In 2007, the world was introduced to an incredible entry into the real-time strategy genre called Supreme Commander. GasPowered Games touted its ability to display hundreds of units on the field of battle and, while the game did have some issues, did provide gamers with an epic experience. Three years later, they have released Supreme Commander 2, and video-game war is once again ‘epic’.
STORY
Supreme Commander 2 finds us twenty-five years after the Forged Alliance expansion to Supreme Commander. The three once-warring nations of the United Earth Federation, Cybran, and Illuminati have made peace after battling a terrifying external menace. Unfortunately, nature abhors a vacuum and war is once again threatening to plunge the nations into global war.
GAMEPLAY
Supreme Commander 2 features similar gameplay to the original, with few exceptions. GasPowered Games has painstakingly simplified the game, which they were criticized for not doing in the original. No longer can your commander and engineer units help one another in building structures. While this seems like a negative, in a game like SC2 it actually works out for the best as it allows you more time to focus on tactics and not juggling build units. To help alleviate any pains the player faces due to this change, units now just build faster in general. Of course, this does not matter at all if you have no resources with which to build, and in SC2 you have three different resources types.
You gain material to build with from specially-marked locations on the game maps while you can build power plants for energy just about anywhere. Also available for you are research structures which speed up the rate at which your side gains points which can be spent on unit upgrades and new technologies. This is far different than the original game, which features unit tiers. The new system turns out to be a lot more fun, however, and also adds to the differences between sides. One player may want to focus primarily on air assets or buffing up their command unit, for instance, while another may want to focus on beefing up structures with AA guns and hitpoint enhancements.
Battles in Supreme Commander 2 are just as thrilling as ever, thanks in part to the visual complexity of the game being slightly reduced. While this may seem counter-productive, the reduced comparative system requirements allows the game to run VERY smoothly, so when you do get a couple hundred units facing off, it will be incredibly smooth and animated.
Controlling units in the game is very straight-forward and surprisingly easy given just how many units can be displayed at once. You can double-click on one unit to select the units of the same type in the immediate vicinity or do the old-fashion ‘click and drag’ to select multiple units. What was cool is that when I would select mostly ground units and a rogue fighter would whiz past, the game seemed to figure out that I did not want that air unit in my group and did not include it in the selection. You can still assign groups to various number keys but one thing I wish was added was the ability to orientate your groups after setting a destination – even general formations would have been a cool addition. Setting up patrols has been made ‘baby-can-do-it’ easy by either allowing the plays to click a patrol button and a destination, in which case the unit will walk back and forth between that point and its original location. You can also zoom out on the map to display unit path indications. Hold down the shift button to assign waypoints to a group, then at the end re-select the original waypoint. It will convert the path into a never-ending patrol, which is a perfect assignment for CAP missions. And, trust that you will need them as the enemy is VERY fond of sending air units at you fairly quickly.
Unfortunately, unit path-finding leaves much to be desired and many times you will have to redirect certain groups to navigate the various landscapes of the game maps.
EXPERIMENTAL UNITS
The highest-level units that you can unlock are the ‘experimental units’ and each side has their own to play with. For instance, the UEF can build the ‘King Kriptor’ robot, which towers over the battlefield and features large plasma cannons for hands. The Cybrans can build a cybernetic T-Rex (yes, the dinosaur). It’s all really cool stuff and there is nothing like seeing your army of smaller units trudging along with one of these behemoths in tow. The resulting battles can be simple spectacular.
THE NUCLEAR OPTION
The idea of long-range combat takes a whole new level in Supreme Commander 2 with various options of hurting enemies from a far, ranging from long-range artillery which ‘dumbly’ targets enemies on the other side of the map, to your ‘basic’ nuclear missile. In fact, once unlocked, you can build several nuclear silos and launch missiles from each simultaneously! The resulting destruction is incredible and seeing the ‘vacuum effect’ from the blast is a great touch to the effect.
Of course, there is a deterrent to nuclear weapons aside from obliterating your opponent prior to their using them. You can build missile defense installations which are very effective at downing nukes in mid-flight.
OVERALL
If you are looking for the best modern RTS title around, you can find no better than Supreme Commander 2. Complex enough for strategy nuts while accessible enough for the more casual gamers, SC2 is a great blend of offensive and defensive maneuvers, effectively catering to each play-style.
