Supreme Commander Review

By Alec Meer Published 15 February, 2007

Appropriate.

Version tested: PC

Every other game I ever play for the next, I dunno, million years, is going to feel flat and small and boring. Why? Because they'll only be running on one monitor. Thanks to its ingenious graphical trickery, I can play Supreme Commander on two monitors, and it does funny things to my brain. Something in it I don't usually use is being exercised, but it feels good. I feel totally in control of the game this way. I'm not entirely sure how to describe the way I'm thinking when I use those two screens. It's nothing anywhere near as static as the average DS approach of here is the action / here is the map. Rather, it's more like I'm right in on a battle one on side, while on the other I check to see if a frigate's finished building - not skipping my focus between the two, but somehow watching both at once. Only it's ever-shifting, like I have a pair of robotic eyes zooming coolly in and out at will.

I'm not entirely sure how I managed to play real-time strategy games without two monitors before. All that clumsy mousing over bits of map, hotkeys to jump to structures and only being able to manage one fight at once seems so terribly backwards compared to this. With enough practice and some sort of fiendish mod, I reckon I could control the game with two separate mice too. I'd be the ultimate General, coolly able to direct two wars at once, the look spoiled only slightly by having to glue a pointy stick to my forehead so I could use the keyboard as well. SupComm's incredible bigness (remarkably intact on just one monitor, should you be a pauper) is perhaps final proof of the surprising fact that RTS, once the most-lampooned of all PC game types, is now firmly established as the platform's most artisan genre. Built on a solid foundation of what made l'il army games so compelling in the very first place - that is, WAR! - then pumped up with ungodly sci-fi steroids, it feels like a definitive statement. In some booming, oh-so-macho voice it inarguably intones 'This. Is. How. It's. Done.'

'Supreme Commander' Screenshot 1

Like TA, the game's dirtiest trick remains arranging for your Commander to explode in an enemy base. Oh, the humanity, etc.

Which is also its greatest flaw. In striving to be the ultimate RTS, it accentuates everything that those don't get on with strategy games despise the most. It's a game of constant management on multiple fronts, of the paper-rock-scissors combat mechanic, of tactical thinking and total familiarity with each of its many units. It's the Bible of RTSes - one man's revered tome is another's tedious gibberish. It knows it's preaching to the converted, however, which is why it's so unrelentingly intense. Just be warned - it's an exhausting game. There is no downtime here. Too many times, tired out and aching for closure, but knowing another sustained enemy assault was due in seconds, I tried to send a few nearby tanks into a base defended by a lone ground turret. It's just the one, I reasoned. Surely they can deal with it. But it doesn't work like that - they were wiped out, because corners can't be cut so. It's admirable consistency on the game's part, but sometimes, I just wish that it'd give me a bit of a break.

Still, SupComm's rewards for such heavy mental investment are manifold. By far its greatest achievement, though, is scale. Less from the huge unit count, but rather the sense of titanic destruction, multiple simultaneous goals and an ever-expanding game map in the campaign missions. Looking down with military detachedness from the most zoomed-out viewpoint, troops reduced to playschool shapes and colours, there's no question that this is indeed a war, and not some poxy, narrow skirmish pretending to be one.

'Supreme Commander' Screenshot 2

The plot is humans vs robots vs aliens. Only they're all human really. Sort of.

It's very rare to have a conflict on a single front - land, air and sea assault generally have to happen in carefully coordinated tandem, rather than being the usual this, then this and now this approach. Coupled with the cleverness of the AI (actual cleverness, as opposed to just punishing hardness), this gives a sense of real importance to each battle. Victory is something to be truly proud of, rather than just the doorway to the next level. Victory means you're a great leader.

SupComm's fully aware too of how to best spend your time - the traditional tedium of unit building and resource collection is stripped down as much as it can be. Both remain a vital art, just in a very different way - if, say, you haven't got enough energy, it's because you've been lazy or haven't thought carefully about the situation, rather than you just haven't built enough little men with axes yet. If you haven't got a steady stream of battle-ready robots pouring out your factories, it's not that they've ground to a halt and the game's churlishly refusing to build them - it's just that they're building much more slowly because you're not generating enough resources to go full-pelt. It's logic, but logic born of established RTS rules. Everything in SupComm is familiar, even if you've never played its prequel, Total Annihilation - it's just that the stereotypes of RTS it retains are handled thoughtfully rather than mechanically. Joyously, too - climbing up the tech tree doesn't just give you slightly bigger tanks, but really big tanks who can deal a ridiculous amount of damage compared to the ones they've just superseded. Also, city-sized cannons, boats that can walk on land and giant spider robots. I'd suspect SupComm of having a bit of a laugh, if only it wasn't so deadly serious.

'Supreme Commander' Screenshot 3

Somehow, it still looks just as exciting even when you're zoomed out so far that everything's just squares and triangles.

Still, it doesn't feel quite the game that its strategy stablemate Company of Heroes does. SupComm sacrifices ingenuity and elegance for intensity and enormity. It's a fiddlier game to play, and with less scope for pulling heroic victories and experimental tactics out of the hat. The interface suffers too - it's a bit cramped and overloaded with mid-90s-looking cheapo icons, while quite a few buildings look that bit too similar. And though it's graphically splendid for the most part, the landscapes you fight on look universally bland. Of course the constant superultracrazyexplosiondeath, and the seamless zooming from strategic to down'n'dirty viewpoints kind of masks that, but something more detailed and deformable would have pimped the game up enormously.

It's worth pointing out that SupComm's a hard taskmaster to your PC, too. Official specs may claim otherwise, but anyone not running it on a dual-core rig is going to suffer slowdown once the unit count starts creeping into the hundreds. Graphically, it's not too demanding (its two-screen party trick didn't upset the Radeon X1900 in my rig, for instance), but managing the AI for so many tiny tanks is a real drain on the CPU. It's smooth, though not lightning-fast, on my last-gen dual core Athlon chip, while even the cheapest Core2Duo will scoff it up. Some people may feel this is a reason to drop the score; personally, I strongly don't. Desktop dual core chips have been around for almost two years now - sooner or later there had to be a game that made multi-core processing (also now established for two out of three of the newly current-gen consoles) more or less a necessity. Let's be thankful it's a great one, and not some empty-headed Doom clone. It's unfortunate folk with older systems will be left out in the cold (or with emptier wallets), but the PC as a games platform can't be expected to hang around waiting for the idlers to catch up forever.

