Supreme Commander
I've been playing Supreme Commander for the last month or so, and it's been a lot of fun. I completed the Aeon campaign fairly easily, with only a few restarts on the later missions, and I've also completed the UEF campaign. I'm working my way through the Cybran one now.
I felt a bit cheated when there were only six missions in each campaign. However, each mission lasts about two hours, and they have multiple parts and shifting objectives, which is a very cool concept. So, the first Aeon mission just asks you to destroy five subs. Then, when you've destroyed them, more of the map unveils and you have to destroy an air factory belonging to an enemy commander on a seperate island. Finally, the whole map is revealed and you reaslise that, all along, you've been fighting in a larger theatre as part of a larger battle, and each and every action had some purpose to do with defeating the main enemy.
The learning curve for Supreme Commander is pretty high and every review I read when I wanted to see what others thought about it criticised this. I know Total Annihilation, its precursor, so I hit the ground running, but I was amazed that the first Aeon mission has you on islands building sea and air units, given that most (no, all) strategy games get you familiar with land units first and then slowly add other units on special maps designed largely for the new units. Each of the SC introductory missions gets you comfortable with two sets of units by the end (although they introduce one set at a time) and the third comes very soon. However, this works well because, unlike other strategy games, the mix of units you use in SC really matters.
One of my most fun moments provides an example. It was an Aeon campaign where I had to take out a very heavily defended island that was tough going. I got a fleet of ships in close, however they were being decimated by air units and the anti-air ships were steadily being destroyed and soon I'd have no cover and would have to retreat. I dispatched interceptors and these held the line for a moment, but kept flying over the anti-air defences on the base and getting destroyed until they were no more. Finally, I issued the order for a combat air drop of ground units on a very small beachhead the sea units had cleared. Less than half of the units survived the landing (none of the air transports did), however a lot of them were anti-air units. Within a few seconds they eliminated all the enemy air cover and the few ground units that made it engaged in mutual annihilation with ground defences to make the area (mainly) safe. The net result was that my fleet was safe and left guarding the beach-head while my ground units kept air defences at bay, leaving me with a beach head onto which I could drop the next wave and call in ship reinforcements.
I'm quite surprised about choosing the Aeon as my first faction, as they're a religious faction, bent on spreading "The Way" through the galaxy and I'm not exactly the most religious person (as an understatement). However, this faction really suited me in many ways and its campaign proved to be really enjoyable. Aeon units and building are built by spraying a silvery gloop on the ground and watching the completed unit rise out of the gloop (this is opposed to the UEF/Cybran way, where a wireframe appears and lasers dance over the unit/building, filling in parts of it as if they were welding). The buildings are pretty and the units are sleek and the Aeon units work very well together and badly on their own.
The Aeon campaign is awesome in that the commander is female (he is male in the other two campaigns) and the Aeon end up in a battle over the meaning of "The Way" as the campaign progresses. You choose to side with the Princess over the Avatar of War in interpreting that The Way does not mean exterminating ("Cleansing", in the jargon of the Aeon) all non-believers but actually working to bring peace, and that the war will end when it stops being total war. As part of this you even protect a UEF colony from Cleansing in mission 5 from other Aeon. The Aeon campaign ends with actual peace between the three sides brought about by an interesting and novel use of the UEF superweapon that doesn't involve any blowing up of planets. The UEF campaign ends with peace also: after you've used the superweapon to blow up all the planets belonging to the other factions. I felt so proud at that moment... not. It reminded me far too much about the unification of China as portrayed in the film Hero (who cares if I've killed everybody who disagrees with me and massacred a load of people, we're united against our external enemies, right, and that's good). It's not a philosophy I've ever agreed with, and it didn't provide me with any incentive to fight or win, which you could see from the number of times I had to restart missions which were no more difficult than the Aeon ones. The Cybran's goal is to Liberate their brethren in the UEF, so I'm hoping that the Cybran campaign will be a lot better and I'm looking forwards to see how that ends.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game and the way it's been put together. TA had a feel of accidental greatness, in that the makers set out to make an original game based on Command and Conquer and somewhere got sidetracked into adding some "cool" extra features that only served to make TA so amazing and original and what it was. However, this meant that TA had lots of clumsy and jarring bits where things didn't quite fit together the way the makers had envisioned them or where the makers original direction and the games actual direction deviated significantly. SC changes all of that, in that it takes the soul of TA, distils it and reimagines it as a sleek end product, with many of the distinctive features of TA built in and most of the annoying ones taken out. So the makers build in the idea of technology levels which evolved from TA straight from the start, and also allow upgrading of factories, radar installations and the like making life easier. Also, the game designers followed the TA strategy of giving the same unit mix to all the factions so that the same strategic possibilities are available to everyone, while giving individuality through tweeking the units in subtle ways (for example, me and the UEF land units work, me and the UEF sea units just don't get on, but give me the Aeon ones and we click again, buton't ask me why).
The command interface is also very good and works very well. It's easy to set waypoints and holding shift lets you see all the waypints you've set as well as other waypoints for other units, while queued contruction orders are automatically marked in so you can plan well ahead when building your base, something that is, just, so right and so not easy in TA. The main problems come when commanding groups of mixed units (groups of similar units work very well), a problem that's still there from TA. For example, if you have air cover in the form of patrol boats for a fleet, they will almost always get wiped out if you fleet is ordered to take on torpedo lauchers, as they'll go right up to them and wait to be destroyed. Also, although the path finding algorithms are a lot better than in TA, the naval units have severe problems when navigating long distances as they don't take depth into account and so nearly beach themselves by taking the shortest route. On the other hand, these are only issues because everything else has been fixed so well.
