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Supreme Commander - A Cause Worth Fighting For

If you are still deciding whether to play Supreme Commander, I have just two words for you: Chris Taylor. The man behind the much-loved Total Annihilation real-time strategy (RTS) game from 1997, is back with an epic RTS that simply commands you to play it.

The sci-fi back story goes thatthe discovery of quantum gate tunneling has allowed humans to colonise the galaxy, while advances in cybernetics have created a merger of AI (artificial intelligence) and human brains.

The Earth Empire, afraid that AI-enhanced humans would be able to overthrow them, has secretly implanted control mechanisms in all AIs.

The inventor of the cybernetic brain has fled with his followers to form the Cybran Nation. Of course, no sci-fi flick is complete without its aliens.

The Aeon are a group of humans who have been enlightened be a race called the Seraphim, and now seek to cleanse the galaxy and show everyone The Way. Then there is the United Earth Federation (UEF), a military government determined to reunite the galaxy under their terms.

If all that name-dropping is too much to deal with, the summary is that the stage is set for these three factions to battle it out over the vastness of space. And what a battle it is.

You start with just one armoured commander unit, which allows you to build Tech I structures like power generators and tank factories. As fighting heats up, you can upgrade to Tech II, which greatly advances your ability to defend your base - it focuses on heavy turrets and defensive units.

Going further up the tech tree brings you to Tech III. This is the point where huge tanks and artillery units that can level bases start to come into play. Finally each faction gets to build their own unique units as part of the experimental Tech IV level.

This does not sound too exciting until you realise that you get to build things like giant robots and submersible aircraft carriers. My personal favourite is the UEF's Mavor, a Tech IV artillery cannon that takes an exorbitant amount of resources and time to construct. It makes up for that, though , by being able to bombard any position on the entire map into oblivion. Do not let your opponent get this one up and running.

Sending a couple of hundred walking tanks into the enemy base and watching them crush the opposition also appealed strongly to my megalomaniac fantasies. There are many more ultra-cool, ultra-high-tech units, which can do things like project an energy shield around your entire army. The shield ripples when hit - something even the most hardened sci-fi geek would be proud of.

For me, watching my opponent's tanks fire fruitlessly at the shield whilemy backline artillery pounded them into oblivion proved to be deeply satisfying. The entire game is backed up by an orchestral score from Jeremy Soule, the British Academy Award winner responsible for scoring Guild Wars and Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series - and it shows.

The rousing main theme kicks in as you begin building your army, and rises in an angry crescendo whenever a big battle is in progress. To be fair, the game is not without flaws. The strategy here is that of scale, rather than of individual units. To win, you need to control formations, not each unit's special ability. And indiviudal units die quickly.

So fans of squad-level tactical RTS games such as Company of Heroes, or RTSes like Warcraft III which focus on individual unit abilities, will need to adapt.

Another issue with SupComm is that you will need a monster PC to run it. On my Pentium D 2.8Hz with 3GB of RAM and 256MB of video memory, there were still some jitter issues, especially with hundreds of units on screen. And the game takes 8.5GB of hard drive space to install.

One final complaint, the ground looks boring. Maps generally consist of large open fields separated by a couple of plain-looking mountain ridges. The good news is, you won't have much time to concentrate on the ground once fighting starts.

Daryl Lim
Singapore
05 May 2006

This article is an abstract from Digital Life, March 13, 2007. The Straits Times

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