Supreme Commander for Xbox 360 Reviews & Ratings by IGN

The argument in favor of bringing real-time strategy games to Xbox 360 is simple: Not everybody has a PC that can run every RTS, some of which require a high end setup. The Xbox 360 controller isn't ideal for games designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind, but the less than perfect interface is taken as a compromise for the fact that console owners have a system they can play the game on. In the case of Supreme Commander, Xbox 360 owners still don't have a system that the game can run on.



Bringing Supreme Commander to the console was probably a bad choice. It's not that the game itself is bad; in fact I quite enjoyed it when it came out on PC early last year. Unfortunately, debating the pros and cons of Supreme Commander's strategy is rather superfluous in the case of the Xbox 360 port. The game has such serious performance issues that they force everything else to take a back seat. Even with the graphics scaled back from what a good PC can do, Supreme Commander never approaches anything close to a smooth experience. Boot up the tutorial and you'll find a small test bed to learn the basics of the game -- a test bed that contains only a few units and still can't run without stuttering. Zoom in and out on the screen and you'll find that the game just can't keep up.







The main game is no different than the tutorial. In fact, the issues don't get much worse when the game is running full tilt with hundreds of units on screen. Of course, if it did get much worse it would hardly run at all. Sometimes the game even pauses for a second or two after you give a command, freezing the cursor in place. I thought it might be the 360 I was playing on, but several different retail units all showed the same serious issues.



It might be worth it to struggle through the skips and stammers, but this is a case where the technical problems hamper the gameplay itself. Try making a precision unit selection or command while the game is dropping frames and bouncing around. Controllers have enough trouble mimicking the precision of a mouse and keyboard as it is. This exacerbates the problem which is trouble indeed on a game that requires you to often select individual units from a mass of small icons.



The Supreme Commander design takes delicate resource management and mass scale to the extreme. Balancing the economy of energy and mass accumulation with your efforts at producing units and structures and climbing the tech tree presents a great deal of strategy. Moving up through the tech tree produces more efficient and effective units, topped out with experimental units that are truly a sight to behold, but comes at a significant cost. It's no use putting all your efforts into building nuclear capabilities if it makes the rest of your production line crawl to a halt. It's a design that presents a great deal of depth, but also requires fast and precise commands to succeed at.



In addition to the performance issues, the same problems that the PC game had rear their ugly heads here. The single player campaign is rather boring in both design and presentation. The story is nothing to write home about, but it's the mission design that keeps things from being fun. Each of the three factions has a five or six mission long campaign, but it isn't until the very end that you get access to the tech 3 and experimental units that are the icing on the cake. Five or six missions might not seem like much, particularly when all three factions are quite similar in terms of unit options, but each offer multiple objectives as the map continues to expand and new enemies are presented. These can last hours which make some of the surprise reveals feel rather cheap as you complete an objective and are then tossed into a massive battle in a base you didn't know you were going to have to defend.



This design forces you to save often, an aspect that is particularly unfortunate on the console since the game takes its time to save all of that data. Of course, it's not just the design that forces you to save at regular intervals. I had the game crash on me a few times, once as my army was marching in to finish off a long mission.



There are some features that Supreme Commander brings to the table worth lauding. The strategic zoom, a camera control that allows you to zoom all of the way down to ground level and then back up to fit the entire massive map on one screen, is a great fit for the console. It works well and is the best option a console game has yet seen for quickly moving around the map. Supreme Commander also makes use of a command wheel, similar to what we saw in Universe at War which is a more natural fit than traditional barred menus.



It's not all rosy in the control department, though. The positions around the wheel aren't totally locked down which makes it tougher than necessary to remember quickly where to find things. A mass extractor, for instance, isn't always in the same place on the wheel depending upon which tech level you're on. As for the rest of the commands, let's just say its much harder to get to some of the more complex maneuvers than it is with a keyboard and mouse.



The multiplayer game has been scaled down to four players from eight and the largest maps have gone with it, though there is still a hearty mix of maps to play on. You can also play against the AI in either offline skirmishes or unranked online games with a mix of human and AI players. You'll want to play this one online as the Supreme AI (top level) has some issues in this release as far as skirmishes go. It rarely reacts to your attacks at all and seems to only be good at producing bustling economies. One match I played with PC editor Charles Onyett against two Supreme AI opponents was a joke. Even as we marched in to dismantle their bases, the two AI controlled teams managed to create a combined one offensive unit to counter our armies. Another time I parked a single tech 2 destroyer offshore and the AI never attacked it while I bombarded the heart of their base. This continued until there was nothing left.



These issues aren't as noticeable in the campaign which has more scripted events and base setups for you to fight against, but once you play skirmishes against the AI you'll find an opponent that occasionally has unforgivable meltdowns.



Those still looking to buy Supreme Commander on 360 will find a few extras for the wait. Two new modes (King of the Hill and a capture and hold affair) have been added as well as a few new units. The game also makes use of some of the rules of the Forged Alliance expansion, but the campaign remains identical to what we found on PC last year.





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