Supreme Commander

Let me just say that this game is incredible. It surpasses every bit of hype, and all of my expectations. It's amazingly fun, and the single player alone will have you hooked for a long time. The single-player is well presented, with a throwback to Starcraft (vanilla) in the mix of short pre-rendered cut-scenes, gameplay, and mission-briefings. The story here is above average, and any sci-fi fan will enjoy it.

Multilayer is where this title really shines. Like Total Annihilation, this is all about macromanagement and strategy. We've got features that should have been though up years ago (movable waypoints on patrol routes come to mind), and some seriously bad-ass units. Shields are implemented better here then in any RTS previously, (they block shots that hit them, rather than giving a unit more hit points), making their use critical to success later in game. There are enough different strategies here to keep you playing for a decade at least; patches, easy-to-create mods, and expansions should add even more tactics. Resources aren't the PITA they were in Total Annihilation, as you can quickly build heavy mass or power generators that provide virtually infinite resources.

Now, the down sides. There are a few minor annoyances which a patch should be able to fix (namely an inability to cue up commander upgrades, and the fact that you can't set patrol points from a new factory to match those of an existing one, resulting in a million different patrol routes by the end of the game). All in all, these are minor, and won't bother 99% of people.

The big issue here is system requirements. I've tried running the game on a couple of different computers, and, I can safely say that when Chris Taylor says the game will run on a 6600, he means, it will start up. At lowest settings, the game gets single digit frame rates on a 256 meg 7600GS, on a machine with a gig of ram and a 3 ghz processor. And that's on the smallest map with two players and a unit cap of 250 (the lowest).

If you want to run the game at a mediocre frame rate (20-25FPS), I would say that a 7900GT would be a minimum. Duel core and a few gigs of RAM is a must.

If you enjoyed Starcraft, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Age of Empires II, Total Annihilation, or Dawn of War chances are you'll love this game. It's the perfect blend of civ building and brutal combat combined with excellent strategy, assuming your machine can run it.

Overall: 8/10. This would be a 10/10, had the game not lied about it's minimum requirements.

From developer Chris Taylor, we have what is essentially the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation (TA). TA was, in my opinion, the best Real Time Strategy (RTS) game ever made, so even an updated follow up would need to be extraordinary.

Supreme Commander (SupCom) did not let me down. It provides the essentials of what made TA great and adds a number of small, yet useful, improvements. In both games, the player begins with a powerful unit called a "Commander (Com)." The com is a builder, starting the player off with basic resource and unit producing structures, but also acting as a formidable warrior as well.

TA and SupCom had/have two resources - metal and energy (mass and energy in SupCom). In order to generate these resources, the Com and builder units create structures that produce them at a constant rate. They only stop producing if they are destroyed. An interesting thing about SupCom is that the resource system is also real time, continually draining and adding to the pool at a constant rate. For example, if you wish to create a unit that costs 100 mass and 1000 energy, you don't need that in the bank, it just drains slowly from the pool over the course of unit construction. The builder units can be tasked to help build something as well - the more units are on it, the faster it is built (and the faster it drains your resources). Resource management can be tricky, but is an interesting and unique experience in the realm of RTS.

TA had no middle ground between lvls 1 and 3 for resource generation with the map dependent exception of the geothermal structure - you would jump from small output lvl 1 solar collectors to super energy producing lvl 3 fusion power plants with nothing in between at lvl 2. SupCom adds intermediate resource producing structures at Tier 2. Also, metal (now mass) extractors can be upgraded by themselves - TA would require that the old extractor be reclaimed or detonated in order to place the more advanced extractor in the same place, with a construction unit.

Then there is the combat! If you are used to tactical combat games, like Dawn of War, or smaller scale combat such as Age of Empires or even Starcraft, then SupCom will be an almost overwhelming experience at first. You can attack by land with infantry robots, tanks, other vehicles, and super experimental units. You can attack by sea with warships, submarines, combat hovercraft, and amphibious tanks. You can even attack by air with fighters, bombers, hovering gunships, and large experimental units. You can build defensive emplacements to protect your base, and bombard the enemy with artillery units that can hit the enemy from very long distances. And then there are the nuclear missiles that can strike anywhere on even the largest maps. But there are anti-nukes that can also be built to launch and automatically take out any incoming strategic missiles. In fact, there is an appropriate counter tactic to just about every attack method.

Any criticisms? Well, the system requirements were steep for the time, and even top end machines would have some trouble now and then. The learning curve is fairly steep, and the game most certainly requires you to be on top of things nearly 100% of the time. Even small mistakes would be difficult to recover from in multiplayer games.

SupCom is most certainly a different type of RTS game, and in my opinion requires a very different perspective from most entries in this genre. If you feel prepared for a game more about macromanagment with yet a hefty dose of micromanagment, then SupCom is for you. Just be prepared to be schooled in the beginning, first by the AI and later by online players. You'll definitely lose a lot before you win, but I suppose that's not too much different than most other games of skill.