Does consolising a RTS mean its a failure? Months after release, I take a stab at this RTS and am a little surprised.
If you are a religious supreme commander fan, don't expect this to be a true successor to the game mechanics and style you grew accustom to. The first thing I noticed was the graphics. The game does actually look nice for what it is presenting to you but, you will immediately notice that this is slightly sub-par to the graphic representation of supreme commander 1. The ground palettes, details in the units, and colors are very bland in comparison to its predecessor. With that said, the game does look very nice and polished. Explosions, shield effects, flying debris, planes crashing, and other small graphics and bloom affects look very nice. For many, supreme commander in the past was used as a PC gaming benchmark of graphics and speed. Here, the graphics has been streamlined to allow for a bigger market of consumers but it does hold up nicely. If you have played supreme commander one, then think of this game around the medium graphics settings of that game with all the extra effects turned on.
The game is split into 3 races. Single player has you go through each race in a nice engaging story and actually with good dialogue. While it is just a rts game, they do make a good attempt and putting you in the game universe. I was actually surprised that the voice acting was normal and that some time was put in to attempt to draw players into the game. You will not find cliche speaking, voice actors putting bad accents on there voice, or constant yelling of non sense like some other rts in the decades have done. I played from the start on hardest difficulty and it took me around 5-6 hours per race to play. (As of version 1.15)
As I had been a huge supreme commander fan, I expected the same stereotypical.... "turtle base.... max tech level then attack formula". That really isn't the case here. It seems the developers have pushed to get battles faster. Within 5-10 minutes, a major base can be setup and units can be pumping at a nice rate. The maps are also smaller but still big enough that it will take some time for units to cross the field of battle. I feel its a change for the better as now players can actually attack and not have a 10-20 minute hike across a massive map like in the first supreme commander. The leveling system is simple in the fact that you attack or build research centers to gain research points. The points can be put into categories of Air, land, structure and you AU. Inside of these categories are tech trees that generally push toward newer units, more unit health, or more unit attack. Its a really simple system but since there are so many tech trees and formulas, it can be a big game of rock paper scissors when playing against a online opponent or AI. For instance, playing online, you will find that you are pushing down on path tree. Most players get the structure upgrades for more resources and usually go for one tree of a type a unit. That is, they will push there tree along just air or ground and either go for attack or health for the units. There is a lot that can go on when considering paths of tech levels to go through. As you have to attack to gain any nominal research points, the game can become very aggressive which forces even the most turtling players to put in some effort to attack which further makes the research a small chess match. Going one pathway while someone else thinks opposite could end with a quick match. One limelight is that units handle against each other pretty well. For instance, in supreme commander 1, if you attacked with 30 tech level 1 units to 6 tech level 2's, the level 2's would kill all 30 of the level 1's. With the way the leveling works here, you still get a major advantage in power base on the techs you choice but units can hold better up in this iteration of the game.
The game mechanics of building a base are very similar to supreme commander. You build mass collectors, and power plants for currency, research center, defense ground tower, air tower, land- sea factories and some special factories for each team. I little disappointed was in the defensive structures. There is only one ground turret and one air turret. While not alot of variety, they did supplement it by allowing you to add-on on your other buildings with defensive turrets. That is really the biggest weakness in the game. Proportionally though, many other RTS games follow that same front but if you are a supreme commander fan or even the classic total annihilation, you will be greatly disappointed on this aspect. Some may feel there is also a lack of variety of units for each race. Each race has 5 basic ground units of a tank, anti air turret tank, missile tank, and long range artillery. The basic air is a fighter, bomber, attack heli, and transport. Sea units are cruiser, battleship and a submarine but one race does not have sea units as all there vehicles hover(illumanti). Outside of the basic units, each team has experimental units of ground, air, and sea. In essence, its the same as supreme commander 1 outside there being repeats of Tech 1 plane to Tech 2 plane etc etc.
Sound is very engaging with nice epic orchestra music playing. Its a nice little touch to the game and something that today can go unappreciated.
In the end, this is a nice gem. It will not have the graphics of its predecessor but if you are looking for a nice engaging rts, this will do nicely. As of yet, there is no modding tools which can be a great detriment to other rts games of this genre. If you are a fan of supreme commander one, and are open to the graphical aspects, you should enjoy this game. As of the latest patches, the AI hard in skirmish mode can really put up a good fight and catch you off guard many times reacting to your unit selection, base design and styles. This is a nice gem and if you want a new rts on a budget, this will do nicely.
Gameplay
8/10
---Simplistic compared to predecessor but still new elements that are engaging and can make for good online matches.
Sound
9.5/10
--- Nice orchestra style music that helps move along the action.
Control
7/10
--- Everything works well but for some reason you do now have any WASD options. Instead the camera can only be moves with mouse or with arrow keys. Making a small script to emulate arrow keys on wasd works nicely.
Presentation
8/10
---Easy menu options. Story mode cinematics run through the engine itself which is pretty nice. Good flow to single player.
Graphics
7.5/10
---Game is a slight step back in the details. This is really where the consolising shows its self. Graphics do look nice once you turn everything up and x16 anti-aliasing. My e7400 @ 3.6 ghz, oced GTS 250, windows xp ran it completely maxed without a problem and it did look nice on that level. Biggest concern is that gamers with a system beyond mine will probably find fault as the graphics in the game are really not up to par for the hardware that is out today. Its like taking supreme commander 1 stripping the max graphical level and slip-streaming the game engine so it can run greatly optimized on lower end systems.
Conclusion
8/10
---Good game. Probably was not worth buying on release but months later would be a good purchase to any rts fan. If you are open to this game and not holding onto a onto a belief that a sequel must follow its predecessor but with shinier graphics then you will enjoy SC2. 21 missions of single player with 3 races to choose from, engaging online gaming at a budget price will keep you playing for hours.