Flash of Steel header image 1

Supreme Commander 2 Review

March 22nd, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Gameshark, Gas Powered Games, RTS

I like Supreme Commander 2, but I totally understand why a lot of people will not.

I often think about what concepts are core to a series. What makes a Europa Universalis game a Europa Universalis game? What makes Civ Civ? How much or how gradually can you change a game before it is not really true to what people expect of the franchise?

Supreme Commander 2 is not much like Total Annihilation (its earliest ancestor) in some very significant ways. It’s not even a lot like Supreme Commander 1. It is leaner. It is undoubtedly smaller. And it is a lot more manageable.

Take the research tree. Research is centralized on one screen and as you move from faction to faction it becomes readily apparent how the three armies differ. Everything is laid out for you, so you know what you can build towards and decide which trade offs are worth the investment. The distinctions are subtle in some ways; in fact the differences are a lot like those in Sins of a Solar Empire – they seem small or negligible but do give you some insight into how these groups are conceived. The Illuminate, to give one example, can research greater Mass collection along two tracks where the UEF is stuck with it on only one. This means that if the Illuminate can get both of those things researched it will become an economic juggernaut. Because they are space elves. Or something.

In some ways, it’s a sequel that is a microcosm of the tension that Soren Johnson explored in his GDC talk about theme and mechanics. Is the Supreme Commander series about robots (constant theme) or is it a game about micromanaging resource spikes (old mechanics)? If you think that Chris Taylor’s RTSes are really about showing how well you can develop and protect the most complicated economy you can have with only two resources, then this is not a SupCom/TA game. If you think that the important thing is the construction of different sized and shaped killing machines, then it is clearly in that line.

The simplicity and smaller scale of the game (if you can call a unit cap of a few hundred small) means that some people will feel a little bit betrayed by the change. It’s not that the super hardcore TA people feel entitled to be super hardcore – it’s that this was a game and series that they supported and championed for a long time and they may feel like Gas Powered Games is “dumbing things down”.

Make no mistake, Supreme Commander 2 is a much more user friendly game. The user interface is near perfect in many ways, the strategic zoom is useful without making you feel divorced from the action, the maps (clearly inspired by Demigod arenas) have a clarity of design and focus, the campaign missions don’t give you one giant task and then zoom out to give you ten more, etc. In every way, Supreme Commander 2 is more accessible.

And maybe something is lost in that accessibility. You can’t get more old school huge than Total Annihilation, but Supreme Commander 2 is almost old school small. As a result, it is more focused in important ways, but the sprawl of the original SupCom meant that you do some pretty cool things. And the complexity of the economy had a certain perverse beauty to it – designing templates of energy reactors, finding a way to keep your collection rate climbing just as your big ass units were about to come online. As someone who loves deep and complex (but not complicated) game design, I completely understand this feeling.

Supreme Commander 2, though, won me over in ways that the original SupCom and TA did not and a lot of that is because of the streamlining and intimacy. If, as they promise, Gas Powered Games can fix the AI issues then we’ve got a game that I can unequivocally endorse. This is not a game that I expected to like as much as I did, and it’s a game that I really was not enjoying until all of a sudden things clicked.

I like it a lot. I accept that you may not.

→ 12 CommentsTags:

The Flash of Steel Store

March 19th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Blogs, Me

I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this. First, the product quality may not be up to my readers’ discerning standards. Second, it feels like I’m grubbing for money when I already have ads on the site. Third, well, it may be a little tacky in the end so we’ll see how long I do it. I have to pay for blog hosting plus podcast hosting, neither of which is a lot, but it would also let me buy more games promptly. For a while at least.

But, for now, there is a Flash of Steel store on Zazzle. There’s a link below the Amazon widget, too, and Design Tzar Jenn will kill me for putting it there, but we’ll see about moving it later. So far, just mugs/steins/cups what-have-you. I like Zazzle’s variety, and if there is interest or demand in other goods, I’ll think about those, too. I get a ten per cent commission on this stuff, so…yeah. Not making a mint here. But I bought a couple for myself and will probably buy more as prizes.

Maybe I’ll design a T-shirt with Gerykisms on the back.

→ 18 CommentsTags:

The RTS Boss Battle

March 19th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Design, RTS

In his mostly glowing review of Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising, Bill Abner hits on one of my personal annoyances with RTS campaigns – the boss battle.

This annoyed me in the original game and it doesn’t serve its purpose any better in the expansion. It just makes no sense to me at all thematically that the big boss guy would wait until the end of the map to basically fight the marines solo rather than lead his/its troops on the field. Not only that but the boss fights are incredibly boring compared to the rest of the missions. It’s a rush to unleash hell on several squads of marines and a Chaos Dreadnought – not so much fun to just target the big baddie at the end of a level with very little cause for strategic planning.

DoW 2 is full of these. You lead your squad through hell to clear a map and then you find the big, bad general who probably has some special powers and take him/her down. It’s four against one and can be stressful in that enjoyable way that a tight RTS fight can be. Sometimes these boss fights can get downright silly though.

Supreme Commander 2 doesn’t have many boss fights, but in the second mission of the Illuminate campaign arc, a giant experimental unit comes out of nowhere. Oh no! Whatever will you do! You only have an army of three experimentals, ten bombers and 50 assorted other shiny metal weapons. Pardon me for not sharing the heroine’s fear and surprise.

The boss fight is a holdover from martial arts and James Bond movies. Once the hero has cut through a forest of henchmen, he must face off against their leader. He’s not always the final leader, but somebody in the hierarchy. Fantasy RPGs follow this trope and in this character arc concept it makes sense. You the hero are getting closer to your enemy by taking down his entourage one villain (and a hundred expendable ensigns) at a time. Personally, I was pleasantly annoyed by Baldur’s Gate when one boss character escapes from a fight – you end up meeting him again at the side of the arch-foozle. Then you kill him.

