For those who don't know: Supreme Commander is a Real-Time Strategy game (coming out February 20th) by Chris Taylor, famed creator of "Total Annihilation." It was to be his tour de force, was under development for three years, and has been highly anticipated the whole time, particularly since the summer and by RTS-freaks such as myself. The demo was released a few days ago Some of the features that make it so terrific include the ability to independently control hundreds of individual units, huge maps, and the power to zoom in and out to incredibly broad degrees. It takes place far in the future, although the weapons are still realistic enough that contemporary and past tactical principles apply, and it doesn't become completely foolish; although I'm sure it will end up very inaccurate once the distant future comes, it's done sensibly enough that you can imagine this actually being the future of humanity (ahem, another RTS with the same initials.) As the demo came out a few days ago, I sat at my computer, waiting for the official release time to go by. Unfortunately I screwed up by trying to make it d/l faster via my many methods (the file is a gig) and ended up losing it, after which point I had to see the server become full after a few minutes before I tried again; so I was inches away from being practically the first non-industry person to demo a post-Beta version, but lost it. Fortunately I was able to download it last night, sleep the nine hours it took to finish, and play it all day. Despite my relative loss, once the game has sold a few million copies, I've had hundreds of hours of practise, and I pwn it up completely, I look forward to telling people "I finished one of the campaigns (the one of the three that's available in the demo) before the game was even released." I am proud that I truly expect that this will always feel like my game. If you are at all into PC Games or RTSs, I highly suggest that you pre-order, buy, or at least read-up on this game; it's truly terrific. I believe that the RTS genre is the pinnacle of gaming as it perfectly integrates a mind's implementation of thought and action, while Supreme Commander is at least one of the top few RTSs ever. Once the full version comes out, I will consider it for top spot (Age is stiff competition, and anyone who knows my near-irrational love for that series could tell you how much it says that I'm even considering Supreme Commander as equal.) The only thing I can say is "wrong" with this game is that the menu bar is a little too big; quite seriously, this may be enough to stop it from defeating Age II. Now the RTS I'm looking forward to is Command and Conquer 3, although I expect to end up loving this one more, but that still leaves lots of room for C&C3. I also haven't forgotten about Wii and DS, but the major '07 titles for those guys is a little further off than the PC gems coming out right now. And just as important: Yes, as expected, I beat that loudmouthed friend at AOE II last night. Well, here are some screen-shots, made primarily for those who haven't yet d/l'd the demo, are waiting for it to download, or haven't tried it for whatever reason. Remember that they don't really say much about the graphics as the low-resolution jpeg images don't do them justice. Don't doubt that I want to hear anything you have to say about your thoughts or experiences etc. on this game... unless you're going to make it an allegory on communism or why Warcraft is better than Age or something preposterous like that. 
The symbols appears when you're zoomed out so far that the actual unit-size would be invisible. 
As you can see, the player has the ability to simultaneously view two maps at different distances or angles. It even supports the use of multiple monitors for this purpose. 
The campaign maps get significantly larger as you progress through each stage (and each campaign has multiple maps,) although even the earlier and smaller ones rival the map size in most RTSs. 
"Supreme Commander was more than a labor of love; it was the completion of a
journey we started a long time ago and was a game that we’ve wanted to make for
a very long time. To see the game complete is an incredible reward for us,
especially because it delivers many of the goals we set for ourselves back in
2003. And now the journey is complete, and we will soon embark on another.
From all of us here at GPG and the SupCom team, to all of you, we hope Supreme
Commander brings you many hours of entertainment and delivers a new and
exciting experience. And most of all, we hope it’s everything you had hoped it
would be...we worked very hard to make that happen.
All the best!
Chris Taylor
CEO/Lead Designer
Gas Powered Games" But neither images nor words can properly convey the immensity of this game, the usefulness of the side-scrolling, etc, on account of that very immensity. So download the demo for yourself (it requires you to sign-up to Gamespot, but it's free, and you may be able to find it elsewhere.) Good Micro! | 
