rew ? sky
04-30-2006, 10:27 PM
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecommander/news.html?sid=6148537
Having three distinct and unique races is fairly par for the course for a real-time strategy game, but it is how they fight it out in Supreme Commander that makes the game stand out from the rest of the pack. Taylor is a fan of history, and when he compares real-time strategy games to actual wars, he finds them lacking. His problem is that the genre thinks too small. Battlefields in real-time strategy games don't really feel like battlefields, due to the sense of scale. "They don't give you a sense that you're fighting in this big place with waters and mountains," Taylor explains. And he's right. Tactical concepts such as distance and time are irrelevant in most real-time strategy games, as you usually have two bases on opposing corners of the map and just enough room in the middle for a big battle. Supreme Commander, on the other hand, is all about distance and time.
To give an example, he showed us a naval engagement featuring battleships and destroyers slugging it out with an enemy naval force. When zoomed up-close, you don't even see enemy ships on the screen, since it's a long-range engagement. You do get a sense of scale, though, as the battleships are considerably larger than their smaller escorts; they also convey a sense of power, as they're armed with multiple turrets and weapon emplacements. Yet when the camera was pulled back to show the entire map, the naval engagement took place on an incredibly remote part of the map. Far to the south of the battle was the main land mass, where all the action was going on. You could have multiple large-scale battles going on in this map, and there would still be plenty of room to maneuver units. This is important, because to Taylor, far too many real-time strategy games confuse tactics with strategy. Tactics are what you employ when your units are in battle, but strategy is the movement of units on a large scale. In Supreme Commander, you'll be able to conduct sweeping movements with hundreds of units, and you'll get a sense of being a real military commander.
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen008.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen010.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen007.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen006.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen004.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen005.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/272/reviews/928861_20050930_screen001.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/272/reviews/928861_20050930_screen010.jpg
http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/652/652972/supreme-commander-20050930113036594.jpg
Looks awesome...you can manage units at different levels and that nuke shot is crazy looking.
Having three distinct and unique races is fairly par for the course for a real-time strategy game, but it is how they fight it out in Supreme Commander that makes the game stand out from the rest of the pack. Taylor is a fan of history, and when he compares real-time strategy games to actual wars, he finds them lacking. His problem is that the genre thinks too small. Battlefields in real-time strategy games don't really feel like battlefields, due to the sense of scale. "They don't give you a sense that you're fighting in this big place with waters and mountains," Taylor explains. And he's right. Tactical concepts such as distance and time are irrelevant in most real-time strategy games, as you usually have two bases on opposing corners of the map and just enough room in the middle for a big battle. Supreme Commander, on the other hand, is all about distance and time.
To give an example, he showed us a naval engagement featuring battleships and destroyers slugging it out with an enemy naval force. When zoomed up-close, you don't even see enemy ships on the screen, since it's a long-range engagement. You do get a sense of scale, though, as the battleships are considerably larger than their smaller escorts; they also convey a sense of power, as they're armed with multiple turrets and weapon emplacements. Yet when the camera was pulled back to show the entire map, the naval engagement took place on an incredibly remote part of the map. Far to the south of the battle was the main land mass, where all the action was going on. You could have multiple large-scale battles going on in this map, and there would still be plenty of room to maneuver units. This is important, because to Taylor, far too many real-time strategy games confuse tactics with strategy. Tactics are what you employ when your units are in battle, but strategy is the movement of units on a large scale. In Supreme Commander, you'll be able to conduct sweeping movements with hundreds of units, and you'll get a sense of being a real military commander.
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen008.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen010.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen007.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen006.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen004.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/117/reviews/928861_20060428_screen005.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/272/reviews/928861_20050930_screen001.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/272/reviews/928861_20050930_screen010.jpg
http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/652/652972/supreme-commander-20050930113036594.jpg
Looks awesome...you can manage units at different levels and that nuke shot is crazy looking.