Review: Supreme Commander - PC

Our PC can't cope!

Graphic-wise, apart from the explosions that occur when you destroy a base, Supreme Commander is remarkably bland. Of course the gameplay still takes precedent over the graphics, but we couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed by the lifeless terrain and the blocky 3D units. Unfortunately, the further we reached into the game the more problems we also had with frame rate issues. The actual PC we were playing it on isn’t the strongest spec by any means, but according the requirements of the game it should be able to cope. We have to admit to giving up because the slowdown was so much of an issue later on in the campaign, despite us knocking down the settings. We still wouldn’t want that to put you off what is a superbly engaging title that constantly sets your brain overloading with ideas on how to best tackle a situation – just make sure you’ve got the gear to cope with it! The sheer scale and ambition are the two strongest factors of Supreme Commander, but the option to view the whole conflict on one screen, an intuitive interface, the need for strong tactical awareness and some cracking units that you can commandeer should also be enough to win you over.

This is what Chris Taylor had to say on specs:

Something north of a 2GHz CPU. There will be a fairly wide range of video cards, probably north of 128MB cards. I would say that there will be a suggested system spec of somewhere closer to 3GHz machine with 256MB of video RAM or more. But we have got rendering detail settings and so forth, such that if you've got a lower end machine, you'll be able to play the game, you'll just have to dial it in so that it doesn't look as pretty. The game's CPU is dedicated to simulation of the very comprehensive gameplay. Because of the fidelity of the simulation, that has to be there no matter what. In multiplayer, we use a fully synchronous multiplayer model, which means everything that happens on your opponent's machine happens on your machine in lockstep. So, our choices are generally in visuals since it has no negative impact on gameplay. At the end of the day you'll get the game running on a 1.8GHz or an AMD 1600+, but the ideal experience is going to be had with a state of the art gaming rig.

Click for larger image

Pros
Tactically engrossing
Great interface
Huge scale battles

Cons
It's not about the graphics you know.
Demanding on your PC.
Slow starter.

An ambitious effort which gets better the more you play it.

HEXUS Awards

Supreme Commander - PC

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Ive come to the same conclusion it goes realyl slow on my computer at 1280 x 1020 reso. All settings high except shadows which is at low and antiliasing is off. Gets annoying because i would have thought my computer would have been ok. Seems there reccommended specs are way out tbh.

The sound also stutters. I hope C & C 3 Is Better

I had severe slow downs with this game, but i updated to the latest nvidia drivers and the problems were almost eliminated, there are some slowdowns when there are lots of units on the screen, but the game is still playable. I don't have the game set to the very highest settings but it still looks very nice :)

I've played through about 1 and a half campaigns, and it has been very enjoyable so far. It will be interesting to see what the multiplayer is like, i'm not sure my style of play is well suited to it, but we'll see.

I've just seen some early benchmarks from the game, and to be honest, the requirements are insane. The game seems quite CPU bound, and a bit GPU bound too. The lack of SLI support is a huge disappointment too.

I was looking forward to playing this on my new system build with the 24" Dell LCD, but I might have to reconsider buying the game now.

Maybe you already know but the “comment in the forums” link at the end of the review doesn't point to this thread (i assume it should be pointing here); It goes somewhere completely unrelated.:)

OUt of interest, what do we reckon this would run like on my rig (x2 3800 & 6800gt) playable but jaggy? Or like watching a slideshow of red alert?