The overwhelming sense from SupComm (apart from the need to sleep for a week after a bout of it) is that its design brief was mega-war first, player sympathy second. The mega-war it gets absolutely right, but this is an RTS that could have bagged itself a 10 if it had reigned itself in a little, had tweaked its flow just enough so that there wasn't quite so much exhausting struggle. For all its grandeur, it'll simply feel too much like hard work for anyone who wasn't already sold on the concept - a timeless classic should have more universal appeal. It's a triumphant achievement nevertheless, a just reward for anyone who's ever lost their heart to an RTS - a love letter to the fans.

9 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of Alec.

About Alec Meer

A 10-year veteran of scribbling about video games, Alec primarily writes for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but given any opportunity he will escape his keyboard and mouse ghetto to write about any and all formats.

Read more articles from Alec by visiting the Alec Meer archive page.

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Comments (102) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • jadeia #1 5 years ago

    This is a great game - and a very fair rating.

  • jozz #2 5 years ago

    Who didn't see a review coming at this time O_O
    Sounds a bit good regardless.

  • Inquisitor #3 5 years ago

    Strange time for a review
    ;)

    Hoping this comes to the 360.

  • decibel #4 5 years ago

    If only my PC could handle this. It just can't :( Sniff.

  • NegativeZero #5 5 years ago

    A lot of people seemed to love Total Annihilation. For me, it was the game which finally turned me off RTS altogether.

  • thinktank #6 5 years ago

    I'm loving this rts revival and this one is the cherry on top.

  • ave #7 5 years ago

    "a timeless classic should have more universal appeal."
    Of course it should.

  • urban #8 5 years ago

    you know, i don't think i could be happier, first ever dual monitor game?

  • Hunam #9 5 years ago

    /after 9 pints

    Awesome!

  • Garibaldi #10 5 years ago

    No mention of the insane system requirements?

  • absolutezero #11 5 years ago

    Going by both the Beta and the demo the games just not well optimised at all, PCZone seem to back me up of this aswell, seeing as their insane power house rig had trouble running it at full.

    Whats the point in creating a game where no one can play it and have it look like it should. So people can finally enjoy it in a few years time? When theres a bunch of new games to play?

    Eh, I think ill give this a miss, it just seems to want the player to do far too many things at once. I can handle multi-tasking but on this scale its just not fun anymore, its like a chore.

  • smelly #12 5 years ago

    @absolutezero : Ah, see i once fell into the same trap as it seems the developers of this have.

    Years ago, i used to make pc games for a living. As a method of "future proofing" our game, we put in a "super high" graphical setting. The idea was, that no CURRENT pc was capable of coping with this setting, but by time the game came out on budget, pc's would more than be able to cope, and then as a budget game, it'd stand arm in arm alongside the "full priced" games at that date. We even put warning messages to that extent in the manual.

    Then the game was released, and every pc gaming mag moaned about the game being unoptimal, and that with everything turned on, it ran too slowly... People on message boards moaned about the frame rates, etc etc.

    It seems that gamers are stupid and will turn everything on (even if you tell them not to), and then moan about framerates.

    In the end, we just released a patch which fixed the problem. Everyone was happy, all gamers in forums said how great the patch was, etc etc. All we'd done was disabled the highest level option.

    To this day i still believe that gamers who post on forums are monkeys who just like to moan! :-)

    I got out of industry not long after shaking my head at how stupid some gamers are :-)

  • megadaisy #13 5 years ago

    id be very interested to know what that game was called smelly? :)

    i seem to remember though that TA was the same - when it first came out you needed 64mb of ram to play on the really big maps and very few people had that much ram at that time. Its the same thing now with this game and everyone remembers TA as a classic.

    I am so looking forward to this game - i think its going to be awesome.



  • Genji #14 5 years ago

    "In striving to be the ultimate RTS, it accentuates everything that those don't get on with strategy games despise the most."

    Yeah. I'm one of those people. I'm sure it's a lovely RTS, but I despise RTS games. The things that I don't like about them seem to be ingrained within the genre now, so I don't see myself liking an RTS game in the foreseeable future, either.

    Oh well.

    /goes back to playing Civ

  • absolutezero #15 5 years ago

    Thing is I never said I had everything turned up to high. In fact I set it to the same level as I have Company of Heroes. Coh runs perfectly with minimal hits to how it looks, even with SC looking like complete shit it still as awful frame rate problems.

    Future-proofing is pointless, a classic game is going to be well recieved when it his budget, even if it does'nt look as nice as anything else at the moment. Look at the reception that The Longest Journey got when it was recently released. More people play CS than CS:S and the Thief games are still very playable.

    Theres a difference between future-proofing a game and releasing a game that no current PC can play in any form.

    This little discussion is moot though because you already admitted that internet forum users just whine about anything, much like yourself about my first comment. Good job.

  • Talha #16 5 years ago

    @Smelly: By any chance, are you really Scott Adams of Dilbert fame? Man, what you described is SO like him!

  • Dizzy #17 5 years ago

    I couldn't get into it (based on the demo). Seemed bland. Might have to give it another go.

  • Genji #18 5 years ago

    Scott Adams doesn't like kiddy Nintendo games, so no, I don't think so.

    ;)

  • lost_soul #19 5 years ago

    Anyone tried running this on a Macbook?

  • Scimarad #20 5 years ago

    "Which is also its greatest flaw. In striving to be the ultimate RTS, it accentuates everything that those don't get on with strategy games despise the most. It's a game of constant management on multiple fronts"

    Eeeeeek!

