The story and voice acting shown in the demo is ridiculously bad. I like it; it adds character that the original SupCom was sorely lacking.
Is it your contention that the abomination of a 'story' and its portrayal are somehow ironic, and meant to be that cringe-worthy for comedic value... or is it simply crossing into so-bad-it's-good territory?
Wow, it runs like a dream on my kinda shit ('speshully CPUwise) laptop. I barely expected it to run at all.
Yeah I noticed that too, it's certainly easier to run that its predecessors...
I think it might be beneficial to look at this as a kind of 'supcom light' able to run on weaker machines. Also for being more accessible to the lobotomized demographic.
20% Downloaded. Going kinda slow for some reason. Hopefully it even runs...
I say that not because my computer is bad, but because I'm on Linux. SupCom works (via Wine), but you can't just expect a sequel to work because the title is the same with a little number after it.
The story and voice acting shown in the demo is ridiculously bad. I like it; it adds character that the original SupCom was sorely lacking.
Is it your contention that the abomination of a 'story' and its portrayal are somehow ironic, and meant to be that cringe-worthy for comedic value... or is it simply crossing into so-bad-it's-good territory?
No, it's just terrible. If the gameplay was closer to SupCom, I probably wouldn't be too bothered by it.
Hard to say, I only really played the tutorial as far as SP in what I played. (Actually went a fewm issions behind that I think, one of them was damn hard too ) The UEF are so racist and ridiculous I can't think it was on accident though. Also, the term Chiphead is amazing.
From what I've played its fun, they've tried some things different but overall it still feels like supreme commander to me, just with more focus in each unit, not so much tier 2 obseletes tier 1 and so forth.
I'd have to say I am really disappointed at this. I think I will stick to Supreme Commander 1, even without having seen what multiplayer will be like yet.
If the story which was so highly touted is this bad, though, it doesn't reflect well on the probable quality of other features.
So I've tried the demo, thoughts follow (Why is Zen Vulgarity so insistent that I post about this crap anyway? You can try it yourself Zen :P ).
Remember when I said that the story was going to be bad? Yeah I was pretty much right. Although the voice actor for the main character (and his friend) is actually decent, the colonel-guy was about as bad as I expected he'd be. So yeah, but we're not playing this for the storyline (hopefully). It's an improvement on SupCom 1, but that's not saying much.
We already knew that all units are paid for up-front now. This actually helps a lot in preventing the whole "economy stall" that used to happen in SupCom 1. The visuals are a lot cleaner but manage to run faster as well, which is good. Tech levels have been completely replaced by the research tree, which is going to take some getting used to. You earn research "points" over time from your facilities, and the more you have the faster these accrue. There's a LOT of stuff to research, so it forces you to focus and prioritise. It's mainly unit buffs and addons, but you also get the occasional unit unlock. The first map I focussed mainly on expanding the naval tree, second map I was focussing more on air-power. On the whole it works better, but it's something you'll need to familiarise yourself with before you're really sure of what direction you want to be going and why. How well this works out in multiplayer is something I can't judge without playing it, but it has the potential for some diverse games.
Gameplay:
So let's get down to the gameplay itself. Units aren't as disposable as they used to be, in general they seem to last longer and take more of a beating. This ties in with the whole upgrade system which means that whatever you build, if you keep progressing along its tree, it'll be useful throughout. Point defences seem to be more vulnerable as well unless you're building a lot of them, at least without shields and other support. So the gameplay seems a bit more offensively oriented.
The first map wasn't too interesting and was pretty small so I'll ignore that for the moment. Unlike other smaller scale RTS's which are based around individual small scale skirmishes, SupCom 2 seems to be more about pressing waves of units against each other, and trying to create the right mix and backup in order to punch through fortified enemy positions.
That was particularly apparent in the second map. It basically features factories that pump out Fatboys over time, but they're completely automated and just charge straight into enemy lines. Good against anything on the ground, but are decimated via air. So you start setting up air fleets to try and take out patrolling gunship squads, but at the same time you need your own gunship patrols in order to take out enemy fatboys trying to take out your home base. And enemy fighters are actively targeting those so you need to setup either fighter screens or some ground based AA in order to take out the enemy fighters. And those will be targeted by enemy fatboys and gunships so you need to protect them with yours.
In general the second level was a lot better than most of the Singleplayer stuff I saw in SupCom 1. There what you'd typically do is set up your base with an impenetrable line of point defences underneath shields, then build up a huge army to send en-masse to the enemy base, taking down all their point-defences from afar. Here I was having to depend on my units a lot more for both offence and defence, and having them support each other as I advanced up the map. So if that's indicative of the main game, the level design's better. Visually it looked more unique as well, set on land masses in the sky, connected by bridges.
Overall: I want to see what skirmish or multiplayer has to offer. Singleplayer seems improved over the first game, and better thought out in general, even if the story is inevitably going to be bad.
