In removing the different levels of each type of building (you now only get one type of land factory, one mass extractor, one anti-air turret and so on) you get a better grip on how to construct your base. Here's what I'm talking about: in massively reducing the number of units from 300 to 120, each one plays a simpler, more comprehensible purpose. No walls, less artillery, smaller shield generators, more squealing as enemy bots puncture your flimsy defenses. It's a less turtle-friendly game this time around.

In reeling back what was outlandish about the original game, he's supervising the creation of a game he's more comfortable with, and it shows.

Placing to one side the fact that anyone who can call the ideas present in Company of Heroes, Sins of a Solar Empire or World In Conflict 'putting a fifth wheel on a car' needs a stern talking to, Supreme Commander 2 represents Taylor playing to his strengths. In his interview with Eurogamer a few weeks back he actually compared innovation in RTS games to either putting a fifth wheel on a car or taking a wheel off. For one thing, the scale still dwarfs any other RTS out there and you still have the opportunity to fling hundreds of robots at your opponents like a child upending his toybox on his kid sister.įor a second thing, Chris Taylor is a right-winger of the RTS genre. In practice Supreme Commander 2 works well despite its tactical reduction, and that's not as surprising as it sounds.

300 different units, three different levels of land, sea and air factories to push through, mammoth maps, nuclear warfare and comically big 'experimental' robots that took an age to appear in any match.

Supreme Commander was a traditional RTS (read: Total Annihilation) with the single defining feature being its ridiculous scale. Same product, just a little smaller, smoother, shinier and more refined. He wants to make Supreme Commander more accessible and less unwieldy, pushing a kind of technological miniaturisation. So, Chris Taylor wants to take us all down, down to robot town.

Supreme commander 2 map