I felt a bit cheated when there were only six missions in each campaign. However, each mission lasts about two hours, and they have multiple parts and shifting objectives, which is a very cool concept. So, the first Aeon mission just asks you to destroy five subs. Then, when you've destroyed them, more of the map unveils and you have to destroy an air factory belonging to an enemy commander on a seperate island. Finally, the whole map is revealed and you reaslise that, all along, you've been fighting in a larger theatre as part of a larger battle, and each and every action had some purpose to do with defeating the main enemy.
The learning curve for Supreme Commander is pretty high and every review I read when I wanted to see what others thought about it criticised this. I know Total Annihilation, its precursor, so I hit the ground running, but I was amazed that the first Aeon mission has you on islands building sea and air units, given that most (no, all) strategy games get you familiar with land units first and then slowly add other units on special maps designed largely for the new units. Each of the SC introductory missions gets you comfortable with two sets of units by the end (although they introduce one set at a time) and the third comes very soon. However, this works well because, unlike other strategy games, the mix of units you use in SC really matters.
One of my most fun moments provides an example. It was an Aeon campaign where I had to take out a very heavily defended island that was tough going. I got a fleet of ships in close, however they were being decimated by air units and the anti-air ships were steadily being destroyed and soon I'd have no cover and would have to retreat. I dispatched interceptors and these held the line for a moment, but kept flying over the anti-air defences on the base and getting destroyed until they were no more. Finally, I issued the order for a combat air drop of ground units on a very small beachhead the sea units had cleared. Less than half of the units survived the landing (none of the air transports did), however a lot of them were anti-air units. Within a few seconds they eliminated all the enemy air cover and the few ground units that made it engaged in mutual annihilation with ground defences to make the area (mainly) safe. The net result was that my fleet was safe and left guarding the beach-head while my ground units kept air defences at bay, leaving me with a beach head onto which I could drop the next wave and call in ship reinforcements.
I'm quite surprised about choosing the Aeon as my first faction, as they're a religious faction, bent on spreading "The Way" through the galaxy and I'm not exactly the most religious person (as an understatement). However, this faction really suited me in many ways and its campaign proved to be really enjoyable. Aeon units and building are built by spraying a silvery gloop on the ground and watching the completed unit rise out of the gloop (this is opposed to the UEF/Cybran way, where a wireframe appears and lasers dance over the unit/building, filling in parts of it as if they were welding). The buildings are pretty and the units are sleek and the Aeon units work very well together and badly on their own.
The Aeon campaign is awesome in that the commander is female (he is male in the other two campaigns) and the Aeon end up in a battle over the meaning of "The Way" as the campaign progresses. You choose to side with the Princess over the Avatar of War in interpreting that The Way does not mean exterminating ("Cleansing", in the jargon of the Aeon) all non-believers but actually working to bring peace, and that the war will end when it stops being total war. As part of this you even protect a UEF colony from Cleansing in mission 5 from other Aeon. The Aeon campaign ends with actual peace between the three sides brought about by an interesting and novel use of the UEF superweapon that doesn't involve any blowing up of planets. The UEF campaign ends with peace also: after you've used the superweapon to blow up all the planets belonging to the other factions. I felt so proud at that moment... not. It reminded me far too much about the unification of China as portrayed in the film Hero (who cares if I've killed everybody who disagrees with me and massacred a load of people, we're united against our external enemies, right, and that's good). It's not a philosophy I've ever agreed with, and it didn't provide me with any incentive to fight or win, which you could see from the number of times I had to restart missions which were no more difficult than the Aeon ones. The Cybran's goal is to Liberate their brethren in the UEF, so I'm hoping that the Cybran campaign will be a lot better and I'm looking forwards to see how that ends.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game and the way it's been put together. TA had a feel of accidental greatness, in that the makers set out to make an original game based on Command and Conquer and somewhere got sidetracked into adding some "cool" extra features that only served to make TA so amazing and original and what it was. However, this meant that TA had lots of clumsy and jarring bits where things didn't quite fit together the way the makers had envisioned them or where the makers original direction and the games actual direction deviated significantly. SC changes all of that, in that it takes the soul of TA, distils it and reimagines it as a sleek end product, with many of the distinctive features of TA built in and most of the annoying ones taken out. So the makers build in the idea of technology levels which evolved from TA straight from the start, and also allow upgrading of factories, radar installations and the like making life easier. Also, the game designers followed the TA strategy of giving the same unit mix to all the factions so that the same strategic possibilities are available to everyone, while giving individuality through tweeking the units in subtle ways (for example, me and the UEF land units work, me and the UEF sea units just don't get on, but give me the Aeon ones and we click again, buton't ask me why).
The command interface is also very good and works very well. It's easy to set waypoints and holding shift lets you see all the waypints you've set as well as other waypoints for other units, while queued contruction orders are automatically marked in so you can plan well ahead when building your base, something that is, just, so right and so not easy in TA. The main problems come when commanding groups of mixed units (groups of similar units work very well), a problem that's still there from TA. For example, if you have air cover in the form of patrol boats for a fleet, they will almost always get wiped out if you fleet is ordered to take on torpedo lauchers, as they'll go right up to them and wait to be destroyed. Also, although the path finding algorithms are a lot better than in TA, the naval units have severe problems when navigating long distances as they don't take depth into account and so nearly beach themselves by taking the shortest route. On the other hand, these are only issues because everything else has been fixed so well.