Supreme Commander

Title: Supreme Commander
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: June 23, 2008
Date Played: August-September, 2011
Time Played: 40 Hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 2/5


Opinion:
I never got into the Supreme Commander on the PC (Released Feb 2007). But heard good things about it. Primarily the scope of battles where hundreds of units would battle on massive maps. I gave it a few attempts on the PC, but could never get myself to stick to it past the first couple of missions.

Fast forward 3 years, and I got an incredible RTS itch.  I looked over at my shelf of games, and after some deliberation decided to give Supreme Commander another go,  especially since Supreme Commander 2 was just recently released. This time though I would try it on the Xbox 360.

The game consists of 3 campaigns of 6 missions each. Each mission has multiple primary objectives and the map keeps expanding making each mission last from 1 to 3 hours.  As you progress through the game maps get bigger and bigger and you get more and more different types of units. The game uses 2 units of currency Mass and Energy. You produce energy with power plants, and harvest mass from the ground.

It does take a long time to get anything done, the initial base setup is at least a 30 minute task before any action starts.

Overall the game is fun; however Hellbent Games did a terrible, and I mean, absolutely terrible job porting the game. Let me give you some examples if I may:


- The game runs at sub 30 FPS, and in the later missions where huge battles are common it is not unusual to see slideshows and game's FPS feels as if it is in the 10-15fps range.

- First few missions are small-ish, but in missions 4-6 it is not uncommon for the game to freeze if you zoom in too fast.

- In mission 6, because of the amount of units present the game will freeze 100% of the time when you save the game. Luckily this does not corrupt the save game. The game will freeze on its own sometimes as well. This is why saves are essential, but it freezes during save.

- For missions 4-6 when you blow up the enemy commander a huge nuclear explosion goes off, camera zooms right on it, which makes the game play at 1 FPS and the game will often freeze doing this. 

- The game will often go to black screen of death. You can pull up the guide and exit to dashboard, but other than that the game is completely locked up.

- In later missions the game will straight up stop loading textures on units, so they are all greyish untextured models.

That being said, the combat is satisfying, explosions are very well done, especially when you land a nuke on an enemy base. Controls were ported well, and I have not had any significant issues using the Xbox controller with this RTS.  The textures are a little blurry when zoomed in all the way, but that is to be expected.

If Supreme Commander on Xbox360 was not a technical mess it would have gotten as much praise as the PC version did.  But with the state that it is in now (with no patches at all since release, and its been over 3 years) it is hard to recommend this game to anyone on the 360. However if you are an RTS fan, I would definitely recommend checking out the PC version.

My Final Scoreboard - Click To Zoom