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This is Total Annihilation 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 16
Date: January 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

For anyone old enough to remember, Total Annihilation (TA), produced by Cavedog, was the grandaddy of all RTS games. Even today it is still an excellent game. Then Cavedog went bust. Well Chris Taylor, the man behind TA and Cavedog, is back with what amounts to Total Annihilation 2 in the guise of Supreme Commander.

WoW! Beyond my expectations

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Graphically, probably one of the best looking games I have ever seen.
Game play is fast and furious. Great community on the chat as well nice network interface (auto matching and custom games)

I would have said its TA2, but really, TA2 wouldn't have had this kind of great game play. If you have a chance to play this (when it comes out) DO IT! You'll have fun playing or have fun dying!

Scheduled for February 20th!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: January 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Yes... this is spiritual successor of Total Annihilation 2!
Played Beta, and I was just amazed how well the game was written!
Can't wait until February 20th (2007).

This is such a great RTS!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 21
Date: February 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Supreme Commander has its roots in the old (but great) Total Annihilation game. If you liked TA, you will like Supreme Commander even more. Probably the thing I like the most about this game is the intuitive interface for commanding your forces. Using the mouse-wheel it allows you seamlessly zoom in/out of the battlefield. But, the cool addition is that wherever your cursor is located; the scroll automatically zooms to the coordinate. I wish Google Earth would implement that feature too! I've only played the demo, but the tech trees are intuitive and seem to be fairly well balanced. Like others have said Supreme Commander uses the same type of ranking system that was used in the highly successful HALO2 online play. This system is based on the ELO statistical system, which was originally created for chess rankings, but works quite well with online games! I truly enjoy auto-matching with equivalently skilled players much better than "join a server and hope your good enough" online play.

The only downside I can see to this game is if you do not have a fairly high-performance system, you may have difficulty running this game. So, I would recommend running the demo before you buy the game to make sure your system can handle it at the level of detail you would like to play it.

Have fun!

Intuitive but Somewhat Problematic

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 24 / 50
Date: February 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Supreme Commander breathes new life into the RTS genre. In a field of games that has often been overly reptitive, this game brings new elements to the table. Combining massive maps and gigantic units, Supreme Commander impresses players with its size and scale.

Unfortunately, the game also has its serious shortcomings. The most obvious one is the rediculous performance requirements. To experience this game at its fullest, in a 3v3 or 4v4 match in multiplayer, one must have a very up to date machine. The game fails to run well on most reasonable computers without cranking down the settings to the point where graphically it isnt appealing. Another problem is the environments. They are to be honest quite bland. The pristine looking water is nice, but the landscapes often only feature a few trees and one tileset color. Another issue is that this game doesn't truely have 3-unique sides. Although the units visually are all different, they all fill the exact same role and are very similiar, except for the highest technology experimental units. This makes the game quite balanced out of the box, but it is an easy way out for the developers. The way that every side has a "tech three strategic bomber", or a "tech two cruiser" means that the unit variation only runs skin deep. This means the possible strategies in this game will be very limited compared to other popular RTS games like Warcraft III. Another thing is that while the strategic view is impressive, it really will hurt the game's enjoyment at the competitive level. Advanced players will find themselves using 10 parts base management to 1 part unit control. The game will become one in the omninous "world scale zoom" a group of squares going at another group, while players quickly build more groups of units.The units themselves lack control options and the abilities are very limited. This makes it a macro based game, and in the end it lacks excitement and true player interaction. Gas Powered Games truly succeeded in bringing something new to the table, but has failed to take hints from other successful games that have come out since Supreme Commander's predecessor: Total Anihilation. The result is that Supreme Commander doesn't reach its potential.

Simply Amazing!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 11
Date: February 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is very well done, the zoom is the coolest thing to be used in an RTS in years, it totally puts the minimap to shame, and the beauty is how big the maps can get, simply amazing, tons of units, air, land, naval, simply amazing.

Who placed an order in Feb but get one?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 23
Date: February 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I pre-ordered it in Jan but Amazon told me that they are all sold out!!! Is anyone placed their order in Feb but get one? Please let me know~ Thanks a lot~

A worthy successor to Total Annihilation.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 24
Date: February 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am a long-time fan of Total Annihilation, so I had to pick this game up immediately. It is very worthy successor. It uses very similar gameplay, but expands it with enormous maps, original campaigns, and some unique "experimental" weapons. It takes a long time to clear a map (2 hours minimum), which I prefer to short scenarios.

The hardware requirements are pretty high, but it runs well on my [...]PC. I did have problems with the sound being out of sync, but I just had to update the drivers for my Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS. Make sure to update your drivers! It doesn't run well at the highest graphics settings - I am tempted to upgrade my PC just for this game (P4 3.4 GHz, ATI X850, 2 GB RAM).

From no to WOAH!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 34 / 35
Date: February 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

At first I really didn't care much for this game, it seemed slow and I the singleplayer wasn't to fun, but then I decided the give the game a bit more time as I had heard their was a great deal to the game. I started playing the skrimish mode and online and WOW, their were way more units available to me in online/skirmish mode including the ultra units that were not in most of the single player part of the game (along with many other units) the game is very intense and loads of fun, the better I am becoming the more fun the game is getting as the better you get the speed picks way up, in fact their doesn't seem to be a limit, the games speed is completely dependent on you level of knowledge on the game. So while it may seem slow to you when you first start this will quickly change.

