Supreme Commander

I've heard a lot of buzz about this game, much of it is how much better it is compared to C&C3.

I haven't really liked a RTS game since the first C&C because I find the playing style really repetitive. They just seem like the same games over and over again.

Is SupCom really that good a game? Are the resources needed extremely high?

Its good, if you liked total annihilation you should definitely give it a go, campaign gets boring soon but mp with friends is great fun, to your second question yes you need a very powerfull machine to run it without getting a slideshow, the gfx are not that great but since you play with huge amounts of units most of the time the game is very demanding, i dont know it for sure but i think a good cpu matters the most for this game, if you have a pc with a newer dual core and 2gb of ram + a gfx card around a 7900gt/x1900 or better you should have no problems.

It's a fun game, especially in MP. The scale is massive, which I personally like (but taste varies, eh?). Performace-wise, the bottleneck here is the CPU - the game calculates the trajectory of each fired missle separately, and that tends to be a drain, not to mention all those units running around. In fact, SupCom is known as one of the few games which will really utilize that dual/quad core processor you might have.

All that said, if you find "regular" RTS gameplay repetitive, this might be so too. Maybe the large scale helps, though. In any case, it has a demo, so try it out.

I have both Supreme Commander and C&C 3, and have played both of them recently. Yes, from what I hear the system requirements are pretty high for SC. I never bothered to look at them because I have a fairly high end rig. Core 2 E6700, 2GB PC6400, and a Radeon X1950XTX, it runs very smooth for me at 1280x1024 with all options on maximum.

I haven't played it on any other systems yet so I'm not sure exactly where you would start running into performance problems, but I imagine 2 GB of RAM is almost necessary for smooth play on the larger maps, they are absolutely huge!

You can't really compare SC and C&C3 because they are totally different experiences. I wouldn't say that either of them is better than the other.

In C&C 3 you play through the storyline as 3 different factions to complete the game and you must finish the Nod and GDI campaigns in order to unlock the 3rd faction.

In Supreme Commander the 3 factions are all played separately and you can finish the game with any of them.

i've played both demos and i far prefered cc3. supreme commander just seemed inferior to my tastes in every way. i really don't like rts games that don't give me the sense that every soldier matters and keeping as many alive and at a veteran status (if that's even in the game) as possible. supreme commander just didn't seem to do that for me. i can't remember how well cc3 did that but company of heroes was perfect at it.

i never played any of the total annileation games either which are supposedly good but i have a feeling they wouldn't be my type of rts. also supreme commander being a gas powered game doesn't draw me in. but i think the ultimate decider that speaks for which one is better is the fact that its four months out and i have yet to see anywhere sale or not where cc3 was available for under $40. that kind of speaks for itself escpecially when you could pick up a copy of supreme commander for $25 a month after its release.

yet JDR13 is still probably right in that they both have their charms which probably appeal to different people.

curiously undead said:

but i think the ultimate decider that speaks for which one is better is the fact that its four months out and i have yet to see anywhere sale or not where cc3 was available for under $40. that kind of speaks for itself escpecially when you could pick up a copy of supreme commander for $25 a month after its release.
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The reason why you haven't seen C&C 3 for under $40 is because it's an EA game.(Electronic Arts) Like Microsoft, EA seems to have some type of weird policy about not lowering it's prices on games for a very long time. Even their crap games will still be $40 a year after release. Of course I don't doubt that C&C 3 probably sold more copies on name recognition alone.

btw: You couldn't pick up SC anywhere near $25 within months of it's release. In fact, I just checked online at Best Buy, which is one of the cheapest places to buy PC games, and even now it's still $29.99.

Like I said they're both great games, the 2 best RTS games to come out for a long time imo. If you like smaller maps where you can micro-manage your squads then C&C 3 is your game. If you want large scale battles with tons of units then Supreme Commander is what you're looking for. I also have to say that SC absolutely destroys C&C 3 when it comes to variety.

Just for the record, I never like any of the Total Annihilation games. I thought they were extremely bland with really shitty AI. Some people refer to Supreme Commander as the "spiritual successor" to the TA series. That's like saying a Porsche is the "spiritual successor" to a scooter.

i've never noticed ea not lowering their prices for a long time but it does make sense. usually though after 6 months their games are dirt cheap though and or they are available in some kind of "themed' collection. and yes somewhere between 1-2 months gogamer had it for 24.99 i kid you not. also fry's had if for either 25 or 30 around the same timeframe, though i don't think they have those out east though sometimes their online store carrys the same sales. i can't remember if you said before if you played company of heroes because that destroys the destroyers

Games will always go on sale for a week shortly after they're released. I only paid $32.99 for C&C 3 at Circuit City about 3 weeks after it was released. That's why I never buy a game the first week it's released, I always wait and check the Sunday sales ads to see who's going to have it on sale.