 Review By: David Pulgar |
Developer: | Gas Powered Games |
| Publisher: | THQ | |
| Genre: | RTS | |
| ESRB: | Everyone 10+ | |
| # Of Players: | 1-8 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | N/A | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Supreme Commander (SC) is Gas Powered Games’ (GPG) epic strategy game. With Chris Taylor, the creator of Total Annihilation, at the helm, GPG creates a title that puts the Strategy back in Real-Time Strategy. Maps are large, units are numerous and really big units look REAL big. Everything about SC is refined and brilliantly executed. But enough embellishing. Let me tell you why SC is so good.
It’s 3844. Mankind has colonized the stars. There was peace for some time, but (to quote the game) “eventually man’s base instincts take over.” War breaks out and this is where players come in. Supreme Commander is the story of three warring factions: the United Earth Federation (UEF), Aeon Illuminate, and the Cybran Nation. As a commander for one of the three, gamers can play through campaign missions to help end the Infinite War, which has raged for 1,000 years. Story-wise I believe SC has great depth when compared to other strategy games. Each side depicts a storyline skewed to the principles and characteristics of that faction. This helps differentiate the three groups, which otherwise play the same. And that’s my only quarrel with SC. All three factions are almost identical. With the exception of their experimental units, the UEF, Aeon Illuminate and Cybran Nation are indistinguishable. That said, the campaign is engaging and helps to slowly introduce players to SC’s epic battles.
Navigating the battlefield will immediately cue gamers into SC’s sense of scale. There is no mini map. Instead, players zoom in and out using the scroll wheel, ala Google Earth. Watching your unit shrink from a detailed model to a spec on the planetary map illustrates SC’s massiveness. When fully zoomed out, units are depicted with an icon. Tanks, assault bots, aircraft, destroyers, etc. all have different icons to represent them. A notch at the icon’s base tells gamers whether the unit is tier one, two or three. And that brings us to technology tiers. Supreme Commander is all about advancing your army through the technology tree. There are three tiers of increasing strength. The trade off is advanced units, while stronger, cost more and take longer to build. But players WILL need them. One tier three unit can wipe out tons of tier one units before dying. Players move through the technology tiers by upgrading their individual factories, which are broken into land, sea and air. Upgrading a factory does not upgrade all other factories of the same type. Players must choose when and which factory to upgrade in order to ensure the right mix of units.
Automation of tasks makes it easier to work with SC’s large scale. Unit build lists can be created and repeated without having to return to the factory. And when a unit is created, players can already have a detailed route planned for all units from that factory. A great example is when I was ferrying troops to the front lines of a battle. Yes, troop transports are important in SC and come equipped with a “ferry” option. By setting two ferry points and linking a factory’s rally point to the ferry location transports will automatically pick up units and transport them across great distances. This is a prime example of SC’s detailed control scheme. Micro-managing certain tasks, like troop movement, is much easier. But don’t think you can catch a breath. You’ll need to be investing that extra time in monitoring the front lines. Building construction also works in a similar manner. Selecting an engineer, or your Armored Command Unit (ACU), and holding down the shift key allows players to create building construction cues. Yellow icons depict what needs to be built and a yellow line shows the order. There are even ETA stamps to show how long it will take for everything to be completed.
Posted: 2007-11-06 14:13:38 PST