Supreme Commander demo impressions

by: Chuck - posted: 2/6/2007 10:54:00 PM

After the Jackets managed to crap out on the ice tonight I fired up the Supreme Commander demo hoping that it would help me forget how bad the Jackets suck this year.  I have pretty high expectations for the game and the demo did not disappoint.  I think I'm about 3/4 of the way through the single player mission included in the game and it's really good and I could really feel a lot of the Total Annihilation touches in the game (like using your commander to speed up production of units in factories). 

Zooming in and out of the battlefield is amazing and really gives you a sense of the scale of the game and it does a great job of starting you off with a small portion of the map before opening larger and larger sections.  All of your basic RTS conventions are in the game and I was really impressed with how easy it was to coordinate attacks, setup patrols, and build queues (both in a factory and around the map).  Whenever you set an objective you're given a timer as to when it's going to happen so you know just how long it's going to take the two engineering units to setup the four mass extractors and get back to your base to build a power plant to support them. 

The demo feels really deep as there are some strategies (like building your power plants near buildings) that I'm just now picking up on.  If I wasn't feeling a little under the weather I think this is something that could have kept me up until 1am in the morning but I'm having problems keeping my eyes open now so it looks like I'll finish it up tomorrow and start counting the days until Feb 20.