Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3583 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: THQ
• Model: 49304
• Released on: 2007-02-16
• ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+
• Platform: Windows XP
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.25" h x 5.50" w x 7.50" l, .55 pounds

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It may not be quite as famous as Command & Conquer or WarCraft, but for many real-time strategy connoisseurs, 1997’s Total Annihilation is more than a match for its better known rivals. This is the long awaited, unofficial, follow-up by Chris Taylor, creator of the original. As in Total Annihilation you don’t take the role of a nameless overseer, but instead you directly control a giant nanobot dispensing robot responsible for building all major buildings. From these are manufactured a dizzying array of specialised meachanoids, from infantry and artillery robots to repair droids and special construction bots.

The units in the original Total Annihilation ranged greatly in size but here the difference is profound. While many units are roughly human in scale others seem to be the size of a small village, as gigantic spider bots stroll through forests as if they were walking through tall grass. Aircraft carriers are just as massive and function properly as mobile cities with repair and production facilities. The game’s scale is reinforced even further by the new ability to zoom the camera so far out that individual units become icons on an overhead map. This is no gimmick though as you can still control multiple units on this new strategic scale, as well as deploy nuclear missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.

Total Annihilation’s superb waypoint system is replicated and improved here, allowing you to micromanage in exacting detail every movement of every unit. Patrol routes can be plotted out (as useful for repair units as for combat air patrols) as well as strategically circuitous routes around any terrain. All of which is perfect for fighting on multiple different fronts at once. After years of stasis the real-time strategy seems finally to be evolving to the next level.
HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description:
In the 33rd Century, the old Earth Empire finally collapsed. As chaos engulfed the interstellar empire, the military, under the aegis of the Earth Command, stepped forward to restore order.

Acting in a severe and often draconian manner, Earth Command made the difficult decisions that politicians, mired in corruption and their own self-interest, could not. Entire worlds were abandoned, and much of the Quantum Gate network was intentionally destroyed in an effort to isolate the retreating Prime Worlds from the rest of the galaxy.

Despite the best efforts of the military, civil war erupted. After a hundred years, Earth Command was finally able to restore order and establish a new government, which was christened the United Earth Federation.

Risen, phoenix-like from the ashes of the old Earth Empire, the United Earth Federation vowed to purge itself of bureaucratic corruption and remain pure to a single task: the rescue of mankind's war-torn worlds and an end to the Infinite War. By any and all means necessary.

It has worked toward that goal by maintaining an iron grip on the new empire, creating a totalitarian government out of what might be considered the most successful military coup in human history.

Supreme Commander is the first ever RTS to deliver truly strategic as well as tactical gaming with an emphasis on scope as well as ease of use. Set in the 37th Century you command one of three races as the Supreme Commander with a single goal in mind - to end the 1000 year Infinite War and become the reigning power supreme.

Customer Reviews

Just excellent, but know what you're getting first!
While this is a superb game, I'll just point out the few negatives that most people centre on, since these are the only reasons not to buy this game:

1) Not for the occasional RTS player. Don't buy this expecting something similar to C&C3. There are many, many more units and structures - each one powerful and vulnerable in their own way. Just rushing at your foe with an army of your most powerful units will not always work, and will usually be an expensive error. Success depends on the correct use of all of your capabilities, which is why I see this as the most intricate and intelligent RTS to date.
2) It's a power hog. It's common to see hundreds of units on screen at once, so don't expect it to run super-smooth unless you've spent hundreds on an SLI or DX10 system. That said, a half decent machine with a mid-range graphics card will do you proud.
3) The interface takes up an unusual amount of space on the screen - and it needs to. With so many units to keep track of this is a necessity, however a larger monitor running at a high resolution really helps here. If you're running 2 monitors (lucky *****) that's even better, since some of the UI can be displayed in its full glory on the second screen.

As a huge fan of Chris Taylor's 1997 original, Total Annhilation, I'm glad to see the 10 year wait was worth it.

Two monitors are better than one
Having been a fan of the RTS games since they first found their way with Dune II and matured with the C&C series I'm always on the look out for something to fill the gaps between the "next big RTS". Just a few things to start off with. The adverts are pure eye candy; scores of great big hulking machines raining death and destruction on a battlefield that is positively alive with action. Bullets and cannon fire whiz across a scarred landscape filled with smoking wreakage, burning landscapes, explosions coming thick and fast, and in the midst of it all, a Supreme Commander.

The reality? Well, the simple answer is "it depends on your expectations and also on your hardware".

