Australian Gamer Review :: Supreme Commander

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Supreme Commander

Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC

This game is to a Real Time Strategy game what the big Pineapple is to a fruit. This is RTS supersized.

Players: 1-8 Players
Genre:
Release: 2007-04-22

Developer: Gas Powered Games
Distributor: THQ

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If there�s one thing about Australians, we like big stuff. There�s the Big Pineapple in Nambour and another one in Gympie, the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour and the big Merino in Goulburn. We�ve also got the big Rocking Horse in Gumeracha, a big Lobster in Kingston, an Orange in Berri, an Oyster in Taree, a Marlin in Cairns, a Miner in Kapunda, a Koala in Dadswell�s Bridge, a Humpty Dumpty in Mildura, a Crocodile in Wyndham, there�s Brett�s Big Hand in Perth and you should see the size of my... *Matt slaps Samo across the face with the big trout from Adaminaby* FEET DAMNIT! I WAS GOING TO SAY FEET! I�m really only scratching the surface. According to Big Thing repository, there are 146 big things in Australia. That�s somewhere one big thing per 139,000 people. Queenslanders are the biggest big thing nuts, having the highest concentration of big things per capita, while, aside from ACTians because their result is superfluous, Victorians are much closer to sanity and have the lowest.

All this big love brings me very neatly to the new game I�ve been playing over the last few weeks; Supreme Commander. This game that will herein be known as SupCom, is to a Real Time Strategy game what the big Pineapple is to a fruit. This is RTS supersized. Unlike the big pineapple though, SupCom is much more than a shiny novelty empty fibreglass structure that you visit once or twice in your lifetime. There�s plenty of substance that makes this game well worth a re-play or seven.

Supreme Commander is, in essence, the successor to the acclaimed title from 1997, Total Annihilation. This time around there�s a new development company and a new publisher but Chris Taylor, the man with the plan is the same. Gas Powered Games, Monsieur Taylor�s dev company has done an outstanding job making this game feel truly epic. It is the arrangement of sheer scale, sound design and an epic backstory that makes SupCom feel so massive. It may also have something to do with the gargantuan system spec required to run the game. With a decent system, SupCom is an extraordinarily pretty game. There are some excellent display options that can make the game look like Total Annihilation or worse if your computer is struggling but realistically, if your machine is more than a couple of years old, it�s going to struggle.

The scale of SupCom extends into the gameplay, which is paced like lightning and extremely well balanced. It is, however, a very tiring game to play. One hour with an RTS usually feels like half an hour, but with SupCom, a small game can feel like it�s taken an age. Gas Powered Games have focussed very heavily on removing unnecessary micromanagement from the RTS equation, allowing the player to spend their time concentrating on strategy. I know that comment seems to defy your expectation in terms of stress and concentration but because micromanagement is less of an issue with SupCom, the speed and precision of the game is properly intense, potentially making a single bad strategic move catastrophic. It�s true that because of the minimisation of micro, there is a certain amount of AI control of your units on the unit by unit scale. This is the element of SupCom that would either make or break the game and I�m happy to report that GPG has certainly nailed it. The AI in your units will do the right thing 90% of the time and in battle, automatic target prioritisation is excellent which allows you to focus on the bigger picture. It�s beautiful to play. The strategy has finally been put front and centre in a strategy game so you can trust your units to fight intelligently while you focus on your naval assault or the other armies you have ready to flank the enemy you�re holding with team one.

Speaking of the bigger picture, SupCom has employed a very clever and extremely handy zooming system that completely negates the need for a mini-map in the head up display, even though one is still available. On your mousewheel you have the ability to zoom from a position so close you might as well be standing on the ground right out to a point where you can see the entire map or �Theatre of War� as the marketing buffs like to call it. Additionally, the zoom always centres on the mouse pointer which completely negates the need for side scrolling. This system is as natural as walking and in the first 10 minutes of playing I�d completely adjusted. I�m willing to stick my neck out and say it�s the best innovation in Real Time Strategy games since their creation, it allows you to move around the battlefield with unmatched fluidity, pace and perspective. You�ll never find yourself disoriented at all making it very easy to stay focussed on the task at hand.

The other revolution in RTS comes in the form of order stacking. The system was in place in Total Annihilation, but the SupCom version makes it feel rudimentary at best. By holding down the shift key, you can issue multiple orders at once to one unit or a team of units. I can queue up an engineer unit to build a factory followed by a series of power plants or send a unit on a specific route with a series of waypoints set out around a hotspot for instance. This route is all mapped out on the ground and when you hold the shift key again, all the unit routes are displayed so it is very easy to keep tabs on which units are doing what. Patrol commands have always been rather vague in RTS games and this order stacking and mapping allows you to set out waypoints on a patrol route making the whole system very transparent and easy to use. More important than ease of use though, is how easy it is to keep tabs on your units. Especially when you�re commanding armies of 500, 600 units plus, you need to be able to keep up with what is going on.

