back. If a contact comes back positive, the enemy’s last position will be highlighted on the map. Now it’s up to you to try and reposition or decide to engage and start planning your strike forces. This strike force planning is a rather simple process that will have your units up in the air in no time: decide how many of each plane should compose that strike party, and assign them a party. If you want you can also pick their departing time to coordinate with other forces, from another carrier.
The hours I have spent playing Task Force Admiral made me realize how crucial timing is. Have your units go piecemeal, and they’ll be easily picked by enemy fighters and anti-aircraft guns. It’s crucial to coordinate efforts to amass a force strong enough to overwhelm the enemy air defences. This is easier said than done. You see, while you’re doing this, the enemy is doing the same, and if all your planes are out and about when they’re attacking, you’re about to have a bad day. Replaying the mission, I had my scouts wondering about when the enemy spotted my forces. Fighters were scrambled to intercept and managed to shoot most of the attacking forces down, with nearly all others being shot down by anti-air fire. As soon as the enemy attack wained for a bit, I readied my forces and launched a counterattack with everything I could muster, overwhelming the enemy ships and zeroes to pick off a carrier. Again, it’s all about the timing.
We’ve talked enough about the management aspect of it, but how do air battles go? I was surprised at how competent these digital fighter pilots are. They’ll manoeuvre realistically, evade pursuing bandits, and pick targets that make sense. Again, there are some wrinkles in this demo, plane on plane crashes happen a bit too often, and torpedo bombers hover a bit too close to the ocean, leading to hilarious and disastrous consequences. One time I had all of my torpedo bombers die because they were flying so close to the water that every single one of them met a bigger wave and crashed. I was laughing too hard at that. There seems to be some sort of physics at play, and I found about that anecdotally, when I say two planes crashing against one another, not exploding, and the American pilot tried to regain control of the aircraft, managing to wrestle the plane back into control after plunging into a freefall. I was very impressed by that. As for the way bombers work, I have not learned enough about dive-bomber tactics to give my opinions on that, but they feel right and coordinated.
The AI looks competent, but I would need more time, and different scenarios to formulate my final opinion. The same goes for the damage model on display, and I haven’t seen enough pilots trying to fly a damaged aircraft back home, and enough ships struggling to keep afloat, and behaving differently depending on the type of damage they sustained. I would be surprised, however, if this aspect wasn’t as detailed as everything else. One thing I still need to see is how ship-on-ship combat plays out, but I haven’t been able to do that yet.
I need to applaud the decision of Amiral and his small crew to develop such a detailed wargame, with equally detailed graphics. Task Force Admiral is stunning. Air scruffles and bombing runs look breathtaking, with ships and plane models looking splendid. The lighting is majestic, and the game’s massive scale looks downright imposing when you’re looking at it in 3D. Most of the sea-related effects look great, but I think the explosion effects could use some colour correction to make them a bit darker and a bit less flat. I would love to see them add crews to the ships, but I believe that to be a Kickstarter goal.
To round things up, I would like to emphasise how authentic and massive everything feels in this game, and how much freedom there is for experimentation with different tactics that stray way from their historical counterparts. I love that, and I’m glad Task Force Admiral doesn’t stumble into the pitfall of corralling you to use exclusively historically accurate tactics. Oh, TFA plays in real-time (with options to pause and speed up time), meaning that if you’re crazy enough, you can play this like a simulator and stay up for days like a real admiral.
It’s hard to put into words how impressed I was with Task Force Admiral, because it feels like a next-gen wargame, if that’s even a thing.
I don’t know when Task Force Admiral is coming out, but what I do know is that I haven’t felt this excited to go back and fight on the Pacific since I flew an FA2 in IL-2: Sturmovik 1946, in 2007, as a teenager. It feels good. It feels really good.
The Task Force Admiral Kickstarter campaign begins next week, and it’s all about giving gamers a good old 1990s experience, with a massive physical edition in those big boxes, so if you’re interested in that, go give them a look. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to Task Force Admiral.
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