All Geeked Out: Supreme Commander

You know, sometimes I get real tired of cheap TV-based escapism.

I mean,TV is fine for a while. But, just between you and me, I get pretty tired of watching predictable storylines and un-original content which I could find on 7 other channels.

So, being a typical man, I decided to return to my computer-game playing roots and checked out something I’ve been looking to play for a good long while:

Supreme Commander.

Labelled as the “spiritual successor” to the fondly-remembered Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander holds the same premise of technologically-advanced factions fighting each other to gain the highest level of power in their universe.

Now, as you can tell from the name, Supreme Commander was intended to be a game where you’d have an extremely large amount going on all at once. Indeed, it touts a simple scrolling system to be able to zoom out from your current view into a map-wide one. In the same fashion, you can narrow all the way down to see waves running up shorelines and individual turrents on your naval units.

The game itself consists of 3 separate factions: The United Earth Federation (“UEF”), the Cybran Nation and the Aeon.

The UEF is a militaric ‘federation’ whose intent is to impose peace through the use of baring arms. Their units are pretty vanilla in style and, overall, hold to be the most ‘human’ looking of the three factions (go figure…).

The Cybran Nation are a group of cyborg humans who, originally, lived in peace with normal humans until riots started to break out and they left to form their own colonies (after a large amount of these cyborg humans were ‘pacified’, as the intro to the game informs us). Their units appear to be much more hellish-looking, with small, random, jutting spikes being present on most things you build.

The last is the Aeon, a group of mysterious humanoids who practice something called ‘the way’. It is inferred to us that the way supports peace throughout the universe, though, just like with the UEF, they demand it through the use of arms. This faction is much more ethereal looking — most structures have few straight lines in their meshes (contrasting to the UEF’s structures, which are generally VERY box like) and their units are similarly designed.

The missions themselves occur along 3 different storylines, each based upon a specific faction.

As the game is ’supreme’, the graphics are — like I mentioned — delicious to look at. However, far too often I found myself watching the zoomed-out whole map screen, not being able to differentiate which units were which without working out what I’d sent where.

In fact, all too often it can seem like the whole system of grandness instilled in the game is a little flawed. With no way to turn down the scrolling speed in the options menu, I often found myself using the zoom in/zoom out functions to get myself across the map. Whilst this wasn’t necessarily a problem, at times it was a bit of a fuss. And likewise, because of how many units you have to send in different directions, it can often be very, very difficult to appreciate the detail that was built into the graphics. Watching my ‘commander’ unit knock down trees as he stamps along to his next location can easily go unnoticed because of the sudden air strike noted on the zoomed-out map radar and the 6 submarines which are bombing my ship factories.

The units themselves are split along 3 tiers: Land, Air and Naval. Often, however, the tiers overlap — for example, the UEF have an amphibuous tank which can skim across the surface of water without slowing down whatsoever. Likewise, the Cybran’s have a ship which can deploy legs to walk over any land which should get in its way. Though, doing so makes the ship move very slowly.

And therein lies one of Supreme Commanders main flaws: its AI. Often the AI built into Supreme Commander is lacking, at best. Every time I’ve asked a group of 5+ units to go somewhere, I watch the command slowly spread across the group, ultimately making the entire selection of units move in an extremely ugly — not to mention tactically poor — line towards wherever I’ve clicked.

In the same vein, often the AI doesn’t seem to recognize what’s going on — especially when it’s losing. On more than one occasion I’ve zerged a base only to later find peripheral tanks positioned which haven’t been scrambled to counter-attack me. Whilst it doesn’t necessarily negate immersion into the game, it can sometimes be a bit of a “What the heck?” moment.

Don’t be fooled by my harsh words, though. There are many, many fine points about Supreme Commander. My most pressing of which being the music.

Jeremy Soule, the creator of the score for Total Annihilation, the Guild Wars series, TES 3: Morrowind, TES 4: Oblivion and Order of War, amongst others, has obviously put his soul (excuse the pun) into the music for Supreme Commander. Scores that range from patriotically inspirational to ruminatingly low add perfectly to create an ambiance that matches the current goings-on in the game. Sometimes the game will think I’m under attack (say I’ve left a building to degrade instead of completing construction of it), and when one of the several extremely inspirational scores start playing, I find myself just building units and sending them to some noble suicide just to make what’s going on match the music.

It’s fantastic, and considering Soule’s other mega successes with previous scores (many of which I have on my computer as I write this because of just how dear the music is to me), there’s no surprise that Supreme Commander soon becomes an experience from the music. You can find a wide selection of his previous work, including Supreme Commander, along with previews of songs on DirectSong.

Overall, Supreme Commander is a fantastic way to forget about real life. It’s interesting, gripping and isn’t simply a collection of “Destroy the enemy” missions. Whilst you’ll sometimes find the AI to be a little stunted, and a few other personal niggles like scrolling speeds, you’ll soon be hooked to Supreme Commander.

A delicious game which I’m happy to recommend, and so I happily award this game 8 out of 10 stars: