Supreme Commander for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

I have long been a fan of Real Time Strategy games, but they have never played well on anything other than a computer.

The gameplay appears well put together and balanced. There are a large variety of units, and each has a focus. Anti-air units cant attack ground units, etc. So you need to create a balance in your divisions, otherwise a single bomber can eradicate an entire fleet of tanks.

The controls are difficult, for example to get a engineer to create an air turret, you have to press B to deselect the current unit, A to select the engineer, X to stop what he is currently doing, Right on the D-Pad for the build menu, Scroll the right thumbstick to the 10 o'clock position and release it there, move the left thumbstick around to the air turret icon , and press A.

The inability to have a mouse is detrimental to the complexity of this game. It is laborious to do even the simplest tasks, most tasks require between 4-8 combinations of buttons and joysticks to complete. While the game boasts the need for less micromanagement of the economy, simple orders become complex due to the controls.

The tutorial gave a good overview of the controlls, and the campaign slowly introduces new technology to the player. However I was left wondering some simple things that the tutorial did not address. At one point I had my Commander "Optimize energy usage"? Which immediately eliminated all me energy reserves, haulting production of all units. I don't know what this feature did,other than allow enemy forces to overrun a critical outpost. Also ACU's can perform specialized attacks, however the button combinations to perform these acts make it impractical in the heat of a battle.

The only way to combat the button combinations is to slow the gamespeed down to a dimwits pace to allow you time act. This gets pretty old since every time you change the gamespeed, the game saves your prefrences.

I will likely purchase the game for the PC,and leave the XBox for action games.