Some other random stuff:
- Engineers will automatically repair or reclaim anything nearby if they're not doing anything, which is pretty good. It also removes the need for those air-pads from the first game.
- Engineers can build all structures, you don't need a level 2 or 3 engineer in order to start construction on an experimental, you just need the right research. There's no such thing as a level 2 or 3 anything anymore from what I've seen, it's all upgrade based now. Unit count is far reduced as a result, but everything's got a purpose in mind.
- Missile and anti-missile systems seem a lot more prominent this time around, where before they seemed like a "thrown in" addition. Missiles are your long range firepower in general, but there are units that act as active defence against missile systems as well. Artillery units aren't intercepted by missile defences, but their shells can't really hit moving targets (unless you're talking about something like battlecruisers, but those are expensive to field).
- There's a really neat feature where units of same / similar types that are close to each other don't have to be drag selected. Instead there'll be a circle in the centre of the army saying "40" or however many units are there. You click that and the relevant army is selected. So say I had a bunch of air and ground units in the same area. I don't need to drag select and pick and choose, I just click the "20" button that's for all the air units there, and the "30" button next to it for the ground units there.
- Mini experimentals are powerful additions to your army, but they also build a LOT faster than the experimentals of old, and also cost much less. So I expect you'll be seeing plenty of them thrown with your regular army units. I know I was throwing in a few AC1000's with my gunship squads.
- You can upgrade structures, not to a new tech level, but with defensive and ancillary systems like shields, AA, and radar.
tl;dr : The singleplayer seems better than the first game. Wish I could see what the skirmish or multiplayer's like.
Yeah, beat the demo and although there's a few things I'm still iffy about, I like it. The first game sounded seemed amazing at first glance, but ultimately I couldn't bring myself to play it frequently. Despite the myriad of changes, SC2 reminds me more of the TA I know and love and still play much more than its predecessor.
Yeah, beat the demo and although there's a few things I'm still iffy about, I like it. The first game sounded seemed amazing at first glance, but ultimately I couldn't bring myself to play it frequently. Despite the myriad of changes, SC2 reminds me more of the TA I know and love and still play much more than its predecessor.
I think that's about right. SupCom 2 (I keep having to resist calling it SC2) feels more focussed than the first game did, and also reminds me a bit more of TA in some ways. They stripped out some stuff that wasn't needed and the game's better for that.
subedii on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
herm so i bought Chaos Rising pre-order just now, which comes with Saints Row 2 for free as a bonus
except Saint's Row 2 is not showing up in my games list?
Yeah, beat the demo and although there's a few things I'm still iffy about, I like it. The first game sounded seemed amazing at first glance, but ultimately I couldn't bring myself to play it frequently. Despite the myriad of changes, SC2 reminds me more of the TA I know and love and still play much more than its predecessor.
I think that's about right. SupCom 2 (I keep having to resist calling it SC2) feels more focussed than the first game did, and also reminds me a bit more of TA in some ways. They stripped out some stuff that wasn't needed and the game's better for that.
I'm sure the elitist fans of the first one would whine and get all butthurt about the changes but it doesn't really matter what changes were made, the fact that it's not a carbon copy of the first game would piss them off.
Darmak on
0
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
oh ffs, this isn't even the steam thread
lol
edit - although i am downloading the demo so uhh yay participating
Yeah, beat the demo and although there's a few things I'm still iffy about, I like it. The first game sounded seemed amazing at first glance, but ultimately I couldn't bring myself to play it frequently. Despite the myriad of changes, SC2 reminds me more of the TA I know and love and still play much more than its predecessor.
I think that's about right. SupCom 2 (I keep having to resist calling it SC2) feels more focussed than the first game did, and also reminds me a bit more of TA in some ways. They stripped out some stuff that wasn't needed and the game's better for that.
Focused it what comes to my mind too. It allows you build a big army AND rewards you keeping it. Factories now also rank up as they build more dudes building them cheaper and faster causing old factories to be worth a lot more then brand new ones.The game is both faster paced and runs better, whilst keeping land air and sea viable.
The Research system is interesting, and I can see a lot of potential in team games, not only that but as Subdeii said, the tactical missle system plays a bigger role in some neat ways. Overall i'm fairly impressed by it and I enjoyed what I played.
Oh, and taken from the official forums, by one of the devs:
Don't read too much into skirmish/MP balance from the single-player campaign. SP has its own unique version of every unit, and they may be balanced differently. Research rates are totally different between each mode, as are unit costs.
Oh yeah, if a game has gone over 20 minutes or so, you will be wanting to build anti-nukes. Yes, you will.
I am hoping they come out with smoe sort of Multiplayer demo, because I think people will really like it. Single player is neat and all, but really doesn't show you what you are looking for at all.
