Doesn't meet expectations.

Let me begin by saying I am a HARDCORE TA fan. I still play it. I have made custom maps for myself as well as use custom (cheating) AIs and several mod packs (TAUCP + a few units I really like that I TACC'd in - Bob and Quark smasher come to mind = 300 or so units - Karganeth is my single favorite unit...and I'm Core...and Arm sucks). I especially like the recent unit limit patch to allow 5,000 units per player (I like to play maps with 10 players - 50,000 units on a single map is very cool).

In short, I've been looking forward to Supreme Commander for, uh, a VERY long time.

I have the hardware to run the game (WinXP Pro SP2, latest DirectX, 3GHz Intel Hyperthreaded CPU, 2GB RAM, mid-range ATI video card x700 [latest drivers], oodles of hard drive space). So, I installed the DEMO and ran it. I always play the demo before deciding to buy any game - no demo, no money. This has a demo - wise choice.

Supreme Commander decided that 1024x768 @ 60Hz with several defaults set to high was appropriate for my system. Not a great resolution, but I knew it was going to chug resources regardless of visual settings.

I created a profile. Then got to the main menu. I was somewhat disappointed that there was absolutely no audio or music until the point of profile creation. Figured the entry points to the game would be big and impressive complete with some amazing rendered video. Fine, it is just a menu. TA didn't really have that great of an intro. either.

So, I then decided to do the whole tutorial thing. Thinking to myself: "I mean, TA was huge and this is supposedly bigger and better, so I'm going to need to re-learn everything." Clicking the "Tutorial" button took me to a website that requires registering to watch the tutorial videos (FileFront). I'm not paying money or wasting time in a download queue to watch tutorial videos. So I figured "I can wing it and jump right into the game. I've played enough RTS' to wing it. Right?"

I then started the demo's campaign mode. A lady person pops up and moves her mouth but no words come out. There is no music (not all that important but would really improve the campaign dialogs) but also no audio. The text moved automatically which made it difficult to follow because there was no speech associated with it.

When I got into the game, I was instantly lost. Okay, the familiar commander unit was there but the lady person was still not speaking out loud. I figured out that "mass" is the rough equivalent of TA's metal and "energy" was the same as TA. After the first few tasks, I got some of my bearings and I started playing around with zooming in and out.

First problem: Zooming is inaccurate and finicky. When you are in close, you can pick out individual units BUT then you have to zoom out to do anything with those units. In TA, units are easy to select, albeit there is only one zoom level - that is, a fixed view. The zoom feature would be better done via the minimap. The authors should make it so left-click (or perhaps just hover) on the minimap opens a larger minimap to execute commands or right-click on the minimap to just execute the command directly but not as accurately.

Second problem: It took me forever to figure out how to get the minimap. I assumed it didn't exist because of the zoom feature.

Continuing to play, I went south as per non-speaking-lady's directions and captured the secondary base. Dragon's teeth (or whatever the equivalent) seemed useful. I kept expecting to be attacked but never was. So after building up some stuff, I decided to head out with a fairly hefty army (15 Intercepters). My initial battle up north of my base failed miserably.

Third problem: Can't click airborne targets. They moved around way too much so I couldn't tell my 15 airborne units to attack each one. I let them fly around the area hoping they would take down the enemy (4 units). All 15 got shot down without taking out a single one. My second attempt was significantly better: I paused the game so I could actually click on the airborne enemy units to tell my guys to shoot them down. I then paused after each kill to tell them what to hunt down next. Zooming is a HUGE issue here. Airborne targets can't be seen when zoomed in too far...you can lose half your army before you even know what hit you if you stay zoomed in. In most RTS', I can find a nice comfortable zoom level to play at where I can micromanage AND macromanage at the same time. Here, I have to zoom in, select my units, zoom out locate the enemy, pause the game, zoom in, tell my guys to kill the enemy, then unpause the game. Wash, rinse, repeat for each new enemy.

