Creston wrote on Feb 26, 2010, 00:43:
I was pretty underwhelmed by the demo. Plastic graphics, the awesome UI interface of the first game is all but gone (since, after all, you can't recreate it on a fucking Xbox controller, so why bother keeping it for the PC?), the experimentals are no longer titans of the battlefield, but rather mildly impressive units that die from a dozen normal units being thrown at them. (I sent 8 submarines after a Kraken, and the Kraken died while killing two subs...)

The maps that used to be huge and awesome are now small crappy affairs. Defensive weaponry is worthless. (I had 18 or so heavy anti-air turrets, and they still couldn't shoot down 6 enemy fighters.)

Gone are the Tech Levels, instead being replaced with a fairly extensive research tree. Sadly, that research tree is pretty much the same for Air, Land and Sea. Bonusses to health, bonusses to damage, bonusses to regeneration, less cost to purchase/build, unlock 3 other units, and a few experimentals.

Also, the research tree is unlocked by research points, which you simply gain as time goes on. (And you can speed that up by building more Research Labs.) The two missions in the demo have no time limit or any reason to hurry in them, so it's perfectly feasible to build half a dozen research labs, wait 15 or so minutes, and unlock all upgrades.

All this is not to say I didn't have any fun at all. The two missions were okay, pretty standard RTS fare. It just doesn't feel like SupCom. And I just don't get it. The original SupCom, plus FA, sold a ton of copies (somewhere in the 1.4 million range, IIRC.) So why fuck with it so badly? Why turn it into a generic, 13-in-a-dozen RTS that feels like it's from 1996?

I had high hopes for this game, it was probably my most anticipated game of the year after Mass Effect 2. Sadly, for me it doesn't deliver. YMMV.

I'll likely get this when it hits 20 or 10 bucks on Steam. It doesn't feel worth 50 bucks to me.

Creston