Oh yeah, if a game has gone over 20 minutes or so, you will be wanting to build anti-nukes. Yes, you will.
I am hoping they come out with smoe sort of Multiplayer demo, because I think people will really like it. Single player is neat and all, but really doesn't show you what you are looking for at all.
It never does, usually people skip over the singleplayer entirely anyways in an RTS game (not counting skirmish mode against CPU, which is all I ever did).
Mini experimentals are powerful additions to your army, but they also build a LOT faster than the experimentals of old, and also cost much less. So I expect you'll be seeing plenty of them thrown with your regular army units. I know I was throwing in a few AC1000's with my gunship squads.
You've never seen the way my friends played the first game. Czars may be weak, but 100 of them is not something to sneeze at. Or and army of 50 Monkeylords. Experimental spam is deadly. Then we had the infamous "5 minute* Mavor."
I liked it. Cheesy single player stuff as an excuse to blow shit up is a thumbs up from me. Even if the acting's bad, the story might not be terrible. Plus, AC-1000? So cool.
can you -I don't know how to say this- .... speed the game up?
I'm ok with this demo, but ordering units across the screen and watching them slooowwwwwwllllyyyyyyyy turn around and slooooooowwwwwwwwlyyyyyyyyyy start moving forward -oops, a clump of units- sloooooooowwwwwlyyyyyy jostle for position and slooooowwwwwwwlyyyyyyyy move forward again is killing this demo for me.
In general the second level was a lot better than most of the Singleplayer stuff I saw in SupCom 1. There what you'd typically do is set up your base with an impenetrable line of point defences underneath shields, then build up a huge army to send en-masse to the enemy base, taking down all their point-defences from afar. Here I was having to depend on my units a lot more for both offence and defence, and having them support each other as I advanced up the map. So if that's indicative of the main game, the level design's better. Visually it looked more unique as well, set on land masses in the sky, connected by bridges.
Personally I feel like it was just the same as in the first SupCom, with the difference that point defenses were a lot weaker. But that was solved by just having more shields covering them and a lot more point defenses.
Then it's back to business as usual. Impenetrable line of shields instead of point defenses, build army, right-click enemy base, win.
Posts
Is it your contention that the abomination of a 'story' and its portrayal are somehow ironic, and meant to be that cringe-worthy for comedic value... or is it simply crossing into so-bad-it's-good territory?
Yeah I noticed that too, it's certainly easier to run that its predecessors...
I think it might be beneficial to look at this as a kind of 'supcom light' able to run on weaker machines. Also for being more accessible to the lobotomized demographic.
I say that not because my computer is bad, but because I'm on Linux. SupCom works (via Wine), but you can't just expect a sequel to work because the title is the same with a little number after it.
No, it's just terrible. If the gameplay was closer to SupCom, I probably wouldn't be too bothered by it.
If the story which was so highly touted is this bad, though, it doesn't reflect well on the probable quality of other features.
Remember when I said that the story was going to be bad? Yeah I was pretty much right. Although the voice actor for the main character (and his friend) is actually decent, the colonel-guy was about as bad as I expected he'd be. So yeah, but we're not playing this for the storyline (hopefully). It's an improvement on SupCom 1, but that's not saying much.
We already knew that all units are paid for up-front now. This actually helps a lot in preventing the whole "economy stall" that used to happen in SupCom 1. The visuals are a lot cleaner but manage to run faster as well, which is good. Tech levels have been completely replaced by the research tree, which is going to take some getting used to. You earn research "points" over time from your facilities, and the more you have the faster these accrue. There's a LOT of stuff to research, so it forces you to focus and prioritise. It's mainly unit buffs and addons, but you also get the occasional unit unlock. The first map I focussed mainly on expanding the naval tree, second map I was focussing more on air-power. On the whole it works better, but it's something you'll need to familiarise yourself with before you're really sure of what direction you want to be going and why. How well this works out in multiplayer is something I can't judge without playing it, but it has the potential for some diverse games.
Gameplay:
So let's get down to the gameplay itself. Units aren't as disposable as they used to be, in general they seem to last longer and take more of a beating. This ties in with the whole upgrade system which means that whatever you build, if you keep progressing along its tree, it'll be useful throughout. Point defences seem to be more vulnerable as well unless you're building a lot of them, at least without shields and other support. So the gameplay seems a bit more offensively oriented.
The first map wasn't too interesting and was pretty small so I'll ignore that for the moment. Unlike other smaller scale RTS's which are based around individual small scale skirmishes, SupCom 2 seems to be more about pressing waves of units against each other, and trying to create the right mix and backup in order to punch through fortified enemy positions.