    /runs in terror

  • hjarg #21 5 years ago

    absolutezero, think of a difference between SC and CoH. Like, the scale. In CoH you occasionally have 20+ units on the screen and couple of buildings.
    I've made assaults with 100+ of my land units ramming into well-populated and well-defended enemy base, backed up by 50+ gunships, some 20-odd fighters and 10 bombers, plus naval support. Guns blasing, shields taking hits, shields going down, turrents opening frantic fire, units maneuvering etc etc. That alone could make game into crawl. And my poor comp has tu calculate something for all these units, render them to my monitor etc etc.
    So same settings don't work. Though yes, it is more bland then CoH. Specially the landscapes.

  • ice_freezer #22 5 years ago

    I'll be rather sticking to CoH and WH 40k: Dark Crusade. Sounds very good, though.

  • space_ace #23 5 years ago

    a bit like gran turismo, eh

  • UncleLou #24 5 years ago

    Do not allow the user to select the highest possible setting if it will be unplayable.

    Dear God, no. A warning, yes - many games do that these days, but I don't want a game to patronise me. And nearly all game come with a "recommended" button which usually works pretty well. I actually agree with smelly - people complain the game doesn't run well at the highest setting, then happily play the console version that looks like the PC version on "medium" anyhow.

    That said, SC is an evil system hog - best way to improve the perfromance is to turn off the minimap, which is a bit suicidal though.

  • captain_cupcake #25 5 years ago

    I was going to give my second monitor to a friend. Might have to reconsider now...

    I haven't played it, but I have a feeling I will still appreciate CoH more

    Smelly - isn't it a bit like driving - you're safer off assuming everyone around you can potentially be idiotic ;) We've had people ring up and complain because they can't turn their computer or monitor on ;)

  • Laserbream #26 5 years ago

    I'm intrigued! It'll be like advance wars DS - I'll pick it up, play it, fail miserably after the first few scenarios, get angry, leave it on a shelf for 9 months and finally sell it on ebay.

    Nice review though, makes me wish I had 2 monitors.

  • Xerx3s #27 5 years ago

    Played TA last night again with a couple of mates and it was still as brilliant as ever.

    TA & E2150 are the best RTS games ever made imo. Really looking out for this.

  • Xerx3s #28 5 years ago


    To this day i still believe that gamers who post on forums are monkeys who just like to moan! :-)

    A bit of a selfowning there? ;)

  • Clive_Dunn #29 5 years ago

    "@absolutezero : Ah, see i once fell into the same trap as it seems the developers of this have."

    That'll be the trap of programming it really badly then ? You can turn everything off in SC, run at 800*600 and play in map mode only and it'll still run at 1 FPS when you've got a large number of enemies. It's the AI that appears to use all the system resources, not some scaleable graphics engine.

    Not sure this is a great review tbh, it's great that the reviewer has played it on dual monitors. What about those ( and I'm guessing we'll be in the majority ) that don't have 2 monitors ? When I played the demo I was amazed at the utter awfulness of the UI, it took up over 50% of the screen so that, on a 17inch TFT, I seemed to be playing on a tiny strip at the top of the screen. I'm sure the game has great graphics, but in order to actually do anything I was zoomed so far out it was more Dune 2 than CoH for me.

    I'm sure I'll pick this up at some point, and I'm sure it'll be a great. But I'll need to upgrade my PC, wait for the inevitable patch optimising the AI, and buy a second monitor before it's worth it. That's a pretty big spend.

  • UncleLou #30 5 years ago

    TA & E2150 are the best RTS games ever made imo. Really looking out for this.


    E2150 was indeed fantastic - and it had terraforming, all those years ago. Building big trenches around the base rocked. :)

  • karstux #31 5 years ago

    Aaah.. dual-monitor gaming == ubergoodness. It's not quite the first game to make use of two monitors - X2 and X3 could do so as well, providing additional views on the second monitor.

    I also remember how I tricked Homeworld 2 into running on two monitors. (For many games, this is surprisingly easy when you use the "horizontal span" mode. I think it's nVidia only, though, and the monitors should have the same size and resolution.) It was truly a sight to behold - the level of immersion is so much higher, it's kinda crazy.

    IMHO this is one area where PC gaming can truly distinguish itself from the console crowd. I wish more games would make use of it - nowadays, all graphics cards have two adapters anyway.

  • SwedBear #32 5 years ago

    I picked it up a few days ago (found a store who forgot it isn't out until tomorrow here in Sweden). Played 1 1/2 mission yesterday on my Dell 9400 laptop and so far it has worked great.

    The laptop has a 7900GS videocard (and I haven't unlocked it yet so it runs faster), has Vista Ultimate installed and has 2 GB of ram. I had no problems setting the game to run at 1440x900 with everything set to high and 2xAA. And tht even with a ton of units on the screen. So I don't think it's that bad really.

    So far liking the game a lot. I always loved TA so I've been looking forward to it. Man are the missions long though. I like it how the mapo gets bigger and bigger and bigger as the mission progresses.

    /B

  • Pirotic #33 5 years ago

    I'm pleased to see it getting a good score, but having been playing the retail version for well over a week - I can't help but wonder how on earth this review misses the biggest negatives.

    production values for a start, the design is fantastic but the final product looks and feels like an alpha test, the 'battlemap background' is a single jpg which gets stretched to whatever resolution the user picks (and poorly stretched at that), the loading screen was blatantly supposed to have been animated but instead they kept a static picture and some unaliased white text in the direct-x default font, then the huge list of bugs and memory leaks, the AI which jumps between genius and moron at random, the dodgy path finding and AI aiming where two units will happily sit opposite each other shooting rockets into the tree inbetween them until user intervention.

    and most of all, how on earth could the review not make any comment about the performance? Even on a top end alienware rig people are finding the single player mode almost impossible to play due to the CPU usage, it's not multi-threaded very well and so even with 4 cores you find the first core max's out and slows the whole game down, while the other 3 sit around 30% with nothing left to do but AI routines (I assume).

