Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance contd.

Skirmishes remain the mainstay of Supreme Commander’s longevity, and here too Gas Powered has put in a lot of effort, providing a glut of new maps to fight over with all the new shiny kit that’s on offer, and it’s online where the game will, like its predecessor, thrive.

The big issue with Supreme Commander has always been that it’s a hog on most machines. The game is simply so massive, with huge maps and thousands of units and potentially dozens of combat situations all being calculated at once, and then displayed on screen, that it chews through processor resources like a hot knife through butter. Forged Alliance has received some graphical updates to befit its nine month old engine, but these only add to the woes of people whose machines were straining under the load, and may tip a few more over into having to make the choice between lower graphical settings or choppy frame rates.

In total however, Forged Alliance adds a lot of new content to an already stuffed game, and will provide some further longevity for Total Annihilation’s spiritual offspring.