Roll out the red carpet—Supreme Commander is preparing to take the crown of strategy gaming. The spiritual successor to Chris Taylor’s wildly popular real-time strategy game Total Annihilation is within sight and what a beauty it is. At Microsoft’s Games for Windows showcase in San Francisco, we had the opportunity to take a look at a final build of the game and walked away pining for more.
Roll out the red carpet—Supreme Commander is preparing to take the crown of strategy gaming. The spiritual successor to Chris Taylor’s wildly popular real-time strategy game Total Annihilation is within sight and what a beauty it is. At Microsoft’s Games for Windows showcase in San Francisco, we had the opportunity to take a look at a final build of the game and walked away pining for more.
Supreme Commander chronicles the last days of the Infinite War, a conflict between three factions of humanity that has endured for over a millennia. Expansion of the human civilization via colonization of distant planets gave birth to three distinct factions: the Aeon Illuminate, Cybran Nation, and United Earth Federation (UEF). As humans ventured into space, the Aeon Illuminate arose from a distinct colony claiming to be hybrids from an alien race. Another group of humans pursuing cybernetic technology eventually formed the Cybran Nation. Desperately holding on to the shreds of humanity’s origins, the UEF slowly lost ties with the colonies. Across each of the three single player campaigns, you’ll become the supreme commander of each faction in an effort to end the Infinite War and control humanity.
The single player campaigns will offer a staggering amount of gameplay clocking in at around 30 hours. Unlike traditional real-time strategy games in which the campaign is divided into separate missions, Supreme Commander provides dynamic operations comprised of interconnected missions. You’ll start an operation by building a base and completing a specified objective. Once you’ve finished your initial mission, the operation map will expand and you’ll be given a new set of objectives. The units and structures from the previous mission are held over through the course of the operation. Producer Jeremy Ables explains that this will enable you to focus on strategy rather than having to rebuild the same base repeatedly with each new mission.
Considering the variety of units available to each faction, you’ll appreciate not having to waste time rebuilding structures. Infantry, tanks, naval destroyers, artillery, bombers—land, sea, and air units are in ample supply. Approximately 80 units are attached to each faction, with a good portion of those specific to each faction. Basic units, such as engineers and assault bots, are largely similar among the factions; but you’ll have the chance to play around with experimental units. For example, the gravity colossus uses its massive size to pummel enemies, while the submersible battleship can dive underwater to ambush unsuspecting units. You won’t have immediate access to every unit, though, since you’ll have to unlock them by progressing through each of the campaigns. There’s an incredible amount of variety—it can be a little intimidating—but the result is remarkably deep gameplay.
Visually, Supreme Commander is astounding. While the units and structures feature a nice amount of detail what stands out is the sheer scope and size of the game. Strategic zoom enables you to go down to the level of an individual unit and pull all the way back to view the entire map. While the ability to dynamically zoom may sound like just another marketing bullet point, it looks to fundamentally shake up the genre. Being able to view the entire battlefield and direct units at that level shifts the focus of gameplay to strategy versus tactics. You certainly can zoom in and tactically order units around, but as Ables claims, Supreme Commander is attempting to bring strategy back into the real-time strategy genre.
Dual screen support allows you to use one screen for action and another as a tactical display; what’s amazing is the ability to switch between the two screens at any time to control your units. Using a single display, you can split the screen into two windows—one for action and the other as a map. Even the mini-map can used to follow and control units. The ability to switch among these different windows will totally change the way you play the game; of course, being able to run the game in this way will require a hefty system. You’ll be able to play Supreme Commander on a mid-level PC, but in order to support dual monitors or split the screen into two windows, you’ll need to have a better-than-average machine.
