Supreme Commander
The Infinite War has raged for over 1000 years and soon will make its way to a videogame console for the first time. For a millennium, war has raged between the United Earth Federation, the Cybran Nation and the Aeon Illuminate. Unwavering, dramatically opposing systems of belief have locked the three forces of humanity into a bitter, merciless conflict that has come to be known as the Infinite War. Now, after centuries of struggle, a war that has torn the galaxy asunder has finally reached a turning point. A leader has risen above all others, and only this Supreme Commander holds the key to ending the Infinite War once and for all. Supreme Commander for the Xbox 360 is a spectacular adaptation of the original, award-winning PC experience, updated and enhanced for Microsoft’s powerful console. The groundbreaking real-time strategy (RTS) game puts players in command of one of three factions – the United Earth Federation, the Cybran Nation or the Aeon Illuminate – that they must lead to victory and end the thousand-year Infinite War. Supreme Commander offers gameplay on an unprecedented scale, with hundreds of units waging war across gigantic maps and a revolutionary Strategic Zoom that allows for immediate viewing and control of entire armies. An easy, intuitive new console control scheme lets gamers dominate the battlefield as they play through one of the three vast campaigns or against players around the world on Xbox Live. Deploy hundreds of unique land, sea and air units in massive battles for supremacy Unleash titanic Experimental Weapons to devastate opposing armies Dominate opponents around the globe via Xbox Live HD and surround sound support
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars So far, so good…
As I’ve been asking this question forever and no one could give me an answer, allow me to fill you in: NO, this game has not had any updates. It is what it is.
I have an Xbox 360 Elite. The Elite and Arcade units have an upgraded chipset, and see much fewer crashes than the other bundled units. If you have an Elite or Arcade, you should be okay playing this game.
SupCom for Xbox uses quite possibly the most innovative and thought-out control structure I’ve seen yet on a console. The controls not only make sense, but they’re easy to LEARN, and they WORK. You select your unit, press a direction on the D-pad to bring up a wheel menu, then use your left and right sticks – sometimes together as needed – to highlight an option which you select with the A-button. It also has a relatively simple method to assign and select groups. There’s a short learning curve to remember which direction on the D-pad accesses which menu, but if you get it wrong, just press a new direction and the menu will adjust.
Unfortunately, the instructions that come with the game – as well as the in-game tutorial – do a lousy job of telling us how to actually play the game. For example, we are never told how to make a level-3 construction unit build level 1 or 2 structures. Secondly, while the game tells us we can outfit our commanding unit with upgrades, we are not told how! In both cases, you access the unit’s build menu, and use the right control stick to select an inner-wheel of the menu, which will change the icons at the outer wheel. Once you learn this interface, it also becomes easy to use, but I literally found it out by accident.
Controlling your units is relatively easy, though the one thing that SupCom does different is that it stacks commands. Each command to a unit is put into queue – it will perform that command after it finishes any other commands you’ve already given it. If you want it to do something right away, you first have to hit the X button, then issue the new command. This takes a longer adjustment than usual, as no other console-RTS games work this way.
I prefer skirmishing to a storyline, so I can’t provide much insight there, but skirmishes work well, with the ability to play against the computer or friends, or against the computer WITH friends, providing a much-needed, coop-skirmish feature.
As far as cons go, there are a few. The camera is weird, especially once the unit count starts to climb. When zoomed all the way out, the cursor moves without the screen moving – much like a mouse on a PC game. When you zoom in, the cursor becomes static and the entire screen scrolls. Sometimes, however, when zooming in, the cursor becomes “stuck” beyond the edges of the screen. You’ll zoom in, and can scroll the screen, but there is no cursor, and thus no way to select units. You have to zoom out, “free” the cursor, then zoom back in. In addition, the zooming is very touchy – it’s very easy to zoom far beyond where you intended to be. And since there is no mini map, you can’t just set the zoom where you’re most comfortable and leave it – you’ll be forced to zoom out from time to time. Sometimes the camera will just jump around on you as you’re trying to control it, causing you to end up viewing parts of the map you had no interest in viewing.
Once you get a feel for the controls and log some time with the game, this will become less of an issue – you get used to it. But it still remains confusing and at times, frustrating. You don’t always have time to be playing with the camera.
The games visuals are… …difficult to review. Units look pretty nice up close, but seem to blend together at a distance. Everything starts to look the same. Level details are very sparse, with most of the maps simply being open space. Compared to the popular Universe at War game – which has detailed landscapes and tons of scenery and foliage – this game feels rather barren.
