2007’s Supreme Commander was an epic in the true sense of the word: potentially thousands of units could battle it out complete with lasers, nukes, and giant robots. While well received, the large scale of the game meant that many of the finer details were found lacking; the interface was clumsy, economy management was a headache and the tier system meant most of your units were useless twenty minutes into a game. Has Gas Powered Games used this feedback to turn Supreme Commander 2 into a worthy successor?

It’s obvious from the start that Gas Powered Games have done more than simply update the graphics and include more units. Thanks to the partnership with Square Enix the campaign is - for better or worse - a much more personal experience. There are plenty of characters and the story is more engaging than that of its predecessor. Still, at times it feels tacked on, with cutscenes cornier than a CCs factory, lacking the quality of something like Halo Wars. Thankfully it relies on its solid gameplay rather than a deep campaign to keep the player going.


Chris Taylor delivers a demo of the game in action.

The gameplay, in general, has been simplified. The tier system used to unlock new units has been completely replaced by a research system akin to Company of Heroes – get kills (or build research stations) and you’ll unlock points to spend on upgrades ranging from shields and weapons, all the way to your end game experimental units. The kills-for-points system speeds up the gameplay which might not please all RTS fans, but it definitely has its upsides – skirmishes are a must if you don’t want to face giant flame-breathing cybernetic dinosaurs with budget tanks. Thankfully the increase in combat is completely manageable due to a vastly different resource system.

Managing your economy in Supreme Commander was practically a game within itself, feeling more like a chore than a video game. GPG have taken note and simplified it a great deal - any veteran of strategy games will instantly feel at home. In short, this means there will be no more moments where your entire base is left defenceless because you’ve drawn too much power. It’s a massive improvement and greatly supports the faster gameplay.

The faster gameplay does have a few issues, however. Maps seem to get crowded very quickly with more focus on small skirmishes with a few powerful units rather than the huge battles that Supreme Commander was known for. Many (but not all) of the maps are a lot more linear, often taking place upon large platforms or across chasms. With massive experimental units quickly clogging up areas, hopefully a few more traditional large maps will be included in the final release.


Lastly, for all those who can remember Supreme Commander melting your PCs when it came out, I’m very pleased to note that the sequel is much less hardware intensive while still being very pretty. Running on a Q6600, 8800GTX and 4GB RAM the game ran on medium to high settings without too much slow down. Unless there are a lot of visual effects to be added before final release, this is a very good sign of the full game’s system requirements.

From what we’ve seen, Supreme Commander 2 is shaping up to be a game to watch this coming March. If Gas Powered Games can introduce some larger maps and slow down some of the gameplay, it may prove itself a worthy successor to Supreme Commander.