Supreme Commander 2 demo (review)

Well the demo’s finally out (I pre-ordered anyway) and I’ve been bashing it around to get an idea about how the full game might ‘feel’. Here is a list of Tops and Flops from my very early and highly presumptuous initial gameplay test drive (bearing in mind how limited the demo actually is):

E-Sports?

Greetings! This is my response in a GPG forum thread discussing the upcoming Supreme Commander 2; regarding the fact that so far we’ve not yet been shown much about its supposed multiplayer features. Rather, they’ve focused PR heavily on showing us single-player and skirmish modes. It’s fairly obvious why, since SupCom1 gave us a relatively poor single-player experience.

SupCom 2 Speculation

I have high hopes for Supreme Commander 2, and as entertaining as the original was, it lacked the lasting appeal of its spiritual predecessor, TA. Luke already went over the problems with SupCom thoroughly and I must say he’s absolutely correct on all counts.  Before starting in about what SupCom 2 might be like, I would like to add that possibly the biggest failing of the original was it wanted to be playable by casual strategy gamers. It could be said it failed, but it tried. 

I understand that there are more casual strategy gamers than the “hardcore” RTS nuts, and to some extent it is necessary to cater to them to sell enough games to make it worth making. However TA was not a casual game, and it was the depth of play that turned its players from casual RTS gamers into hardcore players. 

Sure, you lose a lot at first, but consider the extremes. Is a game better where the strong and the weak player have equal opportunity to win, or where the stronger player will win 100% of the time? I am of the opinion that the more skilled player should win to the degree of their skill – with the situation where one player will simply crush the other in every case is possible but rare (i.e. Starcraft pro vs player new to the genre). So as much effort as possible should be spent in making the game fun and interesting to play again and again, even at the expense of complexity and being difficult to learn. For those of you who play Dwarf Fortress, you know what I mean when I say more depth is better, even at the expense of graphics, and even if that depth will make you lose time and again. Indeed, in Dwarf Fortress you eventually lose every single game, but it’s still fun to play.

Supreme Commander 2!!!

It’s just been announced. I shit thee not. Looks like a 2010 release.

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605175/supreme-commander-2-announced-by-square-enix.html

http://www.supcomuniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?p=56162#post56162

Perhaps Chris (“RTS God”) Taylor has been stopping in looking at my world-famous RTS Concept? *Ahem*. OK maybe not. This is good news though. I can’t wait.

Ideas?