SupCom’s selling point – besides the fact that it actually works on my console – is it’s control scheme. No other RTS is as easy to play. It can be had on Amazon for pretty cheap (my copy was less than $20, shipped) but again, if you’re using any other console than the Elite or Arcade, you might want to stay away.
Happy Hunting.
3 Stars Great game, but crashes constantly
I love this game. A lot. There are plenty of reviews out there that cover the game itself. So I’m going to just address the bugs. Or rather, bug. But it’s such a biggy, that I’m knocking the game two stars just for one bug.
This game requires you to save frequently. Normally, not a big deal. Except probably 50% of the time, when you save, the game crashes. Sometimes you can get back to the Xbox dashboard, but often you have to reboot the console. Extremely annoying. The save game doesn’t get corrupted or anything, or I’d be rating this one star instead, but it’s still a very serious bug. Worse, it’s been out for months, and I’m not really holding out much hope that the bug will ever get patched at this point.
4 Stars Not THAT bad!
Well, I picked this game up a couple weeks ago even though I read the, in my opinion, little harsh reviews. I never played this game on the PC and I think the problem is people are trying to compare this game directly to the PC version and you just can’t do that with an RTS. Sure, the game technically isn’t superb, but it hasn’t made me not have fun playing it. I guess I didn’t really have that many expectations buying it and I just took it for what it was…a rts game on the console..and I have had fun playing it. If you have THAT high of expectations for type of game on a console, then I think your better off sticking to the PC.
2 Stars The original (Total Annhilation) rules !
I’m a fan of the original game Total Annihilation on the PC. I even bought all the expansion packs that where ever released and i wasn’t desatisfied eveeeer !
Supreme commander on the other hand fails to carry the same epic gaming experience. I don’t know how to describe it, but i never was a fan of a digital actors that producers are fond of integrating them in their games now a days!. I mean come on ! who care about crappy acting, we need solid game play !. Plus the Mecha designs is unbelievably retarded compared to the original Total Annihilation ! yep.
That goes for my campaign experience, i never get to the point to try it online. In fact i was so enthusiastic about reselling the game again rather than play it !, wana buy my copy (^_^) ?
2 Stars Technical hiccups keep this game from being epic
Supreme Commander(SC) for the xbox360 is a Real Time Strategy(RTS) game that ups the anti in all aspects relative to other RTS offerings for the console. It’s control scheme, scope and utter complexity is a warmongering-micromanaging-nerds dream come true. Too bad that technical issues get in the way of all this. Did the port-people lazily and quickly put this on the 360 to make a quick buck, or is it possible that the hardware just isn’t ready for this massive game yet? Until a patch is released, or not, to fix the lag/sound/program bugs etc, we will never know.
Gameplay & Story: You build your own personal army of structures and weapons and have it out with someone else who does the same. This army can also include an Air Force and a Navy.
Your army is powered by Mass and Power plants and you can create more Power/Mass output as you “tech up”.
The factions are well balanced and there is a counter action for every attack. Those players who like to “Turtle” now have a game to call their own. You can spend hours tweaking your defenses to repel almost any attack, although, in the long run, those who branch out and expand will have an advantage. Speaking of “Hours”, make sure you visit the bathroom before playing because some battles CAN take hours.
In regards to the story or campaign, I mean, come on – playing an RTS game campaign is mainly for training purposes. The meat of an RTS is skirmish either locally or online. SC does a good job of allowing you to set up the game type of your choosing and provides a nice variety of maps.
Controls/gameplay: The control scheme for SC has now made every other RTS control scheme obsolete. The way you build your army has taken “set it and forget it” to new heights, and I am saying this in a good way.
Sound: Some of the sound effects are good, and others are very odd. When you zoom out of the battlefield, your speakers might get blown out from the noise.
Graphics: Acceptable. In fact, I would call them above average for a game with this scale.
Conclusion: This game is for those who like to build massive forces and manage them over a longer period of time. If you have a case of Halo-itis and like quicker battles like those that occur in Command & Conquer, then this game may not be for you.
Despite the great concepts presented in this game, as it stands now, be prepared for plenty of lag and occasional buggy play. There is a lot of debate about this issue at this time. Some are having more trouble than others. When all is said and done I cannot recommend this game at this time. Its too bad really – almost like someone put a nice lobster dinner in front of us, but we are not allowed to eat it.
Buy/More Info
