First Impressions: Supreme Commander for PC

Author's Rating:

Pros: Insane grand scale, map zooming feature, TA memory inducing

Cons: resource hog

The Bottom Line: 
If your computer can handle it I would recommend this game to anyone who loved the original and anyone who wants to be involved in the success of the sequel.

Author's Review
Intro: This game is probably the most hyped game in it's category since...well, ever. It is the 10 year sequel to Total Annihilation (TA) which was the very game to incorporate most of the features that are in all real time strategy (RTS) games today. With big shoes to fill the initial verdict on Supreme Commander (SC) is looking very promising.

Graphics: SC is a resource hog! I'm finding this to be true with a lot of newer RTS games. Yes I can see that the "mech" I am using has a small scratch on it's left leg but should that compromise smoothness of motion throughout the whole game. I am a great fan of classic console and PC games and one of the reasons why is because more detail was emphasized on content not flashy graphics.

With that said I love the fact that I can see scratches on my mech's legs! Very quality graphic here and impressive death scenes. Unlike the old TA the buildings don't disappear into the ground and the different ways units die add a real freshness to the game. The Insanely huge experimental units that hulk along the map are great and add a lot to size variation. The best aspect of the game by far is the map feature. You can zoom out the see a sort of Google Earth type view of the battle that's happening farther below with all the units and buildings being represented by little dots.

Unfortunately this game is a resource hog, my system wasn't able to handle max graphics for more then 2 minutes and with the insane scale of the battles that occur in SC I can imagine that multiplayer battles will get sluggish even on the lower settings. I recommend you have 2.0 gig processor, at least 1 gig of ram, and it takes up 8 gigs of ram on your hard drive (sigh).

9.5/10

Gameplay: The interface is very clean and very easy to use but yet still has a lot of depth which leave room for more advanced players to improve. Some of these advanced interface options include numerous clicks to initiate different AI attacks, patrolling, and a pretty advanced hotkey feature.so far I haven't had trouble with any of the interface but that's because I try to keep things simple on the battle field for the simple fact that my brain can't handle it all sometimes.

With similarities to the old TA game senior gamers will find a lot of things familiar such as the mass and energy resources and the default 3/4 overhead view (which can be changed by the way). However there are some difference that need to be noted. First is the storyline which in the first TA game was poor to say the least. With a RTS style game I have always had the belief that a storyline wasn't important because in the end you would end up killing your friends in the multiplayer and never touch a campaign again. So far the story is decent and is projected through a campaign in which you eventually end up commanding one of the great armies (one of the three races) into battle in different situations and on different maps. The story is a lot better in SC but still doesn't make me want to play it over and over again. If you want to play a quality campaign try any command and conqueror game, they are the best.

With TA there was always a great online community creating new units and maps which was one of the deciding factors in it's success. It's hard to tell from the first impressions how modded SC will get but seeing as a lot of the good aspects of TA are present I have no reason to believe it won't achieve greatness in the modding community.

9.5/10

Sound: I never listen to the music in RTS games, it's very distracting because the music usually is influenced by the sound effects and ambient sounds (if there are any) which leads me to think a drum beat in the music is an attack from enemy forces (yes I am that paranoid). I turn off the music and play my own collecting of war inspiring music. You can listen to the game music if you want but with games lasting upwards of 3 hours (against good opponents) the looping of the music will in fact drive you insane just like any other RTS game.

Sound effects are crisp and progressive sounds are implemented (far away nosies are quieter). With that said I also was forced to turn these off after a while because of the resources being hogged for graphics.

9/10

Multiplayer: I can't give a honest review of this feature yet because a lot of problems in multiplayer come up over a long period of time. I will update this part as I continue to kill my friends (and enemies) in online combat.

~/10

Result:: I believe Supreme Commander will live up to it's predecessor as being the mother of all RTS games. Certainly it doesn't have the innovation that TA had but it does take grand scale battles to a new level and reminds me a lot of the old ways of making a RTS game (a lot of attention to detail). With it's high system requirements it will be hard for it to have a widespread community at first but maybe down the road it will become the underground classic that TA was.

Overall: 9.5/10*

*may change do to multiplayer factoring

Price: $50