It seems a lifetime ago we were first shipped over to Seattle to see an unknown RTS title from gaming legend Chris Taylor. Since then we've followed Gas Powered Games' epic RTS from first hands-on all the way to the understated review disc plonked on the desk next to us. Has Supreme Commander changed much since we first saw it? Not really. Has it delivered on its ambitious promises? Absolutely.
But then we never did need much convincing; it's always been clear that GPG knows its stuff and its talent is unquestioned - after all Taylor did have a hand in creating Total Annihilation, one of the greatest PC strategy games ever conceived. After almost ten years in the think tank then, just how good is Supreme Commander?
BIG HUGE TA was a revolution in how we perceived a real-time strategy game's make-up. Gone were the rock-paper-scissor unit structures of Command & Conquer and Age of Empires, swept aside too were genre-wide conventions of hero units and manual build queues.
Perhaps most importantly though was how TA threw the limited build counts of its rivals to the curb, allowing you to fill battlefields with armies dwarfing those of Red Alert and StarCraft.
It's 2007 and Supreme Commander has upped the ante again; it is, easily, the most epic RTS we've ever played. Zooming in from the galactic full-command view to a wide-open grassy meadow, each tree blowing in the wind with amazingly lifelike realism for an RTS, you already get a grasp of the stupidly-massive sense of scale GPG is shooting for.
But fill that meadow with literally hundreds of gigantic siege assault bots, each with twin 6ft-long turrets, missile launchers and feet that shake the earth with every stomp, and we guarantee you'll go weak at the knees.
Back them up with a simulated attack bombers diving through the skies, and a truly massive experimental unit that requires a plasma screen nicked from the side of the Glastonbury stage to fully uncover, and you'll pass out in awe.
If that doesn't do the trick you could also drop a nuclear bomb into the mix as well, filling half of the already-gigantic map with blinding fire and destruction, with not much other than black debris left behind.
THE SUPREMES Slap bang in the middle of the FMV-powered plot are the Supreme Commanders themselves; men in towering Armoured Command suits used to warp straight to the battlefield and construct an army all by themselves - and this is just how a skirmish or single-player campaign starts out.
What's interesting about Supreme Commander's solo offering is how its missions seamlessly merge, dealing out whole new missions and objectives while avoiding tedious base-rebuilding and keeping hold of your hard-earned armies.
This is done by simply expanding the playfield after every job well done. For example a rookie commander landing at ground zero will have only a simple island to explore. Complete the first building objectives and the map will expand again to reveal the shore. Fight-out a small naval battle and the map will expand once more to reveal a second island and more objectives, then again after to that to uncover an entire chain of islands and so on.
This structure works very well, keeping your head in the midst of battle and throwing new challenges your way without having to brave the early stages of battle more than once.
MONSTER MULTI-TASKING With thousands of units and structures on screen, Supreme Commander would fail without a top-notch interface.
The full-strategic view is the most important piece of HUD-powering kit, allowing you to zoom out until your legion of tanks and warmechs are icons on a battleground-shaped chess board.
Top honours are also given to the queuing and waypoint systems. After an initial learning curve you'll be queuing an infinite build order of your own mix of units, and having them automatically deployed onto the battlefield to patrol the front lines.
While this system works well, it's inevitable that the incredible amount of action on screen demands some Olympic-calibre multi-tasking. On-screen indicators display how productive your war machine is at all times. Supreme Commander is not for the weak, and demands every ounce of your RTS skills if you're to succeed.
But when you reach this zen-like state of greatness, there's only one thing that can breach your shielded-up base walls; hulking experimental warmachines that take the crown as the biggest controllable units in any RTS ever. For a sense of perspective, the UEF Fatboy is simply too large to fit a default-zoomed screen and easily has the firepower to level an entire base all by itself.
Likewise the sacred assault bot - which looks a bit like a 100ft robotic drunken Frankenstein - truly dominates. Its laser beams make short work of lowly top-level assault vehicles, and the twin-mounted gravity guns throw aside any defence.