Taking out the enemy to the north, a whole new section to the east opened up...but the lady person called it "south". Weird. Whatever. I saw the enemy's location and knew which way to go. Once again I ran into big problems with not being able to click airborne enemies.

Problem #4: At this point I got REALLY REALLY REALLY annoyed with my construction facilities. Every time I went to make units, the rally point had moved to someplace off the map. I completely lost several airborne units this way. I eventually learned to reset the rally point and THEN immediately start construction. Experimenting with this, each factory seemed to reset the rally point off the map if they weren't doing anything for a few seconds.

Eventually, I found the bunkers where the brethren (aka people-I-was-supposed-to-rescue) were hidden. But at that point, I was very dissolutioned because the game wasn't really specific about HOW to rescue them. Figured an engineer would be involved to capture the building, but didn't feel like dragging one across the map. At this point, I quit the game back to Windows and uninstalled it.

Problem #5: I couldn't figure out how to rotate the view. Usually a middle-mouse click or something.

Problem #6: Throughout the game, the graphics were pretty grainy at zoomed out levels. They were pretty nice looking zoomed in - but as I stated before, you can't do much while zoomed in except select units you plan on using while zoomed out. And gaze at the eye candy.

Problem #7: Explosions are the only satisfying sounds I experienced. Those are really well done. However, I was expecting a good musical track and better sound effects. TA is better at sound effects - especially when a buzzsaw, 50 Bobs, or a Karganeth are launching ammo to blow things up. I also missed the screen shaking effect during explosions that TA had that this game doesn't.

Problem #8: Whatever happened with nanolathing? I missed my 50+ construction aircraft and green particles in this game. The authors replaced nanolathing with little red lasers. Lasers destroy things...not construct them. This is fact in the game world. You can't go upsetting the balance.

Problem #9: Not really a problem, per se. But Arm vs. Core is perhaps one of the coolest social battles ever evolved from a video game. Asking someone if they are Arm or Core is a great conversation starter...assuming they even know what you are talking about. This game changed the race names and added a third.

Problem #10: Boring. The game was pretty boring compared to my ten-year-old, heavily modded TA install. Yes, it looks pretty (when zoomed in all the way), but I'd rather have a functional, strategic battle with a thousand units clashing than a pretty battle with 15 units. The screenshots of the game found around the Internet really intrigued me but the demo didn't satisfy me. I'm also used to 50+ Advanced Construction Naval Aircraft flying around, building a massive army in mere seconds (it is fun to whomp on a newbie with a continuous stream of peewees). Waiting for each unit to finish in this game was painfully slow.

The only thing I really liked about this game and thought was a real improvement over TA was the ETA (Estimated Time to Arrival) feature. I queued a whole bunch of things to build and the game tried to figure out when they would be done. Unfortunately, while a good idea, the feature is pretty inaccurate - usually finishing much faster than the original estimated time.

Although, I only played the demo, I know from experience (I've played thousands of games) that full games are usually only slightly better out-of-the-box (i.e. without major patches applied). Maybe the v3.1c patch will be what convinces me to buy the game.

Remember, I'm a hardcore TA fan (and a hardcore gamer in general). If you, the reader, have never played a modded TA before, Supreme Commander is probably a pretty good game. But this review is semi-biased because I play heavily modded TA games. Supposedly the full game has some impressive modding capabilities, so maybe not all is lost for me when someone starts piecing together unit packs, AI mods, etc. The major downsides are zooming and selecting airborne units...both are possibly fixable using a patch sometime in the future.

If the developers of Supreme Commander are interested, I am willing to have a one-to-one discussion (phone). I do a lot of product testing to find the best products and I'm a software developer as well as an excellent gamer - so I know the industry pretty well. I average finding 50 bugs per month in products I use while trying them out (crash, usability, etc.). There is a fee for the service, but we can talk about that. I don't offer the service to just anyone.