    I'd probably have given it an 8, its certainly a top class game but needs a good patching before it can reach the lofty 9.
    Edited by 1 at 15/02/07 @ 09:16

  • Rictor001 #34 5 years ago

    To: All

    It's not CoH & it's not Dawn of War - it's a completely different game from a completely different developer. Deal with it!

    and as for the guy who banged on about Supreme Commander being everything that he has always hated about a genre of games that he has never played and has no interest in or intention of playing - why are you even posting on this review?

    Re: the high system spec for this game - Didn't a lot of people have to upgrade to play Half Life 2? I wasn't a regular reader of EG back then but did you all get up in arms about that too? seems wierd that on the one hand we all rave about how the PC is the ultimate gaming platform cos of it's adaptability and ease of upgrade but as soon as a game comes along that might just push our systems people get all upset. Maybe we should all petition Chris Taylour to make it run at the same spec as TA then even my grand parents will be able to play!

    Rant over. ;)

  • ArcMonkey #35 5 years ago

    Hoping this comes to the 360.

    If only MS would let you plug any mouse into those USB ports...

  • UncleLou #36 5 years ago

    the loading screen was blatantly supposed to have been animated but instead they kept a static picture and some unaliased white text in the direct-x default font

    My loading screen is animated, are you sure they sent you the final version? There's some kind of spinning logo in the middle.

  • robg #37 5 years ago

    In terms of running this game on a widescreen monitor (there seem to be very few widescreen benchmarks generally) - if I need to run it at 1680x1050 then what sort of PC will I need for it to look decent?

    E.g. atm I have a E6300, with a Sapphire X1950 Pro Ultimate and 2GB RAM, would that do it? Or should I hold off buying a widescreen until more cards support the wacky resolutions?

    P.S. good review, although possibly a little bit harsh. It's only a first release; when C&C Generals came out there was a bug where when the expensive supersonic Aurora bombers dropped their big bomb, the game crashed. So if it's better than that then it's a good start :)

  • MrChuckles #38 5 years ago

    Been playing the demo at lunch every day, and my only dislike (as with TA) is that if you have a full mass/energy bar, then you are losing...

    I have always hated queuing up tons of units and watching my resources fall, but with this and TA, you have to do it. Once you get your head around 'BUILD MORE!!!!!!' it become awesome.

    I think i'll play it much more co-op vs AI than vs humans, as i just don't have the click mentality of some gamers.

    I'm more of a Total War, Company of Heroes 'tactics over strategy' guy.

  • skillian #39 5 years ago

    Performance issues are almost completely related to processor speed rather than your graphics card. It seems a dual core processor is almost mandatory for this game.

    That's the reason it doesn't scale in performance that well - it's easy to turn down the effects and textures to help your graphics card, but not so easy to tone down the AI to give your CPU room to breathe.

  • bioreit #40 5 years ago

    @ FluffyTucker

    "thinking this could run on a 360"

    You know, it amazes me how some people can be so ignorant in this day and age.

    The benefit of consoles is that they do not have a constantly changing, wildly different setup; even with the core and premium 360s, the baseline hardware is still exactly the same.

    Therefore, developers can optimise their code to a far, far greater degree as they don't need to take into account the 100 or so graphics cards little Johnny could have, or what processor he has, or how much RAM he has.

    Yes, maybe in two years Supreme Commander would look even better on the latest PC out at that time compared to the 360, but for the majority of people, for the lifetime of the 360 the 360 version would probably look and play smoother and better.

    Remember, after all - Halo on the Xbox. Played on an Intel Pentium III 733 Mhz, with 64 mb RAM and the equivalent of a GeForce 3 (which, incidentally, SHARED that RAM). Now tell me that Halo could have run as well on a PC with that specification?

    EDIT: Forgot to add the clock speed of the CPU. Doh!
    Edited by 2 at 15/02/07 @ 11:18

  • -TKF- #41 5 years ago

    Ohh yeah.. the things he doesn´t like make this a 11/10 in my book.. weaklings!

  • El_MUERkO #42 5 years ago

    i wish my puter could handle it, i'd love to run the war on the 40" and all my base building and stuff on the 20" but my gfx card and cpu would melt

  • speedtrax #43 5 years ago

    "Remember, after all - Halo on the Xbox. Played on an Intel Pentium III 733 Mhz, with 64 mb RAM and the equivalent of a GeForce 3 (which, incidentally, SHARED that RAM). Now tell me that Halo could have run as well on a PC with that specification?"

    Yeah but Halo was shit, in terms of gameplay AND graphics.
    Edited by 1 at 15/02/07 @ 11:26

  • IMO #44 5 years ago

    This is Supreme Commander talk, take the unneeded Halo bashing elsewhere. It's completely irrelevant.

  • Gurgeh #45 5 years ago

    The thing that slows this game down on most PCs is the lack of dual core. An Xbox 360 has 3 cores, albeit each is "weaker", so in that respect it might actually be more suited to the game than most PCs.

    *edit* the reason for this is the calculation of all the physics and AI that is going on, much of which is perfectly suited to multithreading (the paths of all those artillery shells for example are all independent of one another)

    Unfortunately anything outside the top end of TV sets would be pretty useless as you need as much resolution as you can get on a single display.
    Edited by 1 at 15/02/07 @ 11:52

  • bioreit #46 5 years ago

    @ FluffyTucker

    "Considering it seems to be the AI that's slowing this game down, I fail to see how they could "optimize" the code to run better on a vastly inferior 360 CPU than it does on a Core2Duo type chip. Aint going to happen."

    But the graphics and the physics and the shiny-explodey-things-what-go-boom will have some kind of resource drain, yesno?

    So if they can optimise that code, then the supposed (seeing as the only 'proof' that this is what causes the problems are opinions on here, not actual benchmarking) AI problem would to a certain extent become mitigated.

    Oh and care to provide benchmarking at all to support the statement of "vastly inferior"?

    Because as a triple-core 3.2ghz system, the 360 isn't exactly a slouch. Willing to accept that a newer processor will be more speedy, but I hesitate to believe in "vastly".

