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dkirschner's Supreme Commander 2 (PC)

[May 1, 2011 02:00:07 AM]

I'd been hesitant to try this one because 1)I'm not a huge RTS fan, and 2)I was particularly intimidated by this one's scale and seeming hardcore-ness. I played through the informative tutorial first, which teaches the basics of camera functionality, troop movement and attack orders, building and researching. I then began the campaign, which basically served as more tutorial levels, introducing units and letting me further into the research tree. The campaign was boring though. Each of the 4 levels I played went like this:

"Hey stupid nice-guy commander with a pointless back story. I'm going to sound masculine and army tough and yell at you and at the enemy. Then you're going to complete an objective. Then more enemies will appear on a different spot on the map and you go kill them. Then more enemies will appear on a different spot on the map and you go kill them. Then more enemies will appear on a different spot on the map and you go kill them. Then I'm gonna sound tough some more and you go to the next mission."

The characters suck and aren't interesting at all, and the story so far seems like a budget sci-fi novel, a very thin one. I pretty much had to stop playing because I couldn't bring myself to care what was going on.

The gameplay is pretty fun though. It's fairly standard RTS with some neat things thrown in that I'm not used to. For one, things build FAST. Within like 5 minutes you can have your super units researched and on the assembly line. It makes them feel not very hard-earned, but they sure are cool. The scale of the game is massive, and these experimental units tower over buildings and all other units. I ended up playing some skirmish matches to see some of these behemoths. One team gets a giant mech with big guns. That team also can build a structure that launches smaller units anywhere on the battlefield. I haven't yet built all the experimental units for all 3 factions, but I will check them out. You get 'research points' by building research stations, and spending those on a tech tree is how you upgrade units and unlock experimentals and other abilities. It's quite RPGish and works well, but feels very fast.

Right, so the scaling, you can zoom way in for pretty fireworks or zoom way out for a strategic view of the whole terrain. Order large armies around and manage multiple fronts from the strategic view. It works pretty well from what I can tell.

That's really about all I have to say. I'll do a couple more skirmishes to see experimental units, but I'm not playing the campaign, and I don't plan on getting that into it to play online, so the game is fairly pointless for me. Still, it seems entertaining enough, and I imagine people more into RTSes may have a longer relationship with it than me.