Supreme Commander Gold Edition

I love strategy games, and I am always on the look for the best ones. This one, is the best rts for me. I remember the beginning, cd copy and no expansion, I didn't understand anything of the resources, and left the game away. Then some time later I came back and boy oh boy, what a BIG game. Three factions, four in the expansion (stand alone, play SupCom just for the three stories to take your hand with the three human factions). Apparently they are just reskins of one another, same factories and buildings, but in reality every one has its own strenght and weaknesses, and needs some time to master well. Land, air and naval warfare. Air is planes flying around, not standing still levitating. When they run off of fuel they get super slow, and need to refuel somewhere. As someone said, every projectile is simulated. See that big base wiping flying eon unit? With a bit of luck and calculation and an attack ground, your artillery can get it down (years ago I mastered to take down Czars with mavors and t3 artilleries). The thing I loved the most of this game: "automation". It appears in different ways, my favourites being planes on patrol mode around the base, or where I need them: when they run out of fuel, or they take damage, they automatically fly to a refuel and repair station, and come back. This patrol, you can set already from ONE factory, and the other factories helping the first one. Automatic transport. Take your transport, right click to the land factory, and they automatically will ferry units to the gathering point of the land factory. Very useful and nice to see. BIG maps. 81x81 km is the maximum in vanilla iirc. Music: Jeremy Soule. Nuff said Forged Alliance Forever. Search for it and see how this game is still alive and beating. No games have even reached it. This game has plenty of Strategy. Maybe it sounds redundant, but it is important. You can outwit the opponent, not just win by having the better "army composition" or something else.

I remember playing this on a 2.4 GHz PC back when it first came out and it was like a slide-show; 15 frames per second, tops. Only just replayed it and now we're living in the future, my impossibly sophisticated super computer runs it at an easy 150 fps. The scale was impressive back then and it's impressive now. A thousand units on screen at once, ranging from "tiny" main battle tanks to the big brother of Wild, Wild West's giant mechaspider, but with frikken' laser beams on their heads. The unit diversity is impressive, a bit rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, but it balences extremely well. It'd easy to mod, easy to get used to (though my Total Annihilation muscle memory did help) but still challenging in places. In fact, that's a good summary of the game: it's a sexier version of Total Annihilation. If you like RTS then buy this and you will not regret it, I promise you.

If the RTS genre is to survive, it needs to take notes from this 12 years old game. Unfortunately, the only one to do so all this time was Sins of a Solar Empire and Ashes from the Singularity, while everyone else kept copying Starcraft and Starcraft 2 (and only Starcraft 2 could get away with being Starcraft 2). Strategic zoom is a game changer for strategy and the full utilization of 3 theaters of war, land, air and water, leads to a very dynamic experience. The tactics is more based on soft counters that work because of emergent gameplay instead of arbitrary "this unit has bonus damage against that unit". Shields protect vs artillery, but crumble vs a salvo of ballistic missiles, but ballistic missiles are a heavy investment in resources and can be shot down. Gunships can snipe powerful units but are vulnerable to flak because of their close formations. This emergent behavior is seem in all units. The factions are low-key in their differences, not being extremely asymmetrical for the sake of it, but their differences are noticeable and reflect each ideology. UEF units are tough and reliable to mirror how the Federation strives for stability and superiority to keep mankind united. Aeon units are very specialized but limited to showcase the zeal of the followers of the Way. Cybran units are multi-functional and mobile as an extension of the ingenuity of the transhuman engineers that compose the faction, ex-slaves who pursue freedom at all costs. The alien dubbed Seraphin are all about overwhelming firepower, as they wish finish their opponents as quickly as possible to diminish suffering. So even though most units have mirrors in the other factions, their stats and function differ greatly because of their ideologies. Join the thousand years war, choose a side, and dont forget to download Forged Alliance Forever.

In other RTS games, you get resources, you put those resources into aggressive units, and you attack the enemy. In SupCom, you have a basic start, and then the rest is completely up to you. There are many resources: Mass, Energy, Time, build power, micro, but it is completely open so that you can choose exactly what to do with your resources, to execute some strange and excellent strategy that YOU created just now on the spot. You have so many units available to you to use in new ways. These units are not limited to merely 'aggression'. The magnificent unit diversity allows for all sorts of strategic applications. And not just units, but buildings too. You could send an engineer out right into enemy territory, get it to build a Stealth Generator, construct a TML battery, and snipe the enemy commander. This is a logical combination of only THREE units, and none typical 'go shoot stuff' tanks. You could teleport a SCU into the heart of the enemy turtle base and destroy the Strategic Missile Defence in his three seconds of life so that your nuclear missile can do its job. You could send a decoy squadron of Interceptors along one flank of the enemy's base so that your transport drop of an army can get past his horde of Air Superiority Fighters and do damage to the base. Your Mass resources can take the form of strong and heavy turrets. Your Energy resources can take the form of air scouts. But they do not have to stay in those forms. You can reclaim those resources by dismantling structures and units through your build power. This unlocks massive intuition, adaptation, and freedom - aspects that encourage strategy. SupCom gets everything right. It is the combination of unit variety, resource conversion, scale, and control that makes up so great strategic freedom. I cannot put into words how perfectly Supreme Commander gets strategy. Everyone needs to enjoy the satisfaction of having such freedom of strategy. Get it. Then get Forged Alliance Forever.

Supreme Commander gold edition is one of those RTS that truly bring a ton to the table. As the descendent of the still unmatched RTS Total Annihilation ( say what you will, that masterpiece cannot be beaten in its genre - see my review in this site), it is a worthy one, not on par, but a worthy one. joint to its spin off, Forged alliance, this package will give you hours ( or at least, for me and my ability in strategy games) of fun with its ENOURMOUS maps. Which is basically the main feature: the act of coordinating troops feels authentic and of colossal proportion. So, why not 5 stars? mmmmm the game, although set for an epic war, still couldn't reach the peak of the game from where it takes inspiration. but let's go step by step. Gameplay wise, you'll need to meticulous planning and micro-micromanage everything (although the game does give something to help you out), so have an eye on every single operation is key to victory. There are tons of units, terrains, and strategy to employ and for any hard-core strategy fans this game is heaven. However, the downside is the niche nature of this game and the level of attention required is not for any player which is not a truly strategy lover.. but if given time, SC can truly be rewarding. As for the rest of the features, story wise is actually very good, but still cannot match the tone set by its predecessor ( not that it a truly negative note this one), while graphics are ... well, good? point is, there is a feature that makes the whole graphics kind-a pointless, since most of the time the player needs to zoom out from the usual picture found in other strategy games.. so basically you'll see mostly icons than the actual units. Which is both a good and bad thing: good because you'll feel like a master planner coordinating with your army.. bad since you'll miss mostly of the epic battles fought by the units. Anyway, the game, even for those not accustomed to strategy games, should be a must-play.