  • robg #47 5 years ago

    Any news on what I asked? :) Whether or not this comes on the 360 is up to people who think a gamepad in *any* way is as good as a mouse for RTSes.

  • Mooks #48 5 years ago

    My copy arrives Fri XD

  • bioreit #49 5 years ago

    @ FluffyTucker (again)

    "It's a triple 3.2Ghz system, but each core is shit."

    Once more - any evidence for this beyond just rampantly woeful opinion?

    And you reckon that a single-core Athlon 64 is better than the 360 and PS3 processors?

    Damn! Those developers REALLY know how to squeeze power out of those 'shit' CPUs then. I mean, who knew that a single core Athlon 64 could give me Rainbow Six: Vegas and Gears of War?

    Unless, of course, your vocal chords and colon have been swapped over?

  • UncleLou #50 5 years ago

    I mean, who knew that a single core Athlon 64 could give me Rainbow Six: Vegas and

    My single core Athlon runs Vegas just fine.

    Anyway, what's with all the console talk in this thread?

  • bioreit #51 5 years ago

    @ FluffyTucker

    "Just compare Oblivion on the 360 and the PC. "

    Ok, lemme comapre it to a PC with a single-core Athlon 64, seeing as that is what YOU have actually said that is better than a 360 CPU.

    Wait, no I can't, because it's actually crapping out on me.

    Yes, on an expensive PC Oblivion is probably better than on 360, but on a £280 one? And a £280 when it came out, not now. Not even on a £400 or £500 PC does it look and perform better.

  • bioreit #52 5 years ago

    Anyways,

    I loved TA, I will probably love this even more.

    And when our 'Video-editing' machine turns up next week, I will give it a proper, dual monitor, Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 8800 GTX SLI run through.

    But for now, our new PDAs and laptops have arrived :D

  • Gurgeh #53 5 years ago

    The more you play this game, the better it gets...

    As for slowdowns, here's an example of why it slows down:

    http://im g151.imageshack.us/img151/3436/...

  • bioreit #54 5 years ago

    O_o

    It's not? I've been lied to! Oh the pain! It burns, IT BURNS!

  • robg #55 5 years ago

    @Gurgeh - what sort of setup you running, resolutions, rough detail level, rough framerates? (if it's not too much trouble :)

    Ta

  • Bonzrat #56 5 years ago

    It is a gimmick, but a good one. And you can select units on the second screen in the final code, though stuff like build icons is only on the first screen.

  • Mudo #57 5 years ago

    The score seems a teensy bit inflated to me.

  • Firetsy #58 5 years ago

    Computer architecture basics:

    The XBOX 360 has a three _cut down_ Power4 processor cores. It has no out of order execution and bad resource sharing, it also has way smaller caches to slow memory accesses with random data. Xenon has 1FPU, 1ALU and 2 vector units. In total 3/3/6.

    Core 2 has 3 processing units able to do fpu/alu/vector. Having 6 total. And because it has sophisticated out of order and decoding it can keep these well used. So it actually has more execution cores with floating point and integer operations. It also has very good out of order execution and branch prediction.

    The bottom line is Xenon cpu (in xbox) performs very well in streaming type applications and vector calculations. However this game has fairly little use of such processing and the true general purpose core2 (or X2) should easily wipe the floor with Xenon.

    Anyway the memory system of XBOX can't handle the required amount of data anyway...

    Yes, and the game is awesome ;)

    Edit: Little tweak to core microarchitecture, should have checked it in the first place...
    Edited by 2 at 15/02/07 @ 13:15

  • Gurgeh #59 5 years ago

    "@Gurgeh - what sort of setup you running, resolutions, rough detail level, rough framerates? (if it's not too much trouble :) "

    Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB memory, 7600GS. Framerate isn't a problem until the unit count gets really high.

    In multiplayer synchronising all those units between players can slow things down (the blue player had over 800 units at the end) so framerate in multiplayer isn't just down to your hardware setup but also everyone else's setup and net connection.

  • UncleLou #60 5 years ago

    Just remembered, I tried one of the largest maps last night with 7 AIs, and while I didn't play that game for too long (and I suspect it would have slowed down massively later), it was running at a better framerate than even the first campaign mission - which I found a bit weird.

  • shamblemonkee #61 5 years ago

    because it wasnt running ai?!

  • Bongo #62 5 years ago

    Does anyone know if you can save a multiplayer game?

  • UncleLou #63 5 years ago

    Um, except for the 7 AIs (the biggest number possible) which I mentioned?

  • Matfink #64 5 years ago

    Runs great on my AMD 3700 single core + Gf7900...
    Erm this is AFTER turning off the Zonealarm virus checker, which was giving me 1 fps when any transparent objects were drawn (wtf?!).

  • Ryuken #65 5 years ago

    "the loading screen was blatantly supposed to have been animated but instead they kept a static picture and some unaliased white text in the direct-x default font"

    It ain't static at all, the text glows and the circles "move" around a lot. What you're pointing at are prolly the animated globes in the early beta which were awesomely animated yes, but they also had the very noteworthy glitch of a non-fluent repeating point. The loading screen in place now has that a lot less.

    Anyway, you normally won't be looking at that loading screen for more than 10 seconds (since that's the usual loading time) so what's the big deal about it? :)

  • a8a #66 5 years ago

    Well, at first I was open-minded - I love RTS games, and have done for a long time. In fairness, Total Annihilation was not my cup of tea, being more partial to Dark Reign, but nonetheless, revisiting the good old days of RTS cant be bad, eh?

    Actually, it sort of can. It's not that the game is bad - graphically, very impressive etc, etc, and on a gameplay level it surely measures right up there with the old favourites. However, the measuring stick has changed. It seems that the old style of RTS is no longer enough for me; I enjoy the advances that have been made in the genre too much. Total War has revolutionised it beyond recognition, and Company of Heroes has advanced the classic style significantly. Micro-management is being toned down, and in my opinion rightly so, placing the focus on strategy and tactics.

