Supreme Commander

Pretty ugly, but it has a nice personality. [Sept 2008, p.84]

A passable RTS, but one can tell that there is something better hidden beneath the unintuitive gameplay that unfortunately mars the experience and detracts from the fun that players could have potentially had with the game.

Unfortunately, design cuts were not made and porting issues were left in tact which left Supreme Commander for the 360 a case study that PC and console are still two very different platforms.

Cut out about 50% of the units, make the maps smaller and tighten up the bleeding edges to make a new strategic model and we might really have something. The pacing's right, the idea's right, but stuffing the entire PC version of Supreme Commander onto the 360 is just more than the poor machine can handle.

The emphasis on huge battles and great action does manage to shine through, but this release still feels half-baked.

Once players have heaved themselves over the massive learning curve, there is a strategy game here worthy of attention but the "price of entry" is so high Supreme Commander likely won't be attractive to anyone that isn't a hardcore fan of the strategy genre.

It was always clear that Supreme Commander would be divisive on the 360 - and if you're expecting it to be hard, complex, and unforgiving, then you won't be surprised. But sadly, you're likely to find it ugly and a little unreliable too: you can fight your way through it if you want, but you may not enjoy it as much as you should.

SupCom’s original design was highly inventive, but the Xbox 360 version is heavily hindered by the glitches, even though the console’s control scheme innovatively streamlines the gameplay as best as possible.

The overall quality feels like a failed experiment. Sure, Hellbent did a great job of porting over a control scheme that most would shy away from, but at the same time, the quality control involved leaves a whole lot to be desired.

A relative disaster. The PC version of the game still comes highly recommended, but steer clear of this console iteration.

Supreme Commander had strengths to be one of the great RTS of the year in Xbox 360, however its optimization condemns it to the forgotten. Three long campaigns and innumerable multiplayer maps contribute to an excellent duration, and the well transferred controls to the pad of the console were elements that made us dream about a truly interesting proposal. Unfortunately the ridiculous rate of frames per second destroys any of its hypothetical virtues.

As good as the tactical and strategy elements are, frequent lockups, glitches, and a limited amount of crucial onscreen information hamper the overall package.

Great strategic gameplay is dwarfed by embarrassing technical issues.

I loved the PC version when I played it back in 2007 and thoroughly enjoyed some of the other Real-Time-Strategies I have played on the Xbox 360. Supreme Commander, however, is a fundamentally broken game.

Supreme Commander could have been great, but the wait for the console translation leaves an overriding sense of disappointment. Plus the technical flaws leave it almost unplayable.