What Would Matt Do

The recent release of the SupCom single player demo really brought a few things to mind as I played through a bit of it.

One, I’m really tired of the tried and true RTS mechanic of doling out unit types. You either need to have me find and expand my tech in some believable in-game manner or give me all of my abilities up front. The entire single player game doesn’t need to be a tutorial on how to use the system and if your campaign is depending on the next unit type as a driving force to get the player to continue, you’re already losing. That being said, this isn’t the end of the world, just annoying. Maybe I should I tell those kids to get off my lawn too…

Two, this game has really good graphics…when you see them. I mean it. I was zoomed for some reason or another looking at my material extractor and was amazed at the level of detail it had. Same goes for a lot of the units, the explosions, the forests catching fire, the guns/unit missing with their shots and so on. The problem? You don’t see that very much. Due to the very nature of the game, you’re often zoomed out to such a level that you either can’t distinguish units from each other or you’re just seeing icons. And the one thing that is always present, the map, is VERY sparse. Those factors together give the impression that SupCom doesn’t have great graphics. You’ll hear this complaint a lot. It’s not true really, but at the level you’re playing, it often will feel like that. And if it feels that way…

Three, I was impressed with the level of story and the voices for the single player game. I thought for sure it would just be a tacked on thing to help you get used to playing for multiplayer. That is not the case. I was pleasantly surprised.

Four, and perhaps the most important, I really like the multiplayer of SupCom a lot more. Yeah, the voices and story are interesting and the objectives are plainly spelled out, etc. But it’s pretty straight forward.The AI is going to do this and this and that’s about it. Playing the multiplayer beta is overly interesting because there are so many viable tactics. It’s truly war on a massive scale. Work a land invasion, attack via the water, dominate in the air, turtle up a bit and sneak attack, build on their continent when they aren’t looking (taking out that radar isn’t very hard), etc. The unpredictability of the human player makes the battles better. Though, much like Risk or Axis & Allies, the moves the beginning often decide the late game. Which is a good thing.

My only complaint with multiplayer? Yeah, there is no unit micromanagement, but you had better rush the resources. If not, you’ll get destroyed in the later game. You need all of the material sites near you and as many of the other guys as you can get and you need power stations like a mad man. Get it done! So yeah, it’s not WC3 (dear god that was annoying), but resource management is still as or more important than good battle management. Which is an RTS staple for sure, but I think I was looking/hoping for a bit less fo that.

So, icon war game comments aside, I’m definitely going to give this one a go. The multiplayer alone has sold me on it. The single player is just and added bonus.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll buy it as soon as I can. It’s a good to great game. And I love everything GPG has put out so far, minus that last expansion for DS2. Ugh.