Can Supreme Commander be the RTS to rule them all?
The revolutionary Strategic Zoom not only gives the player the flexibility to control the entire theatre of war from an overhead map view, but also enables them to zoom right down to ground level, where they can issue orders to single units. The game can handle a vast number of units on screen, and players will need every single one to take down enormous experimental units that can change the tide of battle. The same units, ranging from miniscule to mammoth, will be available in the ranked multiplayer battles.
Supreme Commander for Xbox 360 Features:
The PC version of Supreme Commander was well received, getting a Metacritic score of 86. It would be quite a daunting task for them to make it a great conversion from PC to the 360, as it is with most console RTS’. However, having seen that it can be done with LOTR BFME II and the Command and Conquer 3 games, it’s curious why Supreme Commander on the 360 just doesn’t look or feel as good.The trouble is that the conversion has very little grace to it, it’s done rather shoddily. The game has some pretty weak visuals for an Xbox 360 title and I have no idea why it looks worse than the PC version, even the opening cutscene looks worse. Supreme Commander has a tendency to crash too and until a patch comes along to fix that, it seems that we have to grin and bear it.
The framerate also seems to have taken quite a nosedive when compared to the original game; Supreme Commander on the 360 is a terrible port of a good PC RTS. The AI can be somewhat idiotic and impaired at times. The PC game was a marvel, but this is just pitiful in its design and the awful control system doesn’t help matters either. The controls are pretty bad and another example of why console RTS’ rarely work. I also noticed that during the tutorial, that the guy who tells you what to do speaks very quickly and quietly, even with my 5.1 surround sound…I had trouble hearing what he was asking me to do. There’s a definite sound issue here and one that needs looked at.
It seems that the whole game has taken a backseat; it’s not the great game that I remember playing last year…instead it feels more like a shadow of its former self. The game doesn’t have any new content besides Live multiplayer and that has very little lag, although there were very few matches at the time of writing. There’s just nothing about the game that jumps out, even with some bad games you can see the potential they were trying to achieve…but I can’t even see that with this port.
The Verdict
I think I’ve said it all; Supreme Commander on the 360 is a pitiful excuse for a port. It has annoying controls, awful graphics and just isn’t that much fun to play. Stick to the PC version and keep away from this.
