Ok, this one's a bit of a soft spot in my heart, and I'm cranking this out for 2 reasons... a) My recent change of jobs means I don't have to pass any CSO exams any more (although, apparently the branch is due an auditors visit in the next fortnight...), and b) I've seriously not had that many games pass through my hands that I've managed to tolerate long enough to be able to review. Seriously, Space Marine... Sort your shit out.
So....
*drum roll*
Title: Supreme Commander 2 Genre: RTS Developer: Gas Powered Games Publisher: Square Enix Ratings: ESRB - E10 Formats: PC, Xbox360, McSteamPlay
Synopsis:
The war between the United Earth Federation, the Aeon Illuminate, and the Cybran Nation is over. United after countless millions have been slaughtered in the name of defense, religion, and plain survival, the major factions in the galaxy are finally at peace, when the unthinkable happens. The UEF President is assassinated, and everyone starts pointing fingers. The fragile peace is brutally shattered, and the galaxy is once again at each others throats. Everyone except 3 Commanders who are able to see past the petty differences of race, and are dedicated to bringing the galaxy back to peace.
Enter Dominic Maddox, a young UEF commander married to one of the Illuminate, who refuses an order from a superior to round up all the Illuminate "terrorists", and embraks on his own campaign to get to the truth. Equipped with an ACU, and his tactical mind, he'll need as much support as he can get, to get past Aeon, Cybran, and his fellow UEF commanders to bring peace back.
Ok, so I've got a bit of a soft spot for Total Annihilation, and the spiritual successor, Supreme Commander. These are RTS games in a class apart from the rest. Tank rushes at anti-ground defenses will get your army being scraped off of the terrain with a dustpan and brush. Sending air units in with AA defenses up will just be a waste of resources. Same with naval units against torpedo launches. Each defense needs its own variant of assault, which then draws games into either a very clever war of attrition, or reliant on strategic genius to win. Even the oft-vaunted method of nuking something to submission can be defeated with cheap anti-nuke missiles. These games put the strategy into RTS.
So where do we stand with a sequel to something that makes me all warm and mushy inside? Well, the truth is that it's still pretty good, but has the same creep that infests just about every sequel ever made.
For an RTS game to work really well, you need to balance out resources, combat, and technology well, and still have some threat from the AI to pressure the player into either making a mistake, or delivering a massive, crippling counter-attack that sets them up for the win. Sadly, SC2 is a bit lacking in a lot of areas.
Resources are really just a case of plonking as many energy generators down as possible, and spamming Mass Conversion to keep your Mass needs satiated. You barely need any Mass Extractors , other than just enough to cover building a huge number of Energy Generators.
Technology in RTS games is normally handled by unlocking upgrades though building, or physically spending resources on research. SC2 does, in a way, have a Research resource. This gets generated by either killing a huge number of units (which when your anti-ground defenses kick in, isn't really a hard thing), or by building Research Stations. Now, the problem with this is that you don't really need to unlock previous technology in any sensible manner, instead just rushing through to whatever Experimental you've chosen to finish the level with. Which the game-breaking Soul Shade 2 Gunship only costs 25 Research to unlock, and makes the level only a matter of parking it over a base until its over.
Combat is something that SC2 really makes me sad about. Coming from the immense Supreme Commander, where even the units have counters and strengths, we then get to SC2, which has aircraft being able to directly bomb AA installations, and not be killed in the process. In SC2 you have 2 classes of units. Overpowered, and everything else. Experimentals fall directly into the OP category, with the aforementioned Soul Shade 2 Gunship tearing through enough AA defenses to make them effectively useless, especially when the Gunship ranks up. Other races have various Experimentals as well, ranging from a walking Dreadnought battleship, to a spiderbot armed with a few hundred lasers. Oh, and the UEF still having access to a deadly artillery installation that only needs to find the enemy ACU to end the game in a couple of minutes. Now, Experimentals are supposed to be OP in comparison with normal units, and SC1 handled this admirably. The Cybran Spiderlord bot took a whopping 35 minutes to build with a tE engineer. Overpowered, yes, but cripplingly expensive, and horrendously long to build kept their usefulness down. The SC2 equivalent takes about 90 seconds to build, and is just as effective as its SC1 version.
