[Demitri]

Sorry for necroing the thread but just saw that there is a demo on steam and i'm dl-ing now. Has anyone else played it yet?

[Fineus]

There is? Well now that you tell me that... yes I'll be downloading it as well!

Edit:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/40140

There's the link for people who can't find it for themselves.

[Rick James]

And I

JIZZED

IN

MY PANTS

[Colonol Dekker]

Don't apologise for the topic re-animation.
 
I've been following this game on gpg.net for a while now and i'll sum this up in two words 'Cybranosaurus Rex'
 
There is a very very good video in pcgamer uk. Last months one at least.
 
It is one of my allowed treats this month. I've already budgeted for it.
Bioshock2 can sling it's hook.

[Fineus]

I've been playing it a bit now and a few things have struck me...

1. I'm getting quite bad shuddering / skipping - particularly when there's some kind of scripted sequence. Anyone else finding this? I'm a bit concerned now as it's not happening in TF2 but it is happening in Aliens Vs Predator as well - but I thought it was an isolated incident.

2. The game UI seems much cleaner / better thought out this time.

3. Unit re-design, but perhaps the research tree is a bit too complicated / too many levels?

4. Units have a different look to them and it's a bit hard to tell what's what in some cases...

[starbug]

I have had a quick go as well.

My thoughts
1. The UI is much better as Kalfireth pointed out.
2. The units seem more simple in design, well the UEF do. I ave found it hard to see much detail on them due to all the blue on the units.
3. Unit Pathing still an issue, units going the long way to get some where, getting stuck or going places they shouldn't and they all klump together when they move and attack they don't enter into a formation like in the first.
4. Game is MUCH SMOOTHER, no slow downs at all!
5. Like the music. Not sure if its still Jeremy soule doing the soundtrack or not.
6. No Cybranosaurus Rex to play with!!!!!!! well not come across any yet.

Overall it seems to be a good game, but still has a few issues they need to address i.e Unit pathing!

[Ransom]

I thought it was disappointing. The new resource system is unfortunate and the game's scale is less impressive. From first impressions it seems like a less ambitious and less robust RTS than its predecessor. It's also uglier.

And while SupCom was never known for its story, at least it was better than this. Argh. I don't think the shift to a more character-driven narrative was a wise one in this case.

[General Battuta]

Was about to post essentially the same thing Ransom did. It's uglier, the resource system feels...well, console-ized, and it feels very much smaller than SupCom 1 did.

And good god the 'character-based storytelling' is awful. Here, let's go from loyal UEF commander to renegade in six lines of dialogue!

And yes, did I mention uglier? SupCom was not exactly brimming with character, but this one's a worse offender.

[Ransom]

BUT SIR MY WIFE IS ILLIMINATE

[SpardaSon21]

How could UEF High Command not know something like that?  Oh wait, this is Command we are talking about after all, right?  I'm wondering if HQ will give you any useful advice such as "Avoid the nuke and you won't get hit, Commander."

[Ransom]

I laughed when the officer actually exclaimed 'How did we not know this?' The developers knew how little sense it made, but they left it in anyway.

[Rick James]

Having finished the demo, I cannot help but agree with the above opinions.

If this game is supposed to be about characters, then why do I feel absolutely no sympathy for them?

Spoiler:

That Cybran in the beginning was annoying as hell, the Aeon sergeant had precisely zero characterization, Maddox's wife gets less than five lines of dialogue before her implied arrest at the hands of the UEF, and Colonel Rodgers is an asshole for no readily explainable reason. I don't mind that this game has characters, but for the love of Heidegger, some better reasoning behind their actions than can be provided in just a few lines of messy dialogue is necessary.

Now, of course, this being a demo, we can't know for certain what the final narrative is going to look like; who knows, maybe this segment of the story we've been given will look better in-context.

EDIT: Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I think the guy who voices Rodgers is the same guy who voices Professor Hojo in the English adaptation of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7.

[Colonol Dekker]

Argh SPOILER TAGS!
 

[Fineus]

BUT SIR MY WIFE IS ILLIMINATE

Son, I am dissapoint.

[Fury]

I played the demo briefly, very briefly. It failed to keep my interest up long enough to even complete the first mission.

[Bobboau]

well supcom missions can last for several days, so that is not supprizeing.

[Mikes]

Uhhh Bobboau... not even playing through the whole SupCom1 campaign lasted several days (lol). Barely one day matter of fact, for a full playthrough with one faction.

As far as Singleplayer goes the game was incredibly short, incredibly easy and well... ,with the heavily scripted missions, incredibly dull actually
Not to give the wrong impression, it was also the best Multiplayer RTS that i have ever played on the PC - by far.
The only strategy games that i was similarly impressed with were Battle Isle II, which wasn't realtime and Total Annihilation, which was lacking in multiplayer support (compared to Supcom anyways).

Playing Multiplayer on the huge 80x80 maps very rarely took as long as over 4-5 hours+ either.
A regular match on one of the 10x10, 20x20, 40x40 maps, playing 2 vs. 2 or 4 vs. 4, was as good as always over in 1-2 hours.


The SupCom 2 Demo certainly can be finished in under an hour. And from the first impression, it's just as bad as Supcom 1 was in Singleplayer (I mean how long does it take to figure out that easily predictable scripts that allow the player to prepare for the next stept as long as they fri**ing want are a bad idea for a singleplayer RTS lol), except.... it's also a lot smaller than Supcom 1.

BUT SIR MY WIFE IS ILLIMINATE

"But SIR, my secret lover my wife doesn't know about IS ILLUMINATE!"
Command: "I AM YOUR WIFE!"
"Hey Darling! So how's your day going?"

... was propably scrapped because it had too many lines of dialogue for the game

[Liberator]

I read about this in the new PC GamerUK mag and i quiet like the idea that square enix is writting the story, as i found the story not that engaging for the first one. Also from the screenshot in the mag, even though its scaling back on things looks like there will still be epic battles, well there were of explosions in the screenshot. I just hope it dosen't end up like Dawn of War 2.

You mean like Command and Conquer 4?

[starbug]

You mean like Command and Conquer 4?

Yip i think so, i haven't been paying that much attention to C&C 4, i never really like the C&C games that much  .

After playing it some more, it really feels like they have dumbed down the game, It seems that they have done the same as Relic done with Dawn of War 2, scaled it back to try and appeal to the none RTS players and i have a feeling that the singleplayer might be like DOW2's boring, Just wish that they had released a demo that you can play skirmish games in, as that might be better than the singleplayer. I hope that i am wrong about Supreme Co 2 being average as i enjoyed the first and it might tide me over until Starcraft 2 comes out  .

PS sorry if this post doesn't make much sense as i have a major hangover 

[Ransom]

Dawn of War 2 wasn't so much dumbed down as it was radically reworked. It was still very robust, just not in the same way as its predecessor.

Whereas this game is just a less interesting version of Supreme Commander. Conceptually it's more or less identical. It's almost like it's just less confident about the worth of those ideas, so rather than refining them it's scaled them back entirely.