- Jul 19, 2007
- 315
- 4
- 81
I have been listening to people talk about Supreme Commander for quite some time now, so I finally found the original and expansion on eBay. My signature rig ran it at 1920x1200 with max settings, so that was good. Started playing...and stopped. The game is just so damn ugly. The flat terrain is almost completely featureless and looks bland and weak. Most units are ugly, and you are zoomed out most of the time anyway, so all you see are the icons.
Even when you do zoom in, the graphics are poor. For example, the ships do not interact with the water they move in. There is no splash, no waves, nothing. Even the original Red Alert in 1995 had water effects around a moving sea vessel. The game with some of the highest system requirements around in 2008 does not.
But it's an RTS, so those are all about multiplayer. I downloaded a couple of replays, from the replay of the week section at gamereplays.org and watched those. It was sad to see the best games this title has to offer. When I was reading about this game, I imagined a lot of tactical combat, with various units having vastly different functions on the battlefield....like CoH on a gigantic scale...but that was not the case. All players built basic ground/naval/air units in each tier and just threw them at one another. The fact that maps are basically large football fields contributed to this to a very large degree.
Moreover, and this is actually sort of sad, ever since StarCraft came out and had 3 different races, all the other RTS's tried to follow suit. SC also has 3 (4 with expansion) sides. But while they look somewhat different (at least until you zoom out a bit) they play exactly the same and every side has the same units, which occasionally vary in their stats and names.
For all the hype about scale, there were not that many units in play. In fact, in no single game I wantched, were there more units than in SC/BW game of average length. For a game that has Scale as its just about only selling point, that's quite sad.
So to recap:
-The game is ugly as hell, even at high resolution at max settings.
-Bland flat maps contribute to shallow gameplay.
-3 different sides are basically the same side with a different coat of paint.
-For all the talk about scale, the number of units in play is actually not that high compared to some games that did not decide to randomly categorize themselves as "epic scale games."
-The zoom feature, while cool as a concept, means that you are playing most of the game zoomed waaaaay out, so all you see are little icons moving around the screen.
-Cheap look because of some obvious omissions such as water effects around a moving sea vessel.
I may sound very negative, but I have high expectations when it comes to RTS games. My mainstay computer game is Brood War and Company of Heroes in second place. Compared to those 2 games, this game is an utter piece of trash. It has no visual appeal or depth. It's total Annihilation all over again with the exercise to see how many different units you can fit into one game in order to put a large number on the retail box. That 80% of these units never see gameplay, of course, the marketing materials do not talk about. I had high hopes for this game, given all the positive reviews in the magazines. Seeing the actual game was a huge letdown. It turned out to be nothing more than a huge marketing campaign and a bunch of set-up/doctored screenshots.
Even when you do zoom in, the graphics are poor. For example, the ships do not interact with the water they move in. There is no splash, no waves, nothing. Even the original Red Alert in 1995 had water effects around a moving sea vessel. The game with some of the highest system requirements around in 2008 does not.
But it's an RTS, so those are all about multiplayer. I downloaded a couple of replays, from the replay of the week section at gamereplays.org and watched those. It was sad to see the best games this title has to offer. When I was reading about this game, I imagined a lot of tactical combat, with various units having vastly different functions on the battlefield....like CoH on a gigantic scale...but that was not the case. All players built basic ground/naval/air units in each tier and just threw them at one another. The fact that maps are basically large football fields contributed to this to a very large degree.
Moreover, and this is actually sort of sad, ever since StarCraft came out and had 3 different races, all the other RTS's tried to follow suit. SC also has 3 (4 with expansion) sides. But while they look somewhat different (at least until you zoom out a bit) they play exactly the same and every side has the same units, which occasionally vary in their stats and names.
For all the hype about scale, there were not that many units in play. In fact, in no single game I wantched, were there more units than in SC/BW game of average length. For a game that has Scale as its just about only selling point, that's quite sad.
So to recap:
-The game is ugly as hell, even at high resolution at max settings.
-Bland flat maps contribute to shallow gameplay.
-3 different sides are basically the same side with a different coat of paint.
-For all the talk about scale, the number of units in play is actually not that high compared to some games that did not decide to randomly categorize themselves as "epic scale games."
-The zoom feature, while cool as a concept, means that you are playing most of the game zoomed waaaaay out, so all you see are little icons moving around the screen.
-Cheap look because of some obvious omissions such as water effects around a moving sea vessel.
I may sound very negative, but I have high expectations when it comes to RTS games. My mainstay computer game is Brood War and Company of Heroes in second place. Compared to those 2 games, this game is an utter piece of trash. It has no visual appeal or depth. It's total Annihilation all over again with the exercise to see how many different units you can fit into one game in order to put a large number on the retail box. That 80% of these units never see gameplay, of course, the marketing materials do not talk about. I had high hopes for this game, given all the positive reviews in the magazines. Seeing the actual game was a huge letdown. It turned out to be nothing more than a huge marketing campaign and a bunch of set-up/doctored screenshots.
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