The game runs great on my 3200+ XP 1 Gig Geforce 6600GT and the game will run fine on any PC bought/built within the last 2 years really. [...]

Furthermore the fact of the matter is the factions are actually pretty unique, it doesn't seem that way at first because they have the same type of units in usually all the same spots across the tech trees. What I mean by that is take a tech 1 land factory for example they all produce a bot/scout/mobile anti-air/tank and artillery. So you would think they were all the same, you would be dead wrong. Every single one of those units happen to vary drastically from faction to faction.

I'll use the tank as an example

The Aeon Tank- is very slow, has a very long range, does heavy damage, but has a long reload time. It also has a very small health bar.
Special ability: It can hover over water...

The Cybran tank- is very fast, has a short range, does low damage, but fires at a very fast rate. It has a moderate amount of health
Special ability: is able to repair other units and structures, can also help engineers build.

The UEF tank-has moderate speed, moderate range, does high damage and has a moderate reload time. It also has a very high amount of health

So as you can see in that example those 3 units which if you just looked at the tech tree would have you believe are identical are ACTUALLY completely different, they are as different as night and day! And thats using a Tech 1 unit example, in Supreme Commander their are 4 tech levels an the units get more and more unique the higher up the tech tree you go.
So actually the units from faction to faction in this game are very unique.

But even if they were not this game literally has more depth in one faction then most RTS games with their expansion have across all of their factions. Each faction in Supreme Commander has over 40 units and structures, thats more then Starcraft with broodwar has with all of it's faction combined!

Also every single unit has it's purpose, their is no unit or structure in this game that are useless because the game is very well balance, unlike RTS games like Red Alert 2 were all you have to do is build Mammoth tanks once you get to them. In Supreme Commander you have to use mixtures of many different unit types to be successful against any good opponent
Another great thing about this game is how well it scales, say you want to play a quick 10 minute game, all you have to do is pick one of the very tiny maps in which their are plenty of, theirs also gigantic maps, bigger then you've ever seen for when you want to play a much longer game. The game in total has nearly 50 maps for the Multi-player alone!
One of the best things about Supreme Commander is just how wonderful the UI is, of course theirs the zoom you already know about. The User interface itself can also be moved all over the screen, you can put the User interface on the top, bottom, left or right side of the screen, additionally in the new patch that just came out their is an option to run a mini UI for those people who complained the UI was to big, well now you have the option of a much smaller one.

The que system in the game is fantastic, it really puts every other RTS to shame, in most RTS games you have to wait for a building to finish to give your builders their next order, in Supreme Commander you simply hold shift and you can lay out the build tasks for a builder to infinity, you can also use this same feature when giving order to any of your war machines so you can give them very complex routes.
Another thing that sets Supreme Commander apart is the use of air and sea, in the RTS games out that have air and sea, they really are after thoughts. You will have one or 2 air units at most a factions and you will rarely see any see units, in Supreme Commander they have put just as much focus on the air and sea as they have the land units. Furthermore their are many different formations for land, air and sea units so you can keep your armies very well organized!
Each faction also has 3 very unique gigantic experimental units.
Ranging from a enormous Independence Day like Flying Saucer with the blue laser of death and all, to a Giant Spider with a freaking laser beam on his back. To a Submarine aircraft carrier that can literally hold over 100 air units!

Supreme Commander has it's short comings, the Single player story isn't that great and the levels can look a bit bland on the bigger maps due to technological limitations of the time, you just can't make maps that big right now and pump them full of decorations. The game also has a big learning curve and even can appear slow paced at first when you don't know how to play. Despite these short comings the gameplay Supreme Commander brings is more intense, deeper and all and all more fun then really any RTS game ever made, this really is a revolution of epic proportions and is a MUST buy for anyone who considers themselves a fan of the RTS genre.

A fantastic successor to TA

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: February 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

You do not need to have played Total Annihilation to appreciate Supreme Commander. SC really follows in the footsteps of TA, but goes miles beyond. I'm not just talking graphics, but real quality of gaming. I have always loved RTS as a genre, but never really found a game that played as naturally as SC. The new "tactical zoom" feature is really a lot more useful than it sounds. The system for resource management is hands down the best I've ever seen. The campaigns are very well thought out, and the voice acting and writing is pretty good (this is a pet-peeve of mine with a lot of other games). Skirmishes are fast paced throughout, and there are some pretty awesome units at the top of the tech ladder to break down even the most tense of stand-offs. Finally, and most importantly (for me at least) the online community, while not huge, is definitely active.

There are, of course, some minor issues. I won't even deign to call them flaws. The different factions are not varied enough for many peoples' taste, and, of course, you need a real beast of a computer to get everything the game has to offer (visually).

Overall, this game has that which makes great games great. Like Star/WarCraft, Command & Conquer, or Age of Empires (and of course, Total Annihilation), SC requires a balanced approach, yet there are an infinite variety of strategies to pursue. I can tell you, I won't be buying another game for a looooong time--not until the expansion pack comes out!

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