Supreme Commander 2 Review
A reduction in the massive scale means less travel times and quicker matches. Multiplayer can be quite enjoyable but the campaign misses the mark.
The next change from the prequel favours a research tree over a series of tiered unit levels. Research points, gained from doing damage, resource crates or from your research buildings can be spent on upgrades for you units and buildings. Broken into groups these branching upgrade paths will eventually lead you to unlocking the heavy hitting experimentals or perhaps a nuclear silo. To unlock the experimental units you will almost need to become specialized in that group – land, air, naval, structure and ACU. You will need to wait some time to unlock more experimentals for other groups because of the cost involved in getting to the bigger units.
Supreme Commander 2: Jurassic Park
This unlock system replaces the tiered unit system in the first game. You can add shields, health, more damage, extra vision or range and other bonuses to units as you require – greatly increasing their potential in a battle. Unfortunately aside from a few obvious upgrades many are simply invisible to the opposing commanders. And in some cases you’d need to zoom in very closely to see any of the visual upgrades that have been unlocked. Unlike a tiered unit system you may have to guess if your units will match your opponents. Aside from normal units the large brutal experimentals are back better than ever.
Thankfully experimentals that were so iconic in the original game return. Broken into the various unlock groups these experimentals tend to have obvious weaknesses that will need to be protected with basic units or other experimental types. No question they still generate fear when lumbering or flying toward your base as you call all units in the area to assist in taking them down. Controlling several of these big units still brings satisfaction when you progress through an enemy base crushing the opposition. Old favourites like the Aeon Colossus return and some of the new experimentals are also pretty enjoyable to use. They have done a good job of balancing rare and powerful units with the research system. You can’t build experimentals with your engineers anymore though; you must construct a huge experimental factory and build them like a normal unit. These huge factories make the production and presence of experimental more obvious.
Excuse me while I shoot a dozen units into your base
Many of the levels are now more than just land and sea geography. They might be intertwined with specific structures including platforms or spaceships – something trickier to implement than with standard level editors. The campaign proceeds in a linear fashion and you cannot start each faction without completing the previous. It works a bit better this way because you don’t spend the first two levels of each faction campaign completing tutorial like missions. The game does feature some in-game cut scenes and the bad news is they cannot be skipped so saving after you get passed these openings is advised. You can save at anytime but try to name the saves appropriately as there is no timestamp or mission association. Path finding has been improved although units still get stuck in a loop or in between buildings. Generally navigation is better because they push through multiple units during the campaign and online.
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Apr 13, 2010 11:02:01 (Apr 13, 2010 11:02)