    In this respect, Supreme Commander has not made progress. This is a game very firmly in the territory of the 'hardcore' RTS fan, where 'hardcore' simply means someone who only enjoys games of 5 year vintage or more. It is made for people who only want a graphical update to Total Annihilation rather than a whole new game. And, if that's what youre looking for, then they've done a good job of it.

    Me? I loved Pong when I was a kid, but now I would play Virtua Tennis for preference. Meanwhile, these guys are making Pong 2k7.

  • robg #67 5 years ago

    Er, Virtua Tennis *is* Pong 2k7 :)

  • UncleLou #68 5 years ago

    Me? I loved Pong when I was a kid, but now I would play Virtua Tennis for preference. Meanwhile, these guys are making Pong 2k7.

    Not a fair comparison at all, it's not like the old style of RTS games is outdated, it's just that recent games have moved in different directions. That doesn't necessarily make them better in a way that Virtua Tennis is better than Pong. Personally, while I loved Company of Heroes dearly, way too many RTS games recently had reduced base building and resource collecting too much in favour of systems that force you to play aggressively and capture points on the map, all to make for fast, aggressive multiplayer games.

    Personally, I like it that SC seems to recuce that a bit. Not to mention that the scale, TA notwithstanding, is pretty unique. Comparing it to Company of Heroes doesn't make that much sense.

  • Stim #69 5 years ago

    Ummm, so where's the all encompassing game play and strategy? Why would I want hundreds and hundreds of units rather than have fewer, key units that really make a difference, ones I really care about losing and ones I can really focus on my strategy with?

    People wonder why RTGs are viewed as the staple of the PC hardcore - hardly a wonder is it?

    I've played quite a few RTSs in my time, and along with many others who've commented so far, they lost their shine for me long ago, probably after Z and C&C to be fair but Starcraft was a welcome distraction. I keep coming back to try again though, hence I'll continue to try and find merit with SC until C&C3 comes out and doesn't live up to expectations either.

    SC is nothing more than TA2, but without the advances I would have hoped for.

    Didn't this game cost millions of dollars to make? So where's the production quality?

    It looks awful, yes you can zoom all the way in and out, but that's not new, Frontline Command from the Bitmaps did that a few years ago before they dissapeared.

    Yes you can have hundreds of units - why? So that they can act as fodder for your big units, glossing over the fact it would be better with just the big units in the first place. Before someone jumps on that and points out that all of the units still have a place as you progress up the tech tree - are you really, really sure? And i'm not talking about spy units here...

    I was a slow convert to TA, and still think it was way over hyped, but it certainly had something, I don't feel that's transcribed to SC, although SC certtainly does have something - 7 out of 10 maybe, but I expect a LOT more for my money than this offers.

    10 minutes of skirmish and 10 minutes of campaign had me in tears of boredom, not joy. The interface is dire, the sound is dire, inovation? Reeks of unnovation to me. A demo is supposed to showcase a game - the SC demo is like waking up bleary eyed next to Jade Goody after a well needed night out with old friends...

    It will also be very interesting to see if the game raises any legal suites from the Atari camp, owners of the TA IP. I expect there would be a huge case for GPG and THQ to answer, although I would say that this would be unfair. Apart from the almost verbatim gameplay, don't those sound effects, unit animations, and menu appearence all appear incredibly familiar?

    On another note, I regularily read Eurogamer, but I don't want to read another review that is almost half taken up by blathering about dual monitor support, that's just bad.
    Edited by 1 at 15/02/07 @ 15:25

  • Rictor001 #70 5 years ago

    @ Stim

    for someone who seems to think they are something of an authority on, well, EVERYTHING to do with this game it's surprising that you didn't know that Atari only own the TA name - Chris Taylor owns the engine and everything to do with the actual mechanic of the game.

    and BOY do you love the sound of your own voice!

    Sure the EG team are going to lose seconds of sleep over you not reading another review that "that is almost half taken up by blathering about dual monitor support" - question on that actually, How you going to know what a review is about unless you read it?

  • Stim #71 5 years ago

    Well I posted my dissapointed opinion to muster some conjecture, so you go for it.

    Ok, here's one for you, if Atari did TA 2, and did a spiritual successor to SC, how would that stand? I posed the point as I find it interesting, of course Chris Taylor and GPG should be able to, regardless of who actuall OWNS TA, be able to do the sequal that many people (me included) would have liked to have seen Cavedog do back in the day.

    I also think that for the actual size of the SC review - that my comment about a great proportion of it being taken up by the fact that it supports dual monitor support takes away from the fact that the review is about a real time strategy game - so tell me more about that please, how do the campaigns, races and features really compare and hold up? How far did you progress in how long? The things I want to really know?

  • Gurgeh #72 5 years ago

    So you got bored after 20 minutes and still give the game 7/10 :o

    The reason you have hundreds of units is that it's a Strategy game, not a tactical one, and the end-game experimental units are not all-powerful. Send one in without an escort and it will get whittled down in short order by all that "fodder".

    I wouldn't class SC as revolutionary, although the sheer scale of what's going on hasn't been done before AFAIK. What is does is put the Strategy into RTS and that's going to give some people a headache.

  • Squid #73 5 years ago

    @Gurgeh

    "The reason you have hundreds of units is that it's a Strategy game, not a tactical one"

    Not to sure about the validity of this statement, strategy & tactical – two words that mean the same as far as skills required.

    @Stim

    ‘Yes you can have hundreds of units - why? So that they can act as fodder for your big units, glossing over the fact it would be better with just the big units in the first place.’

    I think you have a very good point here…

    Squid
    Edited by 2 at 15/02/07 @ 17:33

  • Hypocee #74 5 years ago

    Absolutely not true. History's full of commanders who were brilliant tacticians but pants at strategy, and vice versa. The line between them is as fuzzy as those between night and day or light and death, but as in those examples they're fundamentally different domains. The perception of a near absence of strategy from the RT"S" genre is the fundamental reason Taylor made this game.

  • UncleLou #75 5 years ago

    Yes you can have hundreds of units - why? So that they can act as fodder for your big units, glossing over the fact it would be better with just the big units in the first place.’

