Supreme Commander

SuppComm?

A long time ago, this 1001 list had me playing Total Annihilation for the first time, a game I didn't know existed, and one I saw as a hidden gem of the RTS genre - and not because it had big mechs.

Time passes, technology develops, but there'd be no more Total Annihilation until spiritual successor Supreme Commander came along, which is basically the same deal as before: big stompy mechs building and manufacturing the machines of the Infinite War.

Do we have what it takes to end such a vast battle?

Fun Times

The setup to Supreme Commander is a sci-fi tale as old as time. Humans spread out through the galaxy and all is good until humans do what humans do best and screw it all up, ultimately leading to the Infinite War, which has raged for 1,000 years. How do we know it's infinite, then?

There are three broad groups in play. The remnants of humanity, some alien worshipers, and some cyborgs, and you'll pick from one of these three to take through the campaign mode where, presumably, there's going to be a lot of war.

I'm not sure of the gameplay differences between the factions, but from the look of their big stompy mech, there is only one choice for me, and that's whatever is left of the Earth Empire, the UEF. I'd usually dive into a tutorial section right about now, but I don't have time for that. We're at war. We've always been at war. No time to practice, is there?

A CGI cutscene introduces us to the UEF president, a gruff guy, no doubt of military background, and some kind of superweapon that's in the final stages of its construction. Can we hold out until it is ready? Well, according to the General, with this new commander ready to take to the field, we just might. Who's that, then?

Oh.

It's us.

Our first mission is to help defend something or other from the Cybrans, a bunch of human cyborgs who splintered off from the empire when things turned south. They're the bad guys, but then I get the feeling that everyone who isn't us is the bad guys, and we're most likely the bad guys as well. That's war for you.

And here we are, launched through warp gates to crash down onto the battlefield and get to work. We pilot a ruddy big mech, which you'd have thought would be pretty cool, I mean, just look at that beam weapon.

It's not a weapon, it's a tool. You do have weapons, but this is an ACU, an Armored Command Unit, and is essentially you. This is an RTS where you navigate menus and maps and construct everything from your bird's eye view, but in addition to all of that, you do actually have a presence on the field. You're a strong fella, but you're not invincible, and can of course only be in one place at any given time.

So, much like any other RTS title, you've got to farm resources and create units to do your bidding for you. Tanks, mini-mechs, anti-air units... a lot of options are available to you early on, and I took a load of them and marched west to attack the first Cybran outpost.

From the main window, you can zoom all the way out to a map view, where units are rendered as icons - luckily all those red dots represent chunks of wall and not a massive opposition army - or zoom all the way into the action, where you can see the models animate their way through the fight, or die trying like these piddly mechs were soon to do.

To be honest, the graphics aren't exactly going to knock your socks off. I don't know how good they were back in 2007 compared to other RTS games, but here, it's nothing special. In fact, what's most appealing about the graphics is that I have the option to zoom out and just use the map view for the most part.

When an objective has been met, the camera will sweep down to a somewhat cinematic view of the action, but it's so sparse that it sort of cheapens the experience. It's calling attention to how little there is going on.

Perhaps it's just this first level that's easy on the eyes, and future maps will be crammed full of details, I don't know. All I can see right now is that Supreme Commander is simple in its looks, but then it probably has to be when there's all of this going on.

Look at all those units. Some of them are walls, yes, but a great many of them are friendlies who we need to defend from enemies. The red markers on the lower left are my next objective, some level two power generators that we're going to steal for our own use.

It's at this point that I realise I probably should have been paying attention to all the lime green things, resources for fueling our war efforts. You know, the things good RTS players farm early and often. Whoops.

Frustrations

Your ACU isn't the fastest mech on the block. When you draw a big selection box over a bunch of units to move them all at once, your ACU doesn't join the party, perhaps in case you accidentally march him - slowly - into a skirmish. As such, there were times when I was slow to see that I wasn't moving anywhere, or doing anything.

Do you know how far away these power generators are from your first starting point, where I pretty much parked my ACU up and abandoned? Quite far. Any ideas how slow you are to switch them over to your power grid? Quite slow.

Supreme Commander really did start to bog down here, and I know some of it is because of my ineptitude at efficiently controlling my units, but some of that seems to be inherent in the RTS genre. Slow builds can be fine. Slow builds can be fun. Gathering your forces before zerg rushing the enemy base can be an absolute joy, but I get the impression Supreme Commander doesn't want us to do that.

Powering on a giant artillery cannon that I can't find a way to actually use (I guess I've just got to leave it to the AI to send it), my superiors tell me to sweep up the anti-air turrets to the south of the Cybran base and then send in air units to bomb them back to the stone age, which must be a considerable length of time in the past indeed.

Ultimately, however, this is all working towards my one remaining objective: destroy the enemy commander in his ACU.

He's the dude who one-shots my units for getting too close. These ACUs are not to be messed with, but surely they can't withstand a swarm of tanks, bombers, and myself, right?

It's time to gather up my forces, build twice as many, and dive on in. 

It seems in my clicking that my ACU took the front lines, rather than just standing at the back behind the safety of a line of tanks. This wasn't ideal, but surely, I thought, overwhelming firepower would win out. I juggled my units a little and kept on firing.

Watching the enemy ACU's health bar drain, I know this skirmish is almost won. Then I glance down at my ACU's health bar, swear a little, start to panic, and then watch the fireworks.

After all that, 50 minutes in, I despite the numbers, I was the first ACU to explode. There was so little in it, I swear. I was seconds away from a win, but alas, a supreme commander I am not.

Final Word

Despite not learning how to actually play Supreme Commander, and despite not playing it anywhere near like I probably should have played Supreme Commander, and despite even not really caring for the plot or the backstory of Supreme Commander, I came out of Supreme Commander liking it.

Not in a 'this is amazing' way. I don't think I'll be diving right back in immediately, but nor am I going to be uninstalling it in frustration or anything. What's likely is that I won't get around to it again for a long time, because there's nothing really truly compelling for me to return to, but Supreme Commander is still a game that can offer a nice time.

I'll definitely have to bother looking into the tutorial to see what I should be doing, but yeah, I might try stomping around the battlefield again, certainly. It's not got the appeal of a Command & Conquer, but it is different. It may even have lots of technology going on under the hood that I should be more appreciative of, but I don't know that.

If you like RTS games and haven't played either Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander, you should give one of them a go for sure, just for the slightly different take on the genre. Whether you stick with them is up to you. That's a harder sell, I think.

Fun Facts

I knew there would be something technical to make note of: support for splitting tasks between different cores of the CPU if your system has a dual or quad-core processor. This beauty of a machine has 6 cores and I've no idea why I chose that over anything else.

Supreme Commander, developed by Gas Powered Games, first released in 2007.

Version played: PC, 2007.