Real-time Strategy (RTS) game design has been dawdling for the better part of a decade. Developers have been delivering a steady stream of advancement in graphics and storytelling methodologies but have failed to really overhaul the category in any meaningful way (save perhaps last year's excellent Company of Heroes, which strays so far from the norm that lumping it in with any other group of games -- RTS included -- doesn't seem quite right). Mr. Taylor had promised that Supreme Commander would serve up some meaningful changes to the way traditional strategy games are played, and while it may look like most RTS games on the surface, it doesn't take long to realize just how much more complex gameplay is and how much larger the battles are.

Supreme Commander will put to the test everything at your disposal, ranging from your hardware to your personal endurance. The enormous maps, some of which are as large as 6500 square kilometres (they can actually be viewed from space -- a nice touch, both visually and tactically), combined with the hundreds of exquisitely detailed units and structures that often appear on screen simultaneously will challenge even the most tricked out rigs to keep a steady frame rate. Moreover, even if your box can cut it, you might not. The length of the game's epic three and four hour missions requires extreme patience on behalf of the player, not to mention a knack for long-term strategizing.

Speaking of strategy, the sheer variety of units at the player's disposal, including bombers, battleships, robots, long-range artillery, short-range tanks, weapons of mass destruction, and defensive bubble shields -- just to name a few categories --, takes a dozen hours or more to appreciate, much longer to master. And on the path to mastery you'll learn that Supreme Commander is not the sort of RTS in which one simply builds an enormous army and sends it swarming like locusts over an enemy stronghold.

Really, it takes hours to build and deploy for just a single multifarious mission; an extraordinarily challenging undertaking, but it makes victory all the sweeter.

But as rewarding as its missions can be, Supreme Commander isn't perfect.

The campaign is broken into three segments, one for each of the game's three factions. Set on several planets in the distant future, the story picks up as humanity nears the end of the Infinite War, a lengthy conflict between the colonial United Earth Federation, which is desperately struggling to reunite all of humanity under a single banner; the separatist Cybran Nation, a group of cybernetically enhanced people trying to free themselves of the oppression of the old Earth Empire; and the theocratic Aeon Illuminate, humans who follow an antediluvian alien faith and see other humans as religious defilers.

Here's the problem: all of these factions play roughly the same. Put another way, they lack significantly different military technology. While the ground, air, and naval units manufactured by each bloc look quite different, there are typically identical corresponding units in each faction's military. With a few notable exceptions in the experimental technology available to each group (which you may or may not have the time or resources to construct), it makes little difference which one you choose to play. It would have been nice if each had subtle advantages for different playing styles, one suitable for defensive players, another for more aggressive types. Or perhaps their strengths could have been divided based on land, air, and naval capabilities. Whatever. The simple fact is that the factions are too balanced as is. It's like fighting yourself.

However, this one shortcoming aside, Supreme Commander is a marvelous play, and it has raised the bar in some subtle but significant ways for the RTS genre. It will be interesting to see how Gas Powered Games' competitors respond to their challenge.