Graphically, SC2 has had a bit of a fluffy makeover, which is a shame, as an RTS game should really concentrate on the gameplay and strategy components first. Maps seem excessively constrained by the graphics, which are trying to show massive expanses of impassible terrain, rather than strategic options.
Audibly, SC2 inherits the orchestral score from SC1, always a welcome addition to your army triumphantly crushing your enemy being set to some Elgar-alike. Nothing really to fault it here, as the music kicks in at just the right time, and (shockingly) doesn't kick in when you're reclaiming your own extraneous buildings like the predecessor.
Ok, so I do have that soft spot for SC1, but it doesn't really extend to SC2, with the massive changes that really didn't need addressing (unless you're trying to turn it into yet another C&C-style rushathon), and even the promise of DLC (ick) can't sway.
Scores!
Graphics: Ironically, RTS games are one area that shiny graphics and high fidelity maps get in the way of proper strategy. Expansive maps, but most of it inaccessible to ground units, despite having access ramps. Massive zoom level built into the game is both nice, and horrible at the same time - B
Sound: Orchestral score, satisfying explosions, and (almost) believable voice acting all add up to a strong audio package, complimenting the game nicely, with the subtle tweaks in timing making things seem less disjointed with the soundtrack. Could work things a little better in the heat of things, like some unit feedback or other messages, but overall excellent - A
Gameplay: Not of the same calibre as Total Annihilation, or Supreme Commander, with overly simplified gameplay more pandering to the C&C crowd, than the TA/SC1 group. Overpowered and cheap Experimentals break the endgame very quickly, with no real strategy needed, other than turtling and researching to the extreme. Solid "mainstream" RTS gameplay though, just out of character for an SC title - B
Replay Factor: Bad for single player, with the DLC pack not actually affecting it in a visible fashion. Excellent for LAN play, and the occasional online MP game facilitated by Steam integration. Skirmish mode AI is pretty dire at the best of times, so play it against friends instead - B
Overall: A very solid RTS game that I'd recommend to most people looking to graduate from C&C, but who are a little offput by the more "hardcore" games like Total War. Gameplay has had some very peculiar "fixes" from the first game to the second, which make no sense at all in the title, but allow a little pandering to the weaker RTS games and their playerbase. Very much a "gateway drug" for the more hardcore RTS titles out there. - B
The Final Word So yeah, I'm a massive Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander fanboy. The different level of RTS knowledge, coupled with the huge mission times and devastation that gets caused with the introduction of Experimentals, and the actual tactical choices made in "breaking" a base should make any RTS fan moist, instead of the massive turn-off of a tank rush. Even when I first played SC2 back on the release date last year, it was a funny one, having just finished a revisit of Tiberian Sun, then a refresh of Supreme Commander, I was a bit let down by SC2. The early missions were very much like SC1, with longer mission times, as you actually needed to work with multiple fronts and unit types to break the bases. And then you get access to the 90-second game breakers, known as the Experimentals. The last mission on Shiva Prime took me 20 minutes to do. And 15 of that was getting the base in a state where I could make the Experimentals. 90 seconds of build, and the mission quite literally fell apart in the grand total of 210 seconds. They're just that powerful.
So while I'd recommend this to anyone looking for more of a challenge, anyone who has actually played either TA or SC1 and loved it, I'd tell them to steer the fuck away from this, as it's a big let down from the first.
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Reviews:
Supreme Commander 2 <-- A sequel with a lot to live up to. Does it command everything, or take orders?
Fight Night Champion (PS3) <-- Nubnos comes back from the canvas, and goes in swinging.
James Bond 007 - Blood Stone (PS3) <-- Do try to return this in one piece, 007...
Upcoming Reviews: <-- Add to the list! Dragon Age 2 (PS3) <- OMG YU SO ADDICTIVE?! *In Progress!* Ratchet and Clank 4 (PS3)
Last bumped by Nubnos on Sun Nov 27, 2011 4:31 pm.
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