February Video Game Preview Thread

Got the full version of SupCom last night. I haven't played any of the single player missions but I have played a few skirmish games. AS far as the gameplay goes, if you have played TA and/or TAK then you will pick this up pretty easily. The functions are pretty similar, and many of the commands/shortcuts are the same. The main difference is the way the game treats the Tech tree. Instead of building constructions units you upgrade at each facility. There are 3 tiers and an engineer unit for each tier. Engineer units can build structures for their specific tier. All units can assist building regardless of tier (nice if you wanna crank out the nuke a little faster than normal). Resources ar ea major part of the things you build, as well as, upkeep of the structures. However, you don't really have to micro manage resources inmost situations. there may be a time where you have to turn off a building, like a shield generator, to have enough power to complete a build, but I never felt like I had to really focus my attention away from a battle to deal with resources. Once I balanced out my production with my consumption it was cake. the other major feature that GPG is touting is the split mode. By hitting the home key you can split your screen in two. One half can be used as a map and the other can be used as your view of the battle field. I do not have a wide screen monitor so this seemed a little cumbersome. With a WS I think it would really be a cool feature to utilize. Instead right now I am stuck scrolling in and out (which isn't all that bad, but it would be easier to use a map to target the area i want to go to). I am going to try this feature out a little more in the future.


I will post about my actual game experience a little later.

 

SupCom game experience:

My first skirmish game I chose the UEF, I set my opponent to normal and random faction (they chose the Cybrans). The AI is named like it was in TAK so I was playing this game against Jessica. I decided to use my old TA tactics and build some defenses and tech up. I started by building some mass extractors on the mine areas, then I built some energy plants. Once I had those going I built an Air Unit Factory and an engineer.

While building my second set of mass extractors I found an energy deposit so I built on that. While that was going on I built some tier one defenses with my engineer. After that building phase was complete I started upgrading. It seemed to work best doing 2 mass extractors at a time and building a few more energy plants. Once the mass extractors were upgraded I upgraded my factory and built a new engineer. During the factory upgrade I began to see some enemy scouts which my defenses handled easily. I continued to upgrade my facilities in the same manner adding the tier 2 engineer to build a stronger power plant (you cannot upgrade power structures). I also built a shield generator in the center of my base to protect some vital structures.

At this point I was still seeing scouts come by and taking them out. I built a tier 3 engineer, took all my builders and started a Nuke silo. At this point I found a really cool feature in the game. When you hover over a structure or unit it tells you the stats to build it like the amount of mass and energy it will cost, and if it will use mass or energy once built, but the coolest feature is that it tells you how long the builder working by itself will take to build it on normal speed. It was then I realized the Nuke Silo would take my tier 3 builder exactly 86 min. 32s to finish it alone. So all the builders got in on the act.

Then one of my defenses started firing on an enemy mass extractor, but couldn't hit it because of terrain. Annoyed as I was I decided to build a tier 3 bomber to take it out. I built the bomber (3:57), and proceeded to take out the offending structure. I also found the enemy had a build up of tier 1 units near it so I decided to take them out. My bomber worked with great efficiency and wiped out the entire squad nearest my base (about 40 units) So I decided to explore, I ventured near the enemy base and took some tier 1 defense fire, and found the enemy had built up about 200 units (all tier 1) so I thought lets see how many I can take out with one bomber. The answer was all of them, with a little help from a mistake. While targeting an enemy factory I accidentally bombed his commander. He blew up half his base with the thermonuclear explosion.

I blasted the enemy down to one mass extractor, because I couldn't blow it up without trying out my nukes. I sped the game up to +10 and nuked his last remaining unit. It was a very fun game but I was a little disappointed in the Jessica AI. She built tons of units but never tried to rush me.

My disappointment was short lived. I decided to try again. This time I got a different AI but cannot remember the name. I began again with my defense-tech up strategy. I started concentrating on getting my mass and energy production up. I made a mistake. Thinking that I would see a similar pattern of the enemy scouting me and just figuring to blast them with my commander, was fatal. Instead of sending in scouts the enemy pumped out a ton of tier 1's and rushed me. Had I built some defenses I probably would have been ok. But with nothing they quickly picked me apart. The game time was somewhere around 18 minutes. I was upset with the loss but impressed with the AI differences. Each named AI seems to play the game a bit differently. It is nice to see that you won't get the same strategy everytime you play the computer.

Overall it is a pretty fun game, especially if you are in to RTS or the TA franchise. It has a very TA feel about it, and it seems to be really set up for modding. I am planning on jumping in to the single player campaigns this weekend and will probably play a few more skirmish games before jumping online to play.