Amazon.com: Supreme Commander: PC: Video Games

86 Reviews

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(10)

Average Customer Review

3.5 out of 5 stars (86 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really Great!, March 5, 2007

By	Paul McMillan (SF Bay Area, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

When I first bought this game I wasn't sure about it, the game seemed much to complex for it's own good and everything just went slow because I didn't get it. Despite this I stuck with it, watched the tutorials and other players replays and learned all the games great tools that help you manage the game and wow the game got a billion times more fun and faster.

I have a relatively old computer, going on 2 years and after hearing what a system hog people were saying this game was I was pleasantly surprised to see it runs smooth even with tons of units on the screen yes I have to run the settings on low, but another great thing about this game is it's support the games only been out a couple of weeks an there are already 2 great patches that solve a great deal of issues people were having. In the latest patch they even seemed to have made the game look much better on the lowest settings. One example of the great attitude the developers have is that they took the safedisk protection out in the latest patch, because many people were having problems with it.

The game also has some fantastic unit AI, some of the best I've ever seen, yes they can get a bit confused if you give them outrageous tasks, like say trying to send 1000 units at once through a very tight choke point, but if you use the games fantastic order queue system that lets you give any unit extremely complex routes then everything will be dandy.

The best thing about Supreme Commander is the sheer depth of the game, his isn't your grandpa's CnC game were all you had to do is mindlessly throw tanks at your opponent, oh no you need to mix a great variety of units and structures for defense and offense to be successful over land air and sea.

The online client is better then battle.net! The online setup, an ELO chess based ranking system, team rankings, clan rankings, built in clan support, insane statistics that go as far to tell you how many of what unit types you have built, had destroyed, destroyed, your success with what. The numbers it collects are just insane! Add the replay vault, at the end of every game it asks you if you want to upload the video to the replay vault, a system that allows you to quickly look up popular replays and such, you can even right click on somebody's name and look at all their replays in a blink of an eye. You can even customize the coloring of ever aspect of the GPGNET client. The online system of this game surpasses even Warcraft 3's maybe not in look, but in content by miles.

I haven't played the single player so I can't comment on that, but just on the multiplayer alone, if you're a fan of the RTS genre this is a game you MUST buy.

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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From no to WOAH!, February 24, 2007

By	Matt Ontaro - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

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.

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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A worthy successor to Total Annihilation., February 22, 2007

By	critical_g "!" (USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

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).