TOP COMMAND At a time when RTS has long-had only minor refinement to offer as its main point of sale, Supreme Commander's ambition and technical panache are welcome attributes in an increasingly stagnant genre.
Sup Com is very much a PC gamer's beast, and the supernova-sized war games may prove a little too demanding for anyone other than accomplished RTS players (our heads still hurt from the last LAN skirmish).
If only for its sheer scale and battle mechanics, this should be sampled by every RTS fan with a graphics card - and indeed, mental powers - that are up to the task.
Enter our competition to win a copy of the game, along with other Supreme Commander swag here
Have been playing the one map demo for a few days now and this game is awesome. GPG's has taken a simple game recipe and come up with something outstanding. All i've got to wait for now is my pre-order of the game and a copy of TA's core prime industrial area and then we'll have LAN parties for the next 10 years.
BTW, seeing as I'm out of work at the end of the month and trawling for a new QA job, I feel I ought to point out a typo: >> Verdict The most impesssive RTS game for a long, long time. <<
I'm struggling to see what warrants a 10 on CVG anymore. been playing a 1 map, 1 race, capped skirmish game. OVER and OVER and OVER, its amazing, I love the flexibility of it and its so easy to pick up and have a quick game of skirmish and come out totally satisfied that you spent 20 minutes doing something fun
Oh my word, remind me to stop playing the AI on hard!!!
Talk about annihilation, contstant low level attacks which forced me to invest in a decent tier 2 defense system, continual build up of enemy forces near me, including pinching all the decent resource spots. Thought I was holding out quite well, had built a decent set of tier 3 artillery with mobile flak cannons (since the AI was constantly attacking my shield generators with gunships). Was about to move to clear a nice path for my siege bots when about 10 gunships show up, obliterate my defenses in the blink of an eye. My AA shot them down and I thought the worst was over...
SPIDERBOT!! ARRRGH! It came at my weak defense side (that had just been blown up) and tore through my base and destroyed my commander in about 20 seconds flat.
I personally don't like this one at all. It looks and feels like a five-year old game, only bigger.
As best as I can figure out from three hours of the demo, the entire tactical side of the game consists of the same old routine of building up your base, constructing just the right mixture of units, then chucking them all towards the other guy's base. Same as the first Age of Empires, only on a bigger scale, and with the improved interface options that come as standard with all RTS games these says.
That's not entirely a bad thing, in most cases, but in this case the standard units are definitely lacking in personality, and because of the scale of this game, the graphics are entirely wasted, as the game is all but unplayable unless you zoom out to the point where they become naught but little dots, or more likely little red icons.
It's not a bad game as such, but I was at least hoping for something a little more innovative, instead of the same-old gameplay taken to a bigger scale. I can think of a half-dozen features that they should have stolen from Dawn of War, for instance, that would have to boosted this to being an all-time classic in my eyes.
Fair play to the developers, though. As a straight evolution of Total Annihilation, it looks like they've certainly ticked all of the boxes, and I'm guessing that fans of the first one will busy with this for years to come.
I can think of a half-dozen features that they should have stolen from Dawn of War, for instance, that would have to boosted this to being an all-time classic in my eyes.
I agree with SunScramble - so far, I ain't seeing much new here - just more of the same!! This is the same old clickfest gameplay we've seen hundreds of times already.
Having said that, the AI might indeed be better than anything thus far, it's just hard to get past the "been there, done that" clickfest feel
I've been lucky enough to have been playing SupCom since early beta and i have to say the game turned out awesome, although for me the transition feels fairly small starting out at beta build 2.0 and playing all the way release. The overal feel of the game is incredible, and now with the added bonusses of all music, FMV and single players joins i can say SupCom is truly a great game. The AI is a bit of a weakness, but only in skirmish, in single player it feels challenging enough
As for system reqs: i have an AMD X2 3800+, 2Gb DDR2-667, 256MB GeForce 7600GT and i can run supcom at 1400x1050 quite smoothly with everything on high except shadows and AA, but dont expect high FPS, because this monster needs CPU time by the bucket for all those simulated projectiles. Dual Core CPUs are a definate bonus, as that allows the game to split the load of all the calculations among the processors making it run much much more smoothe.