Possibly my favourite thing about TA and now SupCom is the resource system. Instead of using traditional hunter/gatherer systems with limited resources, SupCom has two resources, mass and energy, both of which are in infinite supply. So your economical performance is based not on how well stupid AI units move from a resource site to a dumping ground but on how well you balance your economy in terms of supply vs demand on the two resources. Obviously if construction and usage demand outstrips supply, your fledgling army comes to a standstill. Because there�s no hunter/gatherer unit there�s no dumb AI gathering resources and there�s no waiting on loads or resource grinding. Just a constant smooth supply.

The story of the game is based around three factions that have split from the old Earth Empire. There�s the United Earth Federation (UEF) who are the remnants of the Empire, then there�s the Cybran Nation, a symbiotic human/AI race that are liberating all of their kind from the control of the Earth Empire and the Aeon Illuminate, religious nutters who are trying to forcefully persuade the galaxy to join �The Way�. In the not insubstantial Single Player mode there is a campaign for each race, each with 6 missions lasting around about 2 hours. The missions are stepped, so you start with a relatively small battlefield and an initial objective and as you complete objectives, the map expands with some new objectives.

The factions are very well balanced and reasonably similar. Each faction has a similar tree in terms of comparable units, but the strengths, weaknesses, features and weapons of the units can vary wildly across the 3 factions. The UEF for example, are very strongly biased towards classical bullet type weapons and traditional technology styles. The Cybrans are much more laser tech oriented and the Aeon are a bit sneaky and more biased towards cloaking and other random technologies. This makes for interesting fights in the multiplayer skirmish modes. Each faction suits a different type of gameplay better. I know I seem to be the strongest when playing Cybran, although my housemate�s playing style seems to favour the Aeon. The skirmishes are brilliantly set out and the maps are well created, with challenging yet crucial hard points and various methods of winning. You really do start the game wondering which strategy your opponent will be using. Will they do a constant low tech unit rush? Or are they going to build the tech tree and hit me later with some level three units? Both strategies are just as effective as each other on most maps, then you factor in possible aerial and naval assaults and the infinite combination you can have of each. There are so many possible approaches that are just as legitimate and as strong as the other and some will suit your style better than others. On the smaller maps, a full game can be as short as half an hour or even less, so the speed of the game really is sit down, shut up and hang on! The real game breaker comes in the form of experimental units. Monstrous monstrosities with firepower so huge that even George W would be jealous and we all know he loves his firepower. The experimental units have the power to sway the game. They also have the power to completely turn the game on its head. They do have their weaknesses so they aren�t always the game winner but depending on the stage of the game or the size of the map, they certainly can be. That makes technology advancement crucial. If you�ve been trying a low level flood strategy without upgrading your tech and an opponent gets an experimental unit then you are finished and you won�t even make a stand regardless of the size of your force.

The online facility provided by Gas Powered Games is absolutely superb. It�s a little desktop application called GPGNet that hosts a chat and naturally, it displays available games and rankings. Where it really shines though, is in the little extras. Things like the ability to set up a clan and manage the clan through GPGNet. My favourite feature though, was the replays. At the end of a multiplayer skirmish, players have the opportunity to save the replay to GPGNet which is accessible to all users. So if you just got the caning of your life, you can go and download a replay of one of the top ranking players and have a look at how they play. Say you�re going to have a ranked match against an arch enemy, you can do your homework and find out how they play first. Neat Huh?

The dev team have focussed very very heavily on removing unnecessary management from Supreme Commander to focus on what should be pivotal in an RTS game. Wartime strategy. This makes Supreme Commander a very mentally demanding game. If you�re a lover of RTS, you are going to love Supreme Commander. It�s a fantastic nostalgia shot for Total Annihilation fans and if you liked TA, go out and buy SupCom now, it�s that simple. It�s that good.

Supreme Commander is a truly epic game, a game of gargantuan proportions in more ways than one. Australians generally tend to like big stuff, I know I do and in this case, Supreme Commander satisfies the theory perfectly.

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Final Verdict

A truly epic strategy game that shuns the micromanagement that is rife in the genre and places strategy front and centre. Supreme Commander is an absolute must-buy for Real Time Strategy fans.

Pros
Gorgeous visuals and effects, huge in scale, massive in intensity with more than one genre revolution. There�s almost no micromanagement of units. GPGNet is a brilliant online system.
Cons
Game slowdown on older systems and when I say old, I mean not very old at all. The pace and precision of the game can make it very mentally demanding to play.