If you disregard the basic RTS elements and focus on strategy, then it is safe to say Supreme Commander is not "like" C&C in terms of gameplay or strategy. There is so much more going on, and the action IS thick and fast, WHEN it does start. Where C&C is about micro-management, this game is about being aware of armies of hundreds of troops, multiple enemy bases, and multiple home bases, and multiple battles. Rather than say in C&C where you can have the intimacy of focusing on individual troops and individual battles, you wont go far if you adopt that kind of approach here.

If you are a micro manager you will positively hate this game. You will find its controls frustratingly awkward, especially when compared to the slick and fluid approach of C&C. You'll miss the reassuring "acknowledged" from your troops, and the far from intuitive controls, you will feel more like a spectator than a commander. Its just too frustrating not being able to follow all the action, and the frustration makes you hate the lush graphics, the fluid animation, you will hate everything Supreme Commander throws at you. War will become a totally pointless and frustrating exercise in futility.

Then I enabled the secondary display...

Suddenly the battles became more engaging and it opens up a whole new dimension to the game. One monitor tracking your troops on one mission, the second watching the enemy movements or anything else for that matter. You need to send in an air strike, one monitor is tracking your planes, the other is focused on the target. There are times when you need to see the entire battlefield, times when you need to focus on individual battles, all the while focusing on the overall objectives. Yes, suddenly it became just like the advert and the controls made sense. This time I noticed the hugely varied weaponry on show, began to appreciate the fact that my troops know how to defend themselves without me having to explicityly tell them to, loved the way huge artillery explosions caused the screen to judder and shake when I was zoomed in close enough. The whole experience became far more engaging. War was fun again, best expressed by a mushroom cloud rising from a shockwave racing across the boiling remains of the enemy forces.

The bottom line?

A single monitor setup really doesn't do Supreme Commander ANY justice at all, its just too frustrating to follow the action and I hated the experience. For me, Supreme Commander comes into its own ONLY when played on a multi-monitor system. In fact I wonder whether it was actually designed to be played that way because only then does it live up to expectation.

Sadly, the reality is that dual monitors arent an option for many. Because of this it is hard to imagine Supreme Commander achieving the wide appeal or acclaim of C&C. If on the other hand you have the monitors, and a capable system, then Supreme Commander would easily merit that acclaim.

Single monitor experince: 1 star
Dual monitor experience : 4 stars

Good but flawed ... and talk about bugs !
This almost deserves 4 stars for fun and overall ratings, but it has some major flaws.

1.) It has major performance problems.
I have 2Gb memory, striped Raid array of WD Raptor hard drives, and an nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2. And even on the lowest graphical settings it grinds down to 5 frames per second when things get busy...
The main reason being my good processor of an AMD FX55 isn't a dual core processor which is what this game really needs.
It isn't really the graphics that are demanding in this game - its the physics engine and the AI processing

2.) It has LOTS of bugs still - I will say that my PC has been very stable with all types of other games including RTS games like Warhammer's latest and Company of Heroes, but lots of problems with this game.
2a : My first problem was the map spinning continuously and the most common answer on the forums was simply pressing the "Home" or "Delete" or "End" keys a single time.... simple enough but the game is unplayable until some kind person answers the question on the forums - a very bad sign of things to come, and something that has still not been fixed in any recent patches.
2b : Lots of Blue screen of death crashes with 3 different types of messages so far
2c : Lots of Unhandled Exception error messages boxes when the game crashes but at least the PC doesn't crash
2d : A couple of internal game message boxes saying it has crashed
2e : It even crashed during game saves sometimes which is the ultimate in frustration
Even in safe mode, it has managed to crash a couple of times...

3.) Terrible tutorials which are basically videos that could be marketed as cures for insomnia, coupled with a 'sandbox' level where you can build what you want but is too boring to play in for long - People learn by doing, and every other game on earth now seems to have decent simple tutorial levels that you can play and learn with. And this is a complicated game... I have often had to find answers to my questions on the internet forums as there didn't seem to be an easy way to find an answer in either the manual or the tutorial videos. My tip is don't forget to look through the keys on the back cover of the game manual - you see lots of things you can do that you didn't realise you could do.

However, it has just been playable enough to show what a good game it could have been.
The computer AI is very good, and you will need to consider which units to build to tackle each situation.
The missions can have quite a long build up time, followed by frantic action. Missionns are split into several sections which gradually reveal more and more areas of a map, but there's no auto-save so make sure you save your games often (given the propencity to crash).

So in the end, I think its a great game if you can get past the fact it is very unfriendly to new players, and has a horrible tendancy to crash, and requires a top of the range PC with a dual core processor, high end graphics card and at least 1Gb of RAM (make that 2Gb if you are using Windows Vista).