That appraisal may sound overly harsh, but the critique serves as a foundation for a cheerful report: developer Gas Powered Games claims it will remedy many of those problems with Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Variance between each race's units was somewhat superficial, and though the massive experimental units were always entertaining, they were absent from battles much of the time due to their high cost and slow movement speeds.
Ignoring these issues, as well as the annoyance of bugs and bizarre online and offline multiplayer de-synchronization, Supreme Commander was ultimately a hollow experiment. Speaking of settings, many players spent more time navigating graphics options than actually playing due to the title's poor performance on slower machines. For instance, while the computer AI was devastatingly efficient during the beta stage of the game's development (only encountered when a player dropped out in a multiplayer test), the AI included in the retail release was barely competent, even at the highest possible settings. Where the experience ultimately fell short was the execution-and in strange, unexpected places. I very honestly loved the mechanics, concepts, and general spirit behind Supreme Commander. Supreme Commander is a strange beast, and like a sick tiger of the wild, it must be put down before it can run free. Whereas the original content in your average expansion is the logical focal point, the same is not be true in this case. Before the brainy, fast-talking Ables ran me through a demonstration of the stand-alone expansion to GPG's large-scale RTS Supreme Commander, subtitled Forged Alliance, I was ready to write the whole series off. "What we found out was that our AI was basically crap," Gas Powered Games' producer Jeremy Ables confessed to me, and not a moment too soon.