Second impressions of the Supreme Commander demo
Okay, I know it’s getting a little ridiculous, writing two blog posts about one game in one day. But it’s Supreme Commander. I finished up the campaign since I last wrote about the demo, and I just had to share a few more thoughts about the game.
This game play is really, really fun. It automates a lot of the things that make other RTSs annoyingly trivial and monotonous. For instance, you can set a construction unit to patrol, and he will automatically repair damaged units and buildings, help construct buildings, and reclaim hulks of destroyed units for resources. It’s so nice not having to worry about manually repairing each defensive emplacement after every little attack. The construction queue is very nice and saves a lot of time (you can even tell other construction units to assist the unit working the queue, so everything gets built faster). Patrols are setup very nicely; each node on the patrol path can be readjusted simply by dragging it, allowing quick alterations to patrol paths rather than having to start over from scratch.
Transportation is handled the best I’ve seen out of any game. It only takes three mouse clicks to set up a ferry route between two points using a transport aircraft. Then, just click with a unit on one end icon of the ferry path and he will automatically be picked up by the transport plane and ferried to the other side. This makes bridging rivers a snap. Even better, you can chain ferry routes together with other routes, as I did when I told my land unit factory on one island to automatically send units over to the ferry point, so they’d all eventually assemble in a fighting force on the mainland, ready to go into battle, without me having to micromanage any of it. It’s really, really nice.
I can tell a lot of thought was put into the unit mix. Combined arms are definitely necessary. Generally I will send in my land force first, and as soon as they start engaging, I send in my bombers at specific targets that need to be taken out; meanwhile, my fighters are patrolling above my advancing column, taking out any enemy air units harassing my guys. The naval units are fun as well, and I was able to take out an entire enemy base just by bombarding it from sea with my frigates. I also used a bunch of frigates as an interdiction fleet along a wide river. They took out the enemy overflights long before they reached my base, which they were trying to attack.
I just wish the demo had more content! I would really, really like to play around with some of those screen-bustingly huge experimental units, as well as the long-range artillery and the nukes. It was the artillery that made the original Total Annihilation so unique; nothing before, or since, has had artillery that could fire clear across the map, leveling enemy bases and requiring them to deal with it, either by a direct assault or counter-artillery barrages.
If I had to pick one thing above all others that I love about Supreme Commander, it would have to be the truly colossal explosion left behind in the wake of a Commander’s death. When a Commander goes up, the game slows down, zooms in, and takes control away from you for a little while, like a cinematic cutscene. A blinding explosion erupts and proceeds to fill the entire screen, laying waste to everything in its path. One of the Commanders I killed went down due to my aerial bombardment, and the explosion’s plume grew wider and taller, consuming most of my column of air units, disintegrating them where they flew. The Commander’s explosion even set off a chain reaction in the enemy’s buildings that caused the entire base to blow up in a huge domino reaction. After the explosion finally subsided, all that was left was scorched earth and a humongous crater that had been ripped into the battered surface. Over one hundred of my units had gone up in that explosion, but I did not care, for when the enemy Commander dies, you win.
Total Annihilation had explosions when the Commanders died, but they weren’t executed nearly as well as these. These are impressive by all counts. I guess the reasoning for the huge explosion is that Commanders have incredibly dense (antimatter?) energy cores that power them, and when the Commander is destroyed and containment fails, all of that energy has to go somewhere. I don’t particularly care about the reasoning, I just know that it’s a fitting end for the death of the most powerful unit in the game, which is, paradoxically, also the first and only one you start with.