    I think you have a very good point here…

    Why is one thing automatically better than the other? You could just as well ask why you have to restrict yourself to 40 units in other games when you could have 300. Why not go all the way and put the unit limit to 5? Could be an interesting game, too. Does the Total War series need hundreds of units? No, you could make each unit represent 50 units, with a bigger health bar, so you have 20 units on each side representing 1000 units. Would hardly make it a better game.

  • guvner #76 5 years ago

    Stim: "Didn't this game cost millions of dollars to make? So where's the production quality?"

    Pretty much every full price game these days costs millions of dollars. Paying the staff alone over 18-24 months runs into millions - do the maths. If the game cost TENS of millions to make you'd have a fair point here.

    Stim: "Yes you can have hundreds of units - why? So that they can act as fodder for your big units, glossing over the fact it would be better with just the big units in the first place."

    Isn't this a staple of RTS games? At the end game you get your hands on uber base destroying units that can easily destroy lots of outdated units?

    In SC smaller units still have a use as the game goes on; the big units can take forever to traverse across the larger maps so smaller units are still very much worthwhile as cheap means to harass isolated enemy mass extractors and small bases.

    Additionally since the type of enemy unit isn't known until it's visibly seen, it's possibly to build large armies of cheap units as diversion attacks; on the radar, a group of light tanks approaching looks exactly the same as a group of heavy tanks.

    And as another example, some base defences are heavy hitters but slow to reload; they'll more easily repel an attack consisting of a few bigger units than lots of smaller ones.

    The smaller units are by no means pointless, but then I wouldn't expect someone who's only played for 20 minutes to have a clue, really. :p

  • smelly #77 5 years ago

    "Do not allow the user to select the highest possible setting if it will be unplayable."

    Its a matter of time to do that.. you need to write different ones for every card... Besides we did that.. Even then people will ignore you, and just set to highest setting and moan about it.

  • smelly #78 5 years ago

    As for the 360.. This game is cpu intensive (not gpu).. and is properly multi-threaded. The 360 has 3 multi core processors.. so there's no reason why this wouldnt run better than on most pc's.

  • smelly #79 5 years ago

    "Considering it seems to be the AI that's slowing this game down, I fail to see how they could "optimize" the code to run better on a vastly inferior 360 CPU than it does on a Core2Duo type chip. Aint going to happen."


    Holey hell! Some of you guys talk nonsense!

    Tell me how the 360 with 3 dual core processors each with 2 cores running at 3ghz is slower than a core2duo?

  • smelly #80 5 years ago

    "Just compare Oblivion on the 360 and the PC. "


    The only fair way to compare a 360 game to a pc game is if it's been properly multi-threaded to take advantage of the multi-core processors.

    This game has... But whether it'd work with the joypad is another matter.

  • EzyRyder #81 5 years ago

    Well, its here and its great. I spent 5 years of my life playing TA and that was the greatest game of all times for me. This is just a dream come true :)

    To the people that say that the score is too high. Well, I think that the score is too high in games like Okami, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus but I do not complain, why? Because people have different tastes and play different games. To me Okami is dry, flat and uninspired apart from the fantastic art design component of the game.

  • Pablo2k5 #82 5 years ago

    Garibaldi said... "No mention of the insane system requirements?"

    What??? You mean apart from the very lengthy 8th paragraph??? You blind???

    I'm not sure why people are knocking this game, I played the demo and loved it, should be getting my copy tomorrow...

    Is it that all the console kiddies are jealous? ;-)

  • Hypocee #83 5 years ago

    "Out-of-order execution" and "floating point registers" are the magic phrases in his explanation. The 360's processors lack the (expensive, difficult) hardware instructions for handling large amounts of floating-point math and logical branching. This is the kind of processing required for AI and to a lesser extent physics. They're great for the kind of predictable, brute-force processing required to, for example, twist a texture onto ten million polygons and apply five bump maps and shaders. Relative to the full instruction set of a general-purpose processor, when it comes to "thinking" they're heavily disadvantaged on a MHz-for-MHz basis. Who knows if the clocks/cores advantage is enough to offset that.

    The old Ars Technica piece on the seventh-gen consoles turned out to be pretty darned wrong about the Wii, but it explains the difference between the maths at some length: http://ar stechnica.com/articles/paedia/h...
    Edited by 1 at 15/02/07 @ 19:43

  • Ryuken #84 5 years ago

    "Micro-management is being toned down, and in my opinion rightly so, placing the focus on strategy and tactics. "

    You're talking about CoH? If anything then CoH put more emphasis on micro than any game before it. SupCom puts more emphasis on macro through its zoom and more convenient non-babysit commands. Tactics and strategy are still present. It's not about one unit that can make the difference, not even an experimental will stand a chance on its own in a game between two equally skilled players. It's all about the big picture, creating diversions (now there's still a goal for your Tier 1 units endgame) so you can execute a painful blow with a mixed attack from all fronts, noticing that gap in a defence and heading straight for it, it's an all-out war. There is nothing wrong with that, it's not even that oldschool imo. More abilities for a single unit and the "what the fuck is happening, it's going too fast here, I can't scroll that fast"-feeling is what most RTS's keep doing, and that wasn't different in CoH at all (the physics, the cover=cool, nice graphics but a lot more micro).

    Pls, let people have the other breed of RTS-preference too, it's been a long time since TA.

  • Stim #85 5 years ago

    @Gurgeh - I feel I need to ratify the point - the demo is a poor showing, hopefully due to THQ rushing it out of the door, the commaner can get caught in the landscape (Skirmish) and thus incapable of continuing orders - there's not audio or visual feedback (till you go back and see it) that this has occured.

    I have played it for substantially more than 20 minutes - I was comenting on the fact that the demo does not show case the title.

    @guvner - (with respect) how much money could have been poored back into development rather than the average FMV at the start? Do you know how much publishers make vs devs at all? Gamesutra or the latest develop mag have rough industry salaries in them, don't believe the hype, most devs do it for the love - there's fa money in it.

