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Saturday 19 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY
Well, after realizing I needed to log again, I booted up the not-so-old PC and slammed in Sup-Com again. This time, since I've played a bit since last time, I'm about half way through the second campaign. Playing as a nation of cyborgs, I quickly realize that my stuff is nowhere near as strong as it was when I was playing with the last guys. In the mission I played, I happened to be on a water map. One that required me to use, well, water units. I built a few Destroyers, the basic mid-level assault ship, and sent them off to do some shore bombardment. Five minutes later, and they aren't there. Confused, I look at a point about 10% of the way down the coast. There's my destroyers. They sprouted legs. And they're walking. Slowly. The walking destroyer would eventually be very, very, very annoying. While it made for a great tank and ground assault vehicle, it was a terrible ship, since whenever I asked it to, perhaps, destroy an enemy ship, it would, by virtue of faulty AI, proceed to the nearest land, and slowly walk in the direction I wanted it to go.
DESIGN
Supreme Commander is a first in the RTS world in terms of scope. You can zoom all the way out to view the entire map, or you can look up the barrel of your tank's cannon. While the units aren't really anything new, the massive variety makes up for it, letting you carefully plan out your attack. As I mentioned before, the AI is, although impressive, as it allows your units to cross miles of terrain with just a mouse click, still very, very buggy, especially with ships, and with formations. When told to head across a system of way points, units often deviate, and, as shown with my walking destroyers, sometimes to disastrous effects. When told to move in formation, units who are not already in formation will try to move towards each other in order to enter formation...useless, if you happen to have two groups of units. Also, when your guys reach the area they were told to go into formation at, they'll recalculate their formation...even if they're already in one, which creates some terrible traffic jams. Along another line, in game commands and commentary aren't voice acted, which makes for some problems, as I often miss characters telling me important information.
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