News: Supreme Commander 2 Released
Posted on : 08-03-2010 | By : ChaosMecha | In : News
Hardware: PC, Xbox 360
7
The much anticipated RTS sequel, Supreme Commander 2 has hit the shelves. Many improvements over the last two games have been implemented (SC2 runs much smoother than the original and Forged Alliance). The most notable changes maybe those of the economic model, tier system, and the large focus on the economy. The economic model has been simplified, so rather than the complex system of mass and energy gain/drain, the whole drained portion was chopped.
Instead of distributing the resources earned each second amongst all working engineers, they have replaced it with a credit system. If you want to build something, you must pay the full price for the item up front, then send one engineer off to build it. You can no longer have 50 engineers rush build something in a couple seconds. The whole tier system was removed. Instead of upgrading your factories to build more powerful units, you instead earn “research points.” Your ACU will slowly accumulate RP over time. You can build research facilities, or kill enemy units to get RP faster. You can then use your RP to improve your units, or unlock new ones. This all boils down to a larger focus on commanding your army. Chris Taylor promised us all of this and did not fail to keep his word. You can grab Supreme Commander 2 on both PC and the 360.
It should be noted this is a much more tactical game. Less focus on base building and more on action. Everything just seems to go faster. The maps are smaller. I liked the base building and more complex gameplay from Supcom1 but Supcom2 has its place as well. I just wish there were more units and much larger maps. Atleast twice the size. It definately feels like a cross between Supcom and Demigod.
SupCom felt more like a real-time Civ to me, and I hated how easily the Experimental units were beat considering how much time was invested building it.
I’d love to play this (big fan of Total Annihilation and SC1) but like with every sequel to a PC game, you need to spend hundreds of dollars on a new computer for each installment.
Maybe when I get my new Macbook…in 2012…
I’m in the same boat you are. My quad-core PC can barely run Supreme Commander 1, and while I’d love to play the sequel and get a good look at the next generation of everyone’s favorite post-scarcity economy construction robots, I don’t want to spend 300 bucks on a graphics card capable of of playing the game at 15 FPS at low resolution.
It should be noted that SC2 runs much smoother and is less extensive on the system than SC1. If you’re still having doubts however, you can pick up the demo off of Steam and see for yourself.
Whoops, forgot to mention: Chris Taylor himself said that he was using a “5 year old computer” to play the game during the gameplay trailer.
My 2.0ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook with GForce 9400M plays SC 1 pretty well as long as you don’t try using an additional display, and you have the detail turned down pretty medium-ish. The game is 1-2 years older than this machine though (not sure how may laptops, if any, could run SC1 well when it was released) so I assume I’ll have a similar wait for SC2.