An indication that your RTS experiences will never be the same:

I booted up CoH this morning to finish up one of the campaign missions that I never got around to playing. As soon as it loaded up, I thought "Damn, zoomed in way too close" and so I started to scroll back on my mousewheel. Nothing happened. "**** the game's frozen" I thought as I kept scrolling and nothing happened. "Why the hell won'- oh. This is max zoom." I had completely forgotten that the way-too-close zoom level that I was at was the game's highest view.

It was actually pretty frustrating, because the entire mission I kept instinctively scrolling back on my mousewheel to no avail. If you've been playing the SupCom demo, I suggest you try out another RTS to see what I'm talking about.

Official SupCom countdown:

Total days: 11

School days: 7

Ah, on to the skirmish!

Battle 1: A.I.-medium

Report: After playing against the Beta's A.I, I was fully expecting the worst, especially since I haven't played Finn's Revenge or as the Cybrans. I immediatly started laying down the basic resource collectors, opting for an air factory instead of land first. I was nervous when my scouts revealed that the A.I. already had a land factory up, and I was expecting an early rush. It never came. It turns out that my biggest obstacle was my expansive nature, as I destroyed my own economy. Still, I barely made it into tech 2 before I steamrolled the A.I.

Battle Time: 27 min.

Battle 2: A.I.-Hard

Report: I went for land instead of air first, but this time the A.I. was fighting hard. I established two forward bases at the two connecting land points, and for a while it was just a back and forth battle, with the A.I. sending huge waves of Hunters up against the cross-fire of my point defences, while I sent out raiding parties to harrass the forward enemy mass points. I took control of both of the islands, and I established a small defensive force of subs, while slowly "leap-frogging" (my own term) my factories. For a while, my T2 attacks kept getting halted by harrassment from enemy gunships, but by increasing the number of flak units in my build orders and getting some air superiority fighters, I turned back all possible air attacks. My big break came when I launched a coordinated pincer attack from both forward outposts, and I was lucky enough to catch their ACU in the middle. It was mop-up after that.

Battle Time: 1:05:00

Overall: I would have loved to try out some of the larger maps, but I would suggest that all players test out the hard A.I. for a fun, although sometimes frantic, play experience.

I've decided to split up my take on the SupCom demo into two parts, one focusing on the campaign, the other on skirmish.

Early impressions: I really loved the intro, even though I've seen it. However, I feel that if it starts up every time I start up the game, I'm just going to esc through it. I really loved the menu/menu background (minor detail I know, but still). The faction selection was pretty damn good looking too.

Mis. 1 briefing: I was dissapointed by a lack of faction-specific intro, but I would assume that they will come with the final game (if not, they would be throwing the player into the story without any real background info). The graphics on the faces are great, but I feel that if that's the only type of interaction that will be had, things could get a bit stale (too early to tell I know). Some more CGI movies depicting pre-battle/post-battle results would be great.

Mis. 1: One thing I loved about both operations was the story-telling that was done in-game, as seeing Dostya and her ML's chase off the remnants of the UEF forces was a great intro. The gameplay seems to have remained the same since the beta (a very good thing) so I'm not going to comment on it much. The way that the operations progress with the ever-expading map was, surprisingly, one of the things I loved most about the SP gameplay, as it always kept me guessing and in the dark as to where my opponents were and what I should be building my strategy around. The in-game communications can be both repetative ("You need to *insert mission objective here* now!") and character defining (Dostya: "The UEF and Aeon continue to fight...continue with your mission objectives. Let them destroy each other."), so their value is varied. The enemy taunts are similair, ranging from generic ("I misunderesitmated you, I won't do it again!") to surprisingly emotional ("How dare you set foot on Orionis!?") to anger-inspiring ("I will cleanse every Symbiont on the face of this planet!"). Overall, I think they help to keep the mood of the game. Other than that, the first operation was quite simple.

Mis. 2 briefing: Same comments as mission 1, although Brackman's eyes seem a bit wonkey.

Mis. 2: Alot of the same from Mission 1. Nice idea having you fight Mach, although at one point I was assaulting the Aeon base when next thnig I know the Aeon commander went thermal somewhere way off away from my attack force (I think she might have been near some of the defenses left over from Mach's base so...). Anyway, I liked the fact that the A. I. was far more aggressive, although still at a pretty easy level.

General: Although the missions weren't particularly demanding, the operations were still quite time-consuming, so I think that the campaigns should be quite robust.

Overall: The two operations were alot of fun, and I can't wait to play the entire thing.

Pt. 2 to come later. 

Question to all the SupCom fans: Did you think that the boards were bad when they released the beta?

That was a walk in the park compared to this demo release. There's nothing more depressing than seeing "The units are too small!" as a common complaint.

I'm going to post my thoughts on the demo here ASAP.

Official Supreme Commander countdown:

16 days (counting today)

Back in the olden days of SupCom fandom (back when a screenshot would make us freak the hell out) we had absolutely nothing to talk about over in the SupCom forums at GR.org.

This quote of mine comes from a thread that ended up with one user realizing the "ChrisT" joke, and then someone asked "Who's Jesus Christ anyway?", prompting this gem:

"A widely known game designer, Jesus Christ (called "JC" by his closest friends) had his first hit with "wine maker 2000", a wine-growing sim where the player is a budding vitner. After this game gained a cult-following, he produced two more titles: "watermaster: float for your life", a 3rd person shooter where the player can actually walk on water, as well as "leper ER", a doctor sim where the player's job is to heal lepers, the blind, the lame, and others.

Of course, most of us know him for his hit FPS "The Crucifixion", as well as the even more popular sequel "The Crucifixion 2: Ressurection". Sadly, after these two titles were released, his small game company "Disciples inc." was bought and subsidized by EA. Because of this, many less popular games such as "The Crusades: Road to Heaven" and "Inquisitor of Spain" were produced in the name of JC, but he actually had no part in their creation.

Although he has long stopped making games, many of his fans still talk of a final conclusion to the unfinished story of "TC2:R" in a third game which is believed to be entitled "The Crucifixtion 3: The Second Coming"; however EA spokesman Barry Reese denies all claims to this."

Good times.

Sore throat, fever, ever-running nose. Yep, that's a good sign. Still, I hope I don't miss any school (not that I particularly enjoy school, it's just that we've already missed two days due to an ice storm that hit central Texas).

Oh, by the way, central Texas got hit with an ice storm. We missed two days of school. Of course we lost our entire Easter holiday, but I don't really care that much. My major concern is having the least amount of school days between now and the SupCom release.

On that note, the official countdown for SupCom's release:

31 days (counting today)

And I made it all by myself (using only Irfanview and microsoft paint).

Ah man, I can't believe it. After over a year of waiting, SupCom is coming out in a little more than a month! Not to mention it's avaialble to preorder.

http://www.eurogamer.net/tv_video.php?playlist_id=1755