That was particularly apparent in the second map. It basically features factories that pump out Fatboys over time, but they're completely automated and just charge straight into enemy lines. Good against anything on the ground, but are decimated via air. So you start setting up air fleets to try and take out patrolling gunship squads, but at the same time you need your own gunship patrols in order to take out enemy fatboys trying to take out your home base. And enemy fighters are actively targeting those so you need to setup either fighter screens or some ground based AA in order to take out the enemy fighters. And those will be targeted by enemy fatboys and gunships so you need to protect them with yours.
In general the second level was a lot better than most of the Singleplayer stuff I saw in SupCom 1. There what you'd typically do is set up your base with an impenetrable line of point defences underneath shields, then build up a huge army to send en-masse to the enemy base, taking down all their point-defences from afar. Here I was having to depend on my units a lot more for both offence and defence, and having them support each other as I advanced up the map. So if that's indicative of the main game, the level design's better. Visually it looked more unique as well, set on land masses in the sky, connected by bridges.
Overall: I want to see what skirmish or multiplayer has to offer. Singleplayer seems improved over the first game, and better thought out in general, even if the story is inevitably going to be bad.
Some other random stuff:
- Engineers will automatically repair or reclaim anything nearby if they're not doing anything, which is pretty good. It also removes the need for those air-pads from the first game.
- Engineers can build all structures, you don't need a level 2 or 3 engineer in order to start construction on an experimental, you just need the right research. There's no such thing as a level 2 or 3 anything anymore from what I've seen, it's all upgrade based now. Unit count is far reduced as a result, but everything's got a purpose in mind.
- Missile and anti-missile systems seem a lot more prominent this time around, where before they seemed like a "thrown in" addition. Missiles are your long range firepower in general, but there are units that act as active defence against missile systems as well. Artillery units aren't intercepted by missile defences, but their shells can't really hit moving targets (unless you're talking about something like battlecruisers, but those are expensive to field).
- There's a really neat feature where units of same / similar types that are close to each other don't have to be drag selected. Instead there'll be a circle in the centre of the army saying "40" or however many units are there. You click that and the relevant army is selected. So say I had a bunch of air and ground units in the same area. I don't need to drag select and pick and choose, I just click the "20" button that's for all the air units there, and the "30" button next to it for the ground units there.
- Mini experimentals are powerful additions to your army, but they also build a LOT faster than the experimentals of old, and also cost much less. So I expect you'll be seeing plenty of them thrown with your regular army units. I know I was throwing in a few AC1000's with my gunship squads.
- You can upgrade structures, not to a new tech level, but with defensive and ancillary systems like shields, AA, and radar.
tl;dr : The singleplayer seems better than the first game. Wish I could see what the skirmish or multiplayer's like.
I think that's about right. SupCom 2 (I keep having to resist calling it SC2) feels more focussed than the first game did, and also reminds me a bit more of TA in some ways. They stripped out some stuff that wasn't needed and the game's better for that.
except Saint's Row 2 is not showing up in my games list?
edit - nm, it's in my gifts list
I'm sure the elitist fans of the first one would whine and get all butthurt about the changes but it doesn't really matter what changes were made, the fact that it's not a carbon copy of the first game would piss them off.
lol
edit - although i am downloading the demo so uhh yay participating
Focused it what comes to my mind too. It allows you build a big army AND rewards you keeping it. Factories now also rank up as they build more dudes building them cheaper and faster causing old factories to be worth a lot more then brand new ones.The game is both faster paced and runs better, whilst keeping land air and sea viable.
The Research system is interesting, and I can see a lot of potential in team games, not only that but as Subdeii said, the tactical missle system plays a bigger role in some neat ways. Overall i'm fairly impressed by it and I enjoyed what I played.
I am hoping they come out with smoe sort of Multiplayer demo, because I think people will really like it. Single player is neat and all, but really doesn't show you what you are looking for at all.
It never does, usually people skip over the singleplayer entirely anyways in an RTS game (not counting skirmish mode against CPU, which is all I ever did).
* Wasn't actually 5 minutes
The experimentals are a bit more specialized in this one and get a lot more use I think.
Yes. It would be weird for them not to be here.
I liked it. Cheesy single player stuff as an excuse to blow shit up is a thumbs up from me. Even if the acting's bad, the story might not be terrible. Plus, AC-1000? So cool.
I'm ok with this demo, but ordering units across the screen and watching them slooowwwwwwllllyyyyyyyy turn around and slooooooowwwwwwwwlyyyyyyyyyy start moving forward -oops, a clump of units- sloooooooowwwwwlyyyyyy jostle for position and slooooowwwwwwwlyyyyyyyy move forward again is killing this demo for me.
Even subs in TA were faster than this.
Thanks.
Personally I feel like it was just the same as in the first SupCom, with the difference that point defenses were a lot weaker. But that was solved by just having more shields covering them and a lot more point defenses.
Then it's back to business as usual. Impenetrable line of shields instead of point defenses, build army, right-click enemy base, win.
Tried setting all to low/off and no dice