PS. one important note, dont have an Audigy audio-card, they're working on a fix, but at the moment the game will likely slow to a crawl if you have one. i dont know why it happens, but it does. And not even on all Audigy cards, just some.
The only thing it has going for it, is that its alright looking and you can have hundreds of units on-screen at once.
The problems I have with it are as follows.
-Crappy pathfinding. Ok, so theres worse, but is it too much to ask for units being able to find thier way out of a hole without messing up thier formation too much? -which leads to the second point: Lack of formation controls/any deep tactical elements. -Lack of any real tactics. I played the first two levels after my brother bought it this morning, I found them both to be the same. Build more than the enemy, faster than the enemy and throw them at each other. -The interface is silly. The layout is simple, but there isn't enough of the screen focusing on the worldview, instead taken up by the interface which makes it looks cluttered. -The nature of the game; the many units and the small worldview means that you spend 99% of your time zoomed all the way out. So whilst it may look pretty, to be able to play it successfully, you hardly ever see any of the units. -There really is nothing too it. It's just a flashier, futuristic version of the same old Age-Of-Empires format. Ok, sure, more units. But its the same emphasis on numbers over actual strategy. -Buggy as hell itself. Took me several hours to get the damned thing to even run. -Retardedly high minimum specs, which, to be honest, I really can't see why? It doesn't look any more graphically spectacular than many other titles out there, so why are the specs so high? -Un-interesting story/background. Already been done.
So yea. Big dissappointment. Game developers should stop spending retarded amounts of time on making the game look amazing, and spend a helluva lot more time on gameplay/story elements IMHO. The Game industry of late has gone seriously down hill.
Having bought this game on the day of release, and being a huge TA fan (been playing it right up until recently), I have to say that this game is utterly fantastic
It basically reminds me of all the good elements of TA, with much much more added into the mix.
Def one of the best games I've played over the past few years. Poor TA is never gonna be played again now lol
-Crappy pathfinding. Ok, so theres worse, but is it too much to ask for units being able to find thier way out of a hole without messing up thier formation too much?
agreed
-which leads to the second point: Lack of formation controls/any deep tactical elements.
Incorrect formation shapes are most definately available - there are plenty of deep tactical options though. Mainly in the development of how you choose to put your army together, or meet the energy requirements. In other words, the strategy is not on the level you are looking at it for.
-Lack of any real tactics. I played the first two levels after my brother bought it this morning, I found them both to be the same. Build more than the enemy, faster than the enemy and throw them at each other.
You choose to play like that - there are plenty of other ways to play.
-The interface is silly. The layout is simple, but there isn't enough of the screen focusing on the worldview, instead taken up by the interface which makes it looks cluttered.
Incorrect - the minimalist UI should sort you out.
-The nature of the game; the many units and the small worldview means that you spend 99% of your time zoomed all the way out. So whilst it may look pretty, to be able to play it successfully, you hardly ever see any of the units.
I quite like playing close up - you could get a second monitor of course.
-There really is nothing too it. It's just a flashier, futuristic version of the same old Age-Of-Empires format. Ok, sure, more units. But its the same emphasis on numbers over actual strategy.
Play onlne, and have that assumption removed
-Buggy as hell itself. Took me several hours to get the damned thing to even run.
I have no bugs.
-Retardedly high minimum specs, which, to be honest, I really can't see why? It doesn't look any more graphically spectacular than many other titles out there, so why are the specs so high?
I agree, but the focus is not on graphics - the card doesn't make nearly as much difference as you might think - its all about the CPU. Having well over 1000 units in a constant state of simulation can get process intensive. Surely you can see that...
Basically, when you have misunderstood so many of the basic concepts in gameplay, and even control, I think a large dose of RTFM is in order, next time preferably before you bring the rhetoric.
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The most epic game we've ever played