Real time strategy really doesn’t work like that, or it shouldn’t. Yes, the story campaigns generally follow the same heroic arc, but Abner is right to point that it makes for poor strategy to leave your strongest unit behind the rest of the army, standing on a platform and waiting for a squad of space marines to fight it. This is a war, and if your general is your strongest unit, you move it to the front line and support him/her with whatever it takes to stay safe and deadly.

This gets to the core of why so many RTS story campaigns are weak. They are written like movies, following one or two main characters through a war or struggle for something. But the gameplay is not designed to be character progression centered, so you end up with either a light combat RPG thing like Dawn of War 2 (which isn’t half bad) or a cliche monstrosity like almost every other one.

But if you tell me I am fighting a war, and the bad guy knows where I am and I am still building farms or mines or energy plants, you need to give me that sense of urgency if you want to have a boss battle. Show me a timer with a countdown to when the big bad and his army arrive. Then I know that this is serious business for my team and that the enemy is taking me seriously, too. Don’t make me kill a planet of bad lieutenants just so I can face off against Superman at the end of a mission.

→ 17 CommentsTags:

New Solium Infernum Guides

March 18th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Blogs, Cryptic Comet

He’s a little late to the party, but Bill Harris has written up some amazing beginners’ guides for Vic Davis’ latest masterpiece, Solium Infernum. Harris did a great job with his Armageddon Empires guides, and he’s doing well here, too.

I’ll admit to having not played SI in a while. I had some MP games going with Tom and Bruce and a few other guys, but, like most multiplayer PBEM games with busy people, they’ve fallen aside. I think one of them had technical issues, too.

The thing I still like most about SI is how neatly all the pieces fit together in what is a truly intricate design. On the latest Gameshark podcast, their boardgame columnist, Michael Barnes, points to Vic’s games as one of the models of board games on the computer. They are clearly board games, after all, but would be impossible to play in any reasonable span of time without computer assistance. It would take days and require all kinds of refereeing. Barnes is right that SI is as well thought out as any board game design available and Harris’ writes about the systems in SI with every connection laid out.

Harris’ guides are good because they explain every step of the opening in terms of why this will matter as the game plays out. For example, in one of his entries he notes:

That’s the kind of effect that changing map size can have on the game, and like I said, it’s indicative of how differently the game can play depending on how it’s set up, and why it’s so engaging.

My goal in setting up a game of SI is to maximize potential chaos–this is, after all, Hell. So I always choose a small map and the highest number of opponents, because far more disruptive events events seem to happen when opponents are more concentrated.

This is the sort of stuff that strategy guides and designer notes should have in them. How does changing this variable change the experience? People should know this. Harris likes chaos, I like order. He wants to get things moving, I like the slow burn.

Keep an eye on Dubious Quality for more guides as he writes them. Someone should seriously pay him for this.

Comments Off on New Solium Infernum GuidesTags:

Three Moves Ahead Episode 56: Civ 5, Sid Meier and Farmville

March 16th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · GDC, Podcast, Three Moves Ahead

ThreeMovesAhead

We throw together a show on some of the strategy gaming news and ideas coming out of this year’s GDC. What do we know and not know about Civilization 5? Is Sid Meier coddling players in his psychological approach? And why is Julian on the side of evil in the Facebook wars?

We announce the winner of the King Arthur steam code and begin planning for PAX East.

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

Fear and Loathing in Farmville
Gamasutra on Meier’s Keynote
Julian’s article on Facebook games
Chris Hecker on the rewarding boring activities
A Theory of Fun for Game Design
Pre-order Sid Meier’s Civilization V
Rob Zacny on the bias against strategy games
Match Defense: Toy Soldiers

→ 17 CommentsTags:

What does it mean to be “hardcore”?

March 11th, 2010 by Troy Goodfellow · Firaxis, Gamespy, Industry, Preview

When I read the strapline attached to Anthony Gallegos’s preview of Civilization 5, I was stopped a little short.

It’s not just for the hardcore anymore.

It’s not? When was it? Is Civilization a hardcore game for hardcore people? I tweeted my curiosity and was met with a nice chorus of replies from friends and colleagues. Former PC Gamer Editor in Chief Gary Whitta pointed out that Civ gives him migraines, and of course it is hardcore; anyone can pick up a shooter and know what to do. Kombo’s Tiffany Martin said that I was seeing the game from inside my strategy gamer bubble where Civ is positively user friendly compared to, say, Hearts of Iron.

By any objective measure, Civ itself has become more “hardcore”, if what we mean by that is a game that requires more attention and calculation. The original Civilization was as user friendly as any strategy game ever made. As great as the UI is in Civilization IV, its main purpose is to make the dozens of new relationships transparent.

But when a game sells hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of copies, is it still a hardcore game?

Part of the problem with using “hardcore” as an adjective for a game is that a lot of people play apparently simple games in what we would see as a “hardcore” way (Hardcore Rock Band players, as an example) and others will play a complicated game – and enjoy it – on easy settings and never really grok everything that is going on around them. From where I sit, hardcore is an adjective best applied to players – not games.

It’s also a little weird to suggest that Civilization 5 will become less hardcore by importing mechanics from Panzer General.

Lots of new previews of Civilization 5 out there. I’ll make my way through the information and report once GDC is over. Not that I’m there. But I do wistfully read the coverage.

→ 18 CommentsTags: