The year is 3844, and mankind has splintered into three separate factions.
A brutal, destruction war, the Infinite War, has raged for more than a millennium, and has spread across the galaxy, ravaging planet after planet.
The three factions - United Earth Federation, Aeon Illuminate and Cybran Nation - have developed technology that enables them to travel almost instantaneously from one world to the next, while massive Command Units make it possible for the military leaders to build entire civilisations and armies anywhere.
Billions of humans have died, and now the armies consist of robotic monstrosities capable of reining down destruction on a catastrophic scale.
But the war has reached an impasse, and now your army holds the fate of humanity in its hand.
Supreme Commander, from Gas Powered Games, is the latest real-time strategy game for PC on the market, and sets new benchmarks on how RTS games are played.
What’s immediately obvious is the incredible scale of the game.
No longer will RTS games be played out on constrictive, lacklustre scenarios.
Supreme Commander boasts some of the largest, most expansive game maps of any RTS game, if ever.
Land, sea, mountains, volcanic wastelands, swamps, barren ice lands - all terrain types are available, all of which affect the way each unit is able to operate.
Like most RTS games in this genre, the aim is simple.
Build enough factories, power generation and ore mining (in this case, mass) complexes to construct an army to defeat your enemy.
That, however, is where the game becomes more demanding.
Unlike many RTS games, success in Supreme Commander isn’t a simple matter of victory through overwhelming numbers.
Unlike any RTS I’ve played before, in Commander you’ll rely primarily on strategy - about 60 per cent on tactics, and just 40 per cent on sheer strength and numbers.
For every offensive weapons platform at your disposal, your enemy will have a defensive platform purpose-built to defend against it.
Often during a game, you’ll require more than a simply front-on attack that relies on weight of numbers.
Instead, hit-and-run sorties aimed at taking out anti-air batteries, followed by bomber runs designed to cripple artillery or strategic missile defences will be necessary.
Visually, the game is highly detailed and immense in stature and while this is a major drawcard of Supreme Commander, it’s also its Achilles’ heel.
Minimum specs listed for the game of a 1.8GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and 128MB of video RAM seems incredibly inadequate (thus why I‘ve listed recommended specs instead).
The test machine in this case was a Vista-powered Duo2 Core machine (2.13GHz) with 1GB of RAM with 512MB of GeForce graphics power, and while these specs seem overwhelming, the game still struggled at times to run smoothly and frame rates dropped dramatically during intense battle scenes.
That said, Supreme Commander is a game of gargantuan proportions and stands alone in its sheer size and playability of real-time strategy games.
While a steep learning curve may seem daunting for newcomers, hardcore RTS gamers and fans of the genre will revel in its complexities.
Overall, Supreme Commander is one of the more impressive RTS games in years and pushes the boundaries of what makes a strategy game a true strategy game, and not one that relies solely on rewarding sheer numbers.
A brutal, destruction war, the Infinite War, has raged for more than a millennium, and has spread across the galaxy, ravaging planet after planet.
The three factions - United Earth Federation, Aeon Illuminate and Cybran Nation - have developed technology that enables them to travel almost instantaneously from one world to the next, while massive Command Units make it possible for the military leaders to build entire civilisations and armies anywhere.
Billions of humans have died, and now the armies consist of robotic monstrosities capable of reining down destruction on a catastrophic scale.
But the war has reached an impasse, and now your army holds the fate of humanity in its hand.
Supreme Commander, from Gas Powered Games, is the latest real-time strategy game for PC on the market, and sets new benchmarks on how RTS games are played.
What’s immediately obvious is the incredible scale of the game.
No longer will RTS games be played out on constrictive, lacklustre scenarios.
Supreme Commander boasts some of the largest, most expansive game maps of any RTS game, if ever.
Land, sea, mountains, volcanic wastelands, swamps, barren ice lands - all terrain types are available, all of which affect the way each unit is able to operate.
Like most RTS games in this genre, the aim is simple.
Build enough factories, power generation and ore mining (in this case, mass) complexes to construct an army to defeat your enemy.
That, however, is where the game becomes more demanding.
Unlike many RTS games, success in Supreme Commander isn’t a simple matter of victory through overwhelming numbers.
Unlike any RTS I’ve played before, in Commander you’ll rely primarily on strategy - about 60 per cent on tactics, and just 40 per cent on sheer strength and numbers.
For every offensive weapons platform at your disposal, your enemy will have a defensive platform purpose-built to defend against it.
Often during a game, you’ll require more than a simply front-on attack that relies on weight of numbers.
Instead, hit-and-run sorties aimed at taking out anti-air batteries, followed by bomber runs designed to cripple artillery or strategic missile defences will be necessary.
Visually, the game is highly detailed and immense in stature and while this is a major drawcard of Supreme Commander, it’s also its Achilles’ heel.
Minimum specs listed for the game of a 1.8GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and 128MB of video RAM seems incredibly inadequate (thus why I‘ve listed recommended specs instead).
The test machine in this case was a Vista-powered Duo2 Core machine (2.13GHz) with 1GB of RAM with 512MB of GeForce graphics power, and while these specs seem overwhelming, the game still struggled at times to run smoothly and frame rates dropped dramatically during intense battle scenes.
That said, Supreme Commander is a game of gargantuan proportions and stands alone in its sheer size and playability of real-time strategy games.
While a steep learning curve may seem daunting for newcomers, hardcore RTS gamers and fans of the genre will revel in its complexities.
Overall, Supreme Commander is one of the more impressive RTS games in years and pushes the boundaries of what makes a strategy game a true strategy game, and not one that relies solely on rewarding sheer numbers.
WE RATE IT
Graphics: 9
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 8.5
OVERALL: 85%
Graphics: 9
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 8.5
OVERALL: 85%
Supreme Commander Website
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