Experience brutal battles on a massive scale. In Supreme Commander 2, players wage war by creating enormous customisable armies and experimental war machines that can change the balance of power at any given moment. Take the role of one of the three enigmatic commanders, each representing a unique faction with a rich story that brings a new level of emotional connection to the RTS genre, or fight the battle online. Where do your loyalties lie...?

Supreme Commander 2 is the latest installment in the award-winning Supreme Commander series that boasts numerous game enhancements, in-depth Campaign Mode, multiplayer online and a unique storyline that represents a new dimension in real-time strategy gaming.

As one of three enigmatic commanders, you must strive to achieve global supremacy by forging vast armies over land, air and sea, complete with experimental war machines that could tip the balance of power at any moment. Set 25 years after the events of the original game, Supreme Commander 2 begins with the assassination of the newly elected president of the Colonial Defence Coalition. The CDC members - the United Earth Federation, the Order of the Illuminate, and the Cybran Nation - deny involvement, blame each other and a galactic war ensues.

This game is fairly easy to pick up, and the basic tutorial levels help greatly in getting you up to speed in a few minutes. In the early levels it's pretty much a case of build and research as much firepower as possible, as quickly as possible, and then send everything you have at your enemy. This is easy to achieve as your enemy won't actually bring the fight to you in any real force. Sure, they'll send a few airborne vessels your way, but that's about it. This allows you plenty of time to build a few factories and pump out vast amounts of vessels to begin your attack.

In the offline campaign you can chose one of three factions, each with their own differing storylines that add extra emotional impact to the single player campaign. Once a faction commander has been chosen, you can work your way through 18 individual missions in battle against each remaining faction leader. Units are available via air, sea or land which in later levels allows you to decide how best to take out your enemy's defences. In the earlier levels you'll only really be able to use one or two of these units (some levels have no sea - making the deployment of your navy impossible, whilst others are mainly sea based with small islands for you to conquer - meaning that ground based forces are useless as they can't travel off the island they are created on).

There were slight issues I had with this game. The main one was trying to find an engineer on the map (engineers are used to build new buildings as well as repair any damage to vehicles and structures. There may be instructions in the manual, but we didn't receive that with our review copy and the tutorial didn't go into how to do this quickly. So, on a number of occasions I was forced to spend quite some time searching the environment for the last place I had an engineer, or having to construct a new one from scratch. Another problem I encountered was that the camera was sometimes a bit of a nightmare - meaning I had to zoom out to the maximum zoom and then zoom back in before it fixed itself. But these are only slight complaints of an otherwise solid game.

For those that enjoy real-time strategy games, Supreme Commander 2 is certainly worth picking up. And once you complete the offline game you can always go online and battle against other fans.

8

Nick Smithson