Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I’m not generally a fan of RTS games, which is why I opted not to buy Starcraft 2 last year. I was even one of the rare few who preferred the first Dune game by Cryo Interactive to the second one by Westwood Studios which is considered to be the pioneer of all modern RTS games. Nonetheless, I’ve dabbled in the genre over the years and the last RTS game that I really liked was Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes.

One notable omission from my list of played RTS games was Chris Taylor’s Total Annihilation. I simply didn’t notice the game when it was first released and by the time I realized what a groundbreaking game it was, it was too late as the game had aged too much. I had a second chance with the first Supreme Commander, but by then didn’t feel up to the challenge of learning a complex strategy game played in real-time.

So I bought Supreme Commander 2 when it went on sale on Steam, both because I wanted to finally play at least one game from the Total Annihilation and also because I knew it was a watered-down and more accessible version. My thoughts:

• Tom Chick commented that this game is closer to Command and Conquer than Total Annihilation. He still liked it though. While I can see how it’s been watered down, I think there’s still plenty about it to differentiate it from other RTS games.
• For one thing, it’s quite possible to turtle in this game, at least for a while until the aggressor develops nukes or similar base-busting technology. That makes it a lot of fun to play turret defense in this game, building multiple layers of shields and row upon row of turrets to turn your base into an uncrackable fortress. In fact, one of the scenarios has you doing just that, racing against time and being constrained by limited resources to beat back an ever increasing horde of enemy units.

• I understand that the first game actually had better graphics than this one, a rare case of a game in which the sequel has degraded visuals. This was to improve performance on a wider variety of hardware. I found the graphics passable but combined with the bright colors, sometimes makes the units look a bit too much like toys. The huge experimentals do still look suitably imposing.
• I love how little micro-management is needed. One reason why I hate playing Blizzard RTS games is that almost every unit seems to have a special ability that needs to be manually activated at the just right moment to be maximally effective. Few units in Supreme Commander 2 have manually activated abilities. In fact, the units here are perfectly happy to move and shoot at the same time, so you don’t even have to worry about the difference between a Move and an Attack-Move command. With the large numbers of units involved in every battle, there’s also less need to focus fire on targets.
• The single-player campaign is pretty standard stuff. It can’t match Blizzard’s production quality of course, but it’s not too bad and I’m still a sucker for the traditional way of introducing new units and structures step by step. Most of the missions are fairly easy especially if you turtle, but a couple of them can get hairy and there’s at least one very special mission in which the enemy uses only one single type of enemy unit against you. One unfortunate bit is that the campaign storyline still involves plenty of betrayals and backstabbings. What is it with RTS campaigns and their obsession with this trope? This is one reason why I liked Company of Heroes so much: straightforward missions with plausible objectives inspired by real-life events that are wholly free of angst and backstabbing.

• I understand that the user interface features were more powerful in previous versions, but the ones in here seem plenty useful to me. I love the ability to queue up commands and have a repeating build queue at factories. Engineers set on patrol routes will automatically repair damaged units and structures and reclaim salvage, though I do wish that they set repairing as a higher priority task than salvaging. You can even set up air transports to automatically bring newly built units from a factory to the factory’s rallying point. Plus of course, zooming all the way out to look over the entire battlefield never gets old. This is one game that doesn’t need a mini-map!
• The unit mix is pretty over the top but the differences between the factions are more subtle than games like Starcraft. I guess the giant robots get all the attention, but the experimental structures are pretty amazing too. The Noah cannon is basically a land factory that lets you shoot the units it produces clear across the map. The cannon loads them in a shell and they get a little parachute to help cushion their fall.
• I even liked the game enough to dabble in the skirmish mode for a bit which I hardly ever do. The AI doesn’t seem very competent in easy or normal mode however, but I understand that many people swear by playing it coop against AI’s with tons of cheats. Mostly the AI still does the classic mistake of sending trickles of units at you so you can kill them with superior forces, but at higher difficulties, it does look like it’s more crafty and will dance out of range if it thinks it can overwhelm you.

Overall, I liked Supreme Commander 2 more than I thought I would. It feels great to play an RTS with an interface that doesn’t fight and in which you’re free to concentrate on the big picture rather than worry about micro-managing special abilities.