So despite my previous post I ended up finishing Supreme Commander II. The thing about modern RTS is that they assume you're playing the campaign as a sort of training for your eventual online multiplayer annihilation. A completely false assumption in many cases, but nonetheless it means the single-player campaign is relatively short. So I played through it.
I don't hate Supreme Commander II as much as I did originally. It still has some of the ingredients that made Total Annihilation a classic and Supreme Commander I the last great RTS.
The physics-based movement and combat of Total, which even in 1997 made Starcraft look completely obsolete and even puts the as-of-yet-unreleased Starcraft II to shame, is still present.
The story is another positive. Although not as deep and intriguing as Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, is still leagues beyond the previous Supreme and Total before them.
Still, so many efforts were put to dumb down this series. Efforts like unit type reduction and the removal of the crucial factory automation process. Efforts that do nothing to deepen or streamline the experience, but just serve to increase the clicks-per-minute numbers to a pathetic Starcraftesque level.
Final thoughts? You can't win against Starcraft, as bad as that game was and as bad as the second one will be. The crowds will flock to it, buy it, love it. So why change course to match this mundane-magnet? You want their endless supply of money? You ain't getting it. And you're turning your niche against you.
Showing posts with label total annihilation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label total annihilation. Show all posts
2010/07/24
2010/06/27
Rant: Supreme Commander II killed Total Annihilation.
When Total Annihilation came out, it made me look away from every other RTS games for good. Many reasons for that, not the least of which was killed by Supreme Commander 2.
I thought TA, and later SC, was putting the strategy in RTS, while Starcraft and others focused on quick-clicking micro-management. I call typical RTS games "clickfests". It's not so much about having a good strategy, as it is about clicking on the right unit with the right timing to unleash the right power. You're not the general of a competent army, but the mom of a bunch of 2 year-old who won't do a god damn thing unless you tell them to.
Where TA and SC shined was in production management. Factories had orders: Build this, deploy there. All of that packed in a nice queue, which could become endless in SC with queue looping. Once a factory is set, you can forget it for the rest of the game, and focus on strategy instead. As is it in real life, nothing is prepaid. You must supply as units are built. If supply is insufficient, production pauses and then resumes automatically as resources become available. It's very streamlined, very realistic and very good.
Now Supreme Commander 2 comes along, and all of a sudden I'm staring at a generic RTS which I thankfully bought on sales on Steam and not full-priced. I will most likely not play it again after mission 3. In SC2, everything must be prepaid. So if, for example, I want my air factory to make 5 fighters, then 1 bomber, then loop, I have to pay for all 5 fighters and 1 bomber IN ADVANCE. But it's ok right? Once you can afford 1 iteration of the loop, you can loop it and it's set for the rest of the game right? Nope. If at any time you run out of resources, the factory will shut itself down, never to resume production again unless you get off your general's chair and start wearing your industry leader hat, personally walking into the factory and flip the fucking on-off switch yourself.
TA and SC, contrary to all other RTS, made me focus on strategy and planning instead of constant click-festing and micromanaging a bunch of children. It was about shifting battle lines. Now all of that is gone.
And when the enemy punctures through your eastern front and leaves you scratching your head as to how they could have succeeded, you'll realise with horror all your factories have been shut down for 10 minutes and you're sitting on the biggest pile of money in the universe. All useless. Because you were busy taking care of your western front (the actual strategic warfare portion of the game, the fun part), and because the factory heads are complete retards now, you lose.
I don't know if it's the bad influence of Square Enix, but it appears in trying to bow down to pressures to go mainstream, the franchise has killed what made it special.
I thought TA, and later SC, was putting the strategy in RTS, while Starcraft and others focused on quick-clicking micro-management. I call typical RTS games "clickfests". It's not so much about having a good strategy, as it is about clicking on the right unit with the right timing to unleash the right power. You're not the general of a competent army, but the mom of a bunch of 2 year-old who won't do a god damn thing unless you tell them to.
Where TA and SC shined was in production management. Factories had orders: Build this, deploy there. All of that packed in a nice queue, which could become endless in SC with queue looping. Once a factory is set, you can forget it for the rest of the game, and focus on strategy instead. As is it in real life, nothing is prepaid. You must supply as units are built. If supply is insufficient, production pauses and then resumes automatically as resources become available. It's very streamlined, very realistic and very good.
Now Supreme Commander 2 comes along, and all of a sudden I'm staring at a generic RTS which I thankfully bought on sales on Steam and not full-priced. I will most likely not play it again after mission 3. In SC2, everything must be prepaid. So if, for example, I want my air factory to make 5 fighters, then 1 bomber, then loop, I have to pay for all 5 fighters and 1 bomber IN ADVANCE. But it's ok right? Once you can afford 1 iteration of the loop, you can loop it and it's set for the rest of the game right? Nope. If at any time you run out of resources, the factory will shut itself down, never to resume production again unless you get off your general's chair and start wearing your industry leader hat, personally walking into the factory and flip the fucking on-off switch yourself.
TA and SC, contrary to all other RTS, made me focus on strategy and planning instead of constant click-festing and micromanaging a bunch of children. It was about shifting battle lines. Now all of that is gone.
And when the enemy punctures through your eastern front and leaves you scratching your head as to how they could have succeeded, you'll realise with horror all your factories have been shut down for 10 minutes and you're sitting on the biggest pile of money in the universe. All useless. Because you were busy taking care of your western front (the actual strategic warfare portion of the game, the fun part), and because the factory heads are complete retards now, you lose.
I don't know if it's the bad influence of Square Enix, but it appears in trying to bow down to pressures to go mainstream, the franchise has killed what made it special.
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