    I'm not going to quote you point for point, I agree with most of what you say in regard to unit quantities and balance, diversions are well needed in play and the ability to create a convincing feint is important - I will quote you here though "Isn't this a staple of RTS games? At the end game you get your hands on uber base destroying units that can easily destroy lots of outdated units?" doe that make it right?

    I'd much rather debate the mechanics of the games than get into a flame war (especially with fan boys) but will make one comment further comment on the review (no offence to Alec Meer whatsoever) but - i'd like to have seen a lot more detail for a 9/10 review.



  • EzyRyder #86 5 years ago

    This game is not the anti CIV, its just what CIV will be if CIV was in real time and set in the future.

    In CoH you can finish missions using a couple of units, its all about small quantities and tactical decissions. In SC you can have those too (although not as well as in CoH) but you can also have the grand strategy that not any other RTS can offer.

    About the stor of SC is poor (not as bad as TA but still nowhere as good as Starcraft) but the game is superb.

  • Garibaldi #87 5 years ago

    @Pablo2k5

    My eyes are just fine, thanks, that paragraph was added sometime after I made the previous comment.

  • djtim #88 5 years ago

    Who the hell talks like this... "Well I posted my dissapointed opinion to muster some conjecture", "I feel I need to ratify the point" ... and still can't spell correctly? And Stim my friend i think you have tactics and strategy confused - they ARENT the same thing. And judging by the comments on this game there are a load of ignorant and/or spoilt gamers out there. If you don't like grand strategy go play CoH and stop wasting everyone's time with your invalid points and opinions. everyone has a right to their own opinion yeah yeah .. but they also have a time and a place. This review of SC was spot on, you can't fault the game for having too high system requirements, because it does wat is supposed to do so well - not tactics, but strategy. Micromanagement is a pain in the ass yes, but a good player with the right mix of units from all tech levels will always defeat a lesser player with only super units. But anyway for those that are reading, people who get CoH (which i don't like personally, it but i know its a great game) probably won't like SC.

  • Genji #89 5 years ago

    So, basically, any criticism of this game is invalid, and doesn't belong in a comments thread about said game.

    It sure took a very long paragraph to say that.

  • EzyRyder #90 5 years ago

    Criticism is valid. I do not like the interface that much, the story is not very good (although they have set it up in a better way than they did with TA). It is ok but was expecting something better like in Total Annihilation.

    The music is fantastic though and the nuclear, chill feeling of the game is fantastic though.

  • UncleLou #91 5 years ago

    So, basically, any criticism of this game is invalid, and doesn't belong in a comments thread about said game.

    The thing is, most people complained about the type of game it is. That's a bit like making comments in a Pro Evo thread how you prefer American Football games.

  • Lutz #92 5 years ago

    UncleLou is right, SupCom is a pure-breed RTS. If you came looking for a shooter, you'll be be gutted. Complain about the game being a bad RTS if needs be, but to complain about it for it's type of game style is idiocy.

  • Stim #93 5 years ago

    @djtim - dude, you've replied to the wrong person...

  • guvner #94 5 years ago

    Stim: "but will make one comment further comment on the review (no offence to Alec Meer whatsoever) but - i'd like to have seen a lot more detail for a 9/10 review."

    Yep - after a bunch of recent two-page reviews for games that rated highly, the SC review is very lightweight on detail.

  • SeesThroughAll #95 5 years ago

    The review failed to give the impression whether it is a "Rush" RTS or not.

  • EzyRyder #96 5 years ago

    @SeesThroughAll - depends on the map, in smaller maps it will be viable but not always possible due to the power of the commander. In bigger maps, impossible :)

  • Lacero #97 5 years ago

    I'm basing this on TA cos I think it still applies :)

    The commander (which you start with) is extremely powerful, the only way an early rush works is if you rush the enemy base (and commander) with your commander. This is extremely risky, and no fun at all to me. It's frowned on by a lot of people in multiplayer. Also while your commander is travelling he can't be building things, while your enemy can. This means you'll almost always lose your commander if you commander rush, as he has a huge radius of damage when he explodes this death blow is your only real hope of doing anything. Skilled players will retreat their commander to the edge so they survive your commander dying.

    During the main game rushing plain doesn't work, your rush will grind itself out on defences unless you have a proper plan and mixed attack force.

  • Hypocee #98 5 years ago

    Yeah, according to beta reports rushing has been shut down *hard* on all but the smallest maps, at least so far. Two reasons: First, the T1 defensive units, including the Commander, are stronger than offensive. This balance shifts as you tech up. Second, raw map size means that without an air transport infrastructure, early units take forever just to get there. This goes away as players invest in forward bases and transportation. I really respect Gas Powered for finding a way to reduce the rush while still rewarding fast expansion and initiative; if RTSes were cars, it's like previous ones didn't have a clutch.

  • Pablo2k5 #99 5 years ago

    @Garibaldi

    My apologies... :-)

  • djtim #100 5 years ago

    "The thing is, most people complained about the type of game it is. That's a bit like making comments in a Pro Evo thread how you prefer American Football games."

    Thanks UncleLou for clarifying, thats exactly what I meant. Directly comparing SC to CoH is not valid or helpful.

  • a8a #101 5 years ago

    I don't know about others, but I was not making a direct comparison, nor doing anything than presenting my opinions. Ie: Supreme Commander is an RTS in the old style, which I used to love when they were the only RTS games, now I prefer RTS games of the new style, because I believe that (good examples of the genre) have made advances which are worthwhile.

  • EzyRyder #102 5 years ago

    Old style? You will have to explain yourself because I haven't got a clue of what do you mean. The only similar games that have been to Supreme Commander are its predecessor Total Annihilation, and in lesser extent, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, Metal Fatigue and The Outforce. They focus on the grand strategy, making resources less important and combat, strategic development and deployement of units more important. Realism and physics are more important.

    Of the rest of RTS the best is Company of Heroes. It is better than Starcraft or Dawn of War. It is the king of Micromanagement but its polished and well balanced (although completely unrealistic). It is a truly great game but more of an arcade than a strategy game.