Forged Alliance reminds me that it’s all about the fun of it
Supreme Commander 2 is in the mail! While waiting for its arrival, I’ve been keeping myself occupied with Forged Alliance, which I’ve never played through before. I’ve been playing the missions on hard as UEF and I just completed the fourth mission. Let me just say … wow. GPG was not kidding when they say that these missions are “Hard”.
The game was frantic from start to finish, with me surviving on a knife’s edge throughout. By the final phase of the mission, it was a race to rebuild my buildings as quickly as they were being taken out, thanks to the frequent attacks by experimental walkers and mobile artillery. I was caught woefully unprepared at the conclusion of the previous phase and I didn’t have any T3 point defense ready for the massive waves of enemies that I had no idea were going to be coming. I lost a good amount of my base, but survived thanks to all of those assistant commanders I had been building up to that point (thanks in equal parts to their resource generation, combat prowess, and rapid construction ability).
I finally managed to get an edge on my opponent by building one experimental walker of my own for each experimental corpse of the enemy that I was reclaiming, and then not letting mine die as quickly as his. By the very end of the survival phase I had actually started taking out the enemy’s bases with my surplus of walkers.
It was nice getting a chance to finally play around with Seraphim units (I captured some engineers early on in the game). Overall, it’s hard to say whether I like the Seraphim? The sniper bots are nice, but the T2 point defense seems underpowered (especially compared to the Aeon version). And the experimental walker — well, let’s just say, is it really all that different from the Colossus? The experimental bomber, on the other hand, is nifty.
Forged Alliance is reminding me all over again of why I loved Supreme Commander (and, by extension, Total Annihilation) in the first place. The pace of battle in this mission was furious, and I was glued to my computer screen for the duration. I was even downright antisocial to a guest that my friend had over (thanks, GPG), preferring to continue the game rather than talk with him. The time whizzed by, and at the very end I experienced the immense satisfaction of winning in the face of long odds, knowing that the enemy had thrown everything at me.
If Supreme Commander 2 is as fun as Forged Alliance is, then I’m going to love it, no matter what kinds of changes were made to the economy, the scale of the maps, or whatever else people are complaining about on the forums today. As I sit here and await the imminent arrival of my copy, all I can say is … here’s hoping.
March 10th, 2010 at 12:04 am
That last mission was the only one I had a lot of trouble with, and that was because of the immense shielding the enemy had. I believe I ended up building several experimental artillery to finally crack it, plus waves upon waves of all the other experimentals. Awesome mission.
Seraphim is a very interesting faction to play. The Bomber is amazing destructive fun if you learn how to control it. Let it go after targets on its own and it will always turn the wrong way and get shot down it seems. The experimental walker gets veterancy super fast and has an insane regen rate. It goes up in a ball of electrical fury, which is a great kamikazee weapon if you can bury it in your opponent’s base before getting killed, but it sucks if you get wacked near your own units. The Super Nuke experimental is game-breaking powerful. We always excluded it multiplayer because if you get one up it can launch at a rate of 1 missile per minute, and anti nukes can’t keep up. Its fun to watch it hit though.
Certain Seraphim units rock, like the T2 chicken walker, and the naval cruiser. I believe Sera has the strongest shields in the game. The T3 tank isn’t the best unit out there, but bang for buck is the best, meaning you can spam them like crazy. I always enjoyed playing Seraphim because they were so quirky, but they have some big weaknesses you have to be careful of.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:05 am
I’ve come to the conclusion that SupCom2 is a better game overall than the first. Skirmish/multiplayer are so much fun, and games are never the same way twice. The tech tree is a leap of genius. I’m really enjoying the sequel, so much so that I finally uninstalled SupCom/FA!