Supreme Commander 2 Preview Page 2

07 Sep 2009 at 11:27:31 by Tim McDonald

Unfortunately (as this is rarely a good sign) one of the nearby Square-Enix attendants noticed that I'd nearly finished the map, and started saying something in German. In mangled German, I apologised and explained that I only spoke English.

“Ah,” he said, in English. “This bit is good.” This is also rarely a good sign.

A cutscene had kicked in. The middle of the base – a huge circular indention I'd taken for simple aesthetics – was opening, and an elevator was rising through it, carrying... an Experimental. Not a small one, no. A genuine Experimental. One of the big ones. One of the ones that utterly dwarfed every unit I had. At least, I hope it's an Experimental. If that was one of the smaller ones, I can only assume that the real Experimentals would be the size of this map.

For some reason, the remainder of the enemy base was under my command, but this was pretty much pointless as I'd joyously bombed the shit out of everything that wasn't a part of the objective prior to actually destroying the mission-critical buildings. The Experimental started crawling down across the bridge.

“Where is your Commander?” enquired the attendant, politely, while I went into a a mad panic ordering things to just shoot at that big bloody thing now now now. He was back at my base, thankfully, as the attendant went on to explain that the Experimental was making a beeline for him and that I wanted to get him as far away as possible and put as much ordnance in between the two of them as I could. Useful advice, that.

By the time the Experimental was most of the way down the bridge – probably halfway to my Commander – it had torn apart most of the troops I had attacking it, and the damage I'd done was negligible. I called in every single unit I had and ordered them all to take a stand at the point-defence lasers on my side of the bridge. Against all odds, it worked; making it hold still for long enough that the rest of my forces didn't having to shoot and run in an endless cycle meant that lots of damage was applied very quickly, particularly as the turrets blocking its path meant it wasn't moving out of artillery fire. The majority of my force was gone, but the Experimental crumbled. Victory.

So from this brief mission, does Supreme Commander 2 have the mysterious quality I found lacking in the first game? Possibly. There's certainly a lot to like: the interface is simplified and is far improved from the pre-expansion interface for the first game, and there's still plenty of unit diversity, with some of my later support units having no use whatsoever save to boost the shields of everything nearby. Battles are still large-scale, too. Bearing in mind that this map was small and tightly focused rather than the sprawling continents I'd expect from SupCom, my game-ending force was nonetheless comprised of perhaps eighty units which is an overwhelming force in most other RTS games. Not only that but it all looks stunning, even though it'll run on any computer capable of running the first.

So yeah, I think I'd like to spend a bit more time with this. I want to see more Experimentals, I want to see what two gargantuan forces battling looks like, and I want to understand what the hell the side-missions were and what the in-game conversations meant. There are downsides to playing things in a language that you only speak poorly, you know.

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