posted on Fri Mar 05, 2010 12:42 am
For once I'm glad to see some agreement here. I was actually half expecting this to be a good game once I heard they fixed all the performance issues with the first one. After all, IMO, that was all that was holding the game back.
I played three games of it and while it ran flawlessly, as it should, it's a PoS. It plays like Command and Conquer, which I don't say lightly. The entire game has been dumbed down and they attempted to turn it into a half-baked version of a normal RTS. IF they just put the new pathfinding and performance tweaks into the first one I would've loved it to death, but they didn't. They somehow felt the need to aim it at a completely different group of people and in doing so accomplished absolutely nothing.
The research trees are all half-baked and ill thought out. They're pretty much all mirrors for all three races with things slightly shifted around and different super units. The experimentals are all pretty laughable now, instead of being epic units of doom they were in the first one. The fatboy2 is a PoS and looks even worse then it performs on the battlefield. Pullinsmash, WTF?!?! AC1000?!!?! They're all terrible designs and poorly thought out.
The only thing worse then the experimentals that lack creativity is the game balance. So... whose bright idea was it to limit sensors to 1/4th the map, yet you can teleport a galactic colossus across the entire map using a teleporter? Or the noah cannon that simply lets you shoot units across the map, anywhere, at anytime. This completely undermines any strategic value of making defense when someone can just drop **** tons of guys in the middle of your base - or just a colossus. So it's just a huge race to build the first experimental or nuke and obliterate someone elses base without blinking a eye - alah Command and Conquer style.
Then there is the units, oh the units. Remember that Sup Com 1 had a bristling selection of units? While the cheap ones were just fodder later on, numbers has a quality unlike anything else. Thats what made the whole idea of supreme commander 1 so awesome, just epicly huge battles. Nope, all gone, it makes it feel like what relic did with dawn of war 2. They completely gutted everything that made the game fun in order to fit it into some predetermined mold that all RTS's should share and in effect ruined the **** game.
The idea of research isn't even new either. The first one had research only it was in a different form. You researched by teching up and unlocking new units as well as upgrading your commander. Pretty straight forward and simple, right?
I thought RTS's would be the one safe haven from the grasp of the nubby joysticks, seeing as even if it was consolized it would still suck because of that. I guess I was wrong. This will be another flop that will be blamed on software piracy instead of the incompetency and greediness of the developer and/or publisher. Seriously, first game with better performance and they would've had a winner... Just like all they really had to do with dawn of war 2 was update the graphics.
I think the dearth of good games will last a lot longer then six years at this pace. At least starcraft 2 will just be starcraft with better graphics and I can enjoy that, even if it's not actually a new game (yes I've seen and played the beta and it's no different then what I've been saying for years). Curiously I wonder why it's taking so long just to make that?
And yes, if this post seems very heated, I did at one time enjoy computer games immensely. That ended around 2004/5ish. Now all I do is play WoW and I actually half thought about buying MW2 because there wasn't anything better to do and that... that is a very sad thing.
yay.