Review of Supreme Commander 2 Demo

Review of Supreme Commander 2 Demo
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Supreme Commander 2 Demo

Supreme Commander 2 is a real time strategy game set in a science fiction world. Created by Square Enix, which is best known for its Final Fantasy series, this demo allows you to play the tutorial and the first four levels of the campaign. This gives you a good feel for the game and its strategy but the demo can be played through in a couple of hours easily, less if you’re skilled at real time strategy games.

Graphics (3 out of 5)

The graphics in this game are not bad but that is about all one can say which is positive. The units gene

rally look and feel more like toys than real military vehicles. The Fatboy, for example, looks and feels considerably more like plastic than a killing machine and as the most powerful unit in the demo it should be more grandiose. In addition to this, there are many graphical elements that just feel odd. The shadows and the backgrounds are well detailed yet you don’t always even see the enemies you are shooting at, instead there is a plus sign or an arrow because they are out of visual range.

Gameplay (4 out of 5)

It is clear where the time and energy of the creators of Supreme Commander 2 were put, and that is inovation and game play. The game play, while not prefect, is good with simpler elements than many other RTS games. it has not abandoned anything to this simplicity though. you still have resource gathering, but it doesn’t force you to build dozens of workers to mine those resources. Instead you simply build a mass collector on a specific spot and protect it. This gives you a steady stream of mass to build things. In addition you can create buildings which produce a constant inflow of energy which you can also stockpile.

tactical screen

The combat and control of the units is very similar to many other games in which you build as many factories as you can as well as collect as many resources as possible creating groups of armies quickly. The major change in this when compared to other real time strategy games is the tactical screen. This lets you see the entire map and units but with far different graphics.

Innovation (4 out of 5)

With a game in a genre as full as the real time strategy genre one of the most important questions is what does any game bring to the table. This game uses many of the things that you have seen but there are a few interesting ideas. The primary differance in this game is that it has research as a resource. The way that this works is that you can build labritories. You can have as many of these as you want and they work together to create research points. You can then use those points to improve units, make them cost less, gain access to more units and more. THis is similar to the building structure of many games but once you have researched it you have it.

The other thing which is unique in this game is that you are actually on the field. You are piloting a ACU which is basically a mech. You can build buildings or fight with this but if it is destroyed you lose the level. This means that it is the most powerful unit generally but also the most important to protect. This adds an interesting element to the campaign and likely even more in the multiplayer game.

Voice Acting (2 out of 5)

The voice acting is one of the major weaknesses of this game. The dialog is generally not all that well written but even with substandard lines the actors could have delivered their lines better. This, most likely, detracts from the full game far less because it is almost certainly more focused on the multiplayer aspect than the campaign but in the demo at times it becomes bad enough to distract from the game.

Supreme Commander II Demo Rating (3 out of 5)

This game is a solid three. Everything works and it is possible that the multiplayer game has more strategy than it appears, but from the free demo the comparisons to games like Starcraft II are impossible to avoid and this simply falls a bit short at every level. There are a few ideas that work well, and it might be simpler for some new to real time strategy games to learn, but from the demo I would have to say that rather than getting Supreme Commander II it would simply make more sense to buy the five star game avalible in this genre unless you have a good reason to do otherwise.