reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
8 MAXIMUMPC april 2007
W
hen Total Annihilation came out
nearly 10 years ago, it gave the
RTS genre a major kick in the arse,
bringing 3D units and terrain, downloadable
units, and a level of battlefield chaos that
was over-the-top for its time.
Why the hell are we talking about a
decade-old game? Supreme Commander
is the brainchild of TA’s daddy, that’s why.
It may not be called TA II, but Supcom is
very much the spiritual successor to that
genre-redefining game. And, as with TA, our
expectations for an RTS are forever changed
after playing Supcom.
This is quite simply the biggest, most
explosive, most visually gratifying RTS we’ve
ever played. Everything about this game
screams B-I-G, from the size of its units and
maps to the size of its explosions—and sys-
tem requirements.
The game serves up three single-play-
er campaigns featuring three very visu-
ally distinct factions—all vying for control
of the galaxy. The story is well told and
backed by top-notch production values.
Each campaign may include only six mis-
sions, but each mission grows in size as
various objectives are met, and most mis-
sions take several hours to complete. (And
you get deep skirmish and multiplayer
options, too.)
You control an Armored Command Unit,
which is basically a King Kong–size robot
that you use to construct a base and raisean army. Lose this unit and it’s game over.
(The same rule applies to your enemies.)
The primary ace up Supcom’s sleeve
is the scale of its maps, which are simply
ginormous—think hundreds of square
miles, not a couple of football fields! Youcan have up to 500 units in your army at
once, as can each enemy commander on
the map, and up to eight players can go
at it on multiplayer maps. The math adds
up to mass carnage, and it also makes for
a game that feels much more like real war
than anything we’ve played yet.
Units are expendable! Base defenses
are strong, and it’ll take hundreds of units to
storm a large installation. The name of the
game is combined arms: finding the right
balance of units to win the day.
Supcom’s interface and camera system
are simply brilliant, which means the game
is never hard to manage despite the scale of
war erupting on your screen. You can zoom
out until units are no more than chits, and
you can zoom in until you can see the whites
of their eyes. Your level of control over the
game never changes.
By holding down the Shift key and
right-clicking you can do just about any-
thing in the game: queue build commands,
set patrols, tell units to assist each other,
and of course, order attacks. It’s all so ele-
gantly simple, which means you are free to
concentrate on strategy and tactics rather
than worry about micromanagement. This
freedom is also bolstered by the fact that
you only need to worry about harvesting
two resources—energy and mass—to keep
your army running.
Supcom is a bloody fantastic game—
even if you don’t like strategy games, you
will like this one. However, this is also themost system-intensive RTS we’ve ever
seen. Don’t even think of playing it with all
the bells and whistles on unless you have
an 8800-class GPU and a multicore CPU.
Even then, it will likely bog down at times.
Nevertheless, this is one game that’s defi-
nitely worth the upgrade hassles.
—Steve KlettSupreme Commander
This most definitely ain’t your father’s RTS!
You can zoom out for a bird’s-eye view of the entire map without losing one bit of con-
trol over your units—you can even put the strategic map on a secondary display!Work your way up the tech tree and you’ll
have nukes to play with—and when they’re
pretend, they’re a helluva lot of fun!the Armored Command Unit is your on-
field general: lose it and it’s game over.$50, http://www.supremecommander.com,
ESRB: E 10+supreme commandereYe grAtifiCAtion
Huge maps, tons of units,
great control scheme; dual-
monitor support is cool.
Sleep deprivAtion
10Extreme resource hog! AI gets
a bit dumb in the largest battles;
faction units are a bit too samey. MAXIM
UMPCKICKASS