SupCom 2’s about metal, metal and more metal. SupCom purists may baulk, but what made the first game great – loads of robots blowing the crap out of loads of other robots in huge battles – is faithfully reproduced here.

Best of all, though, the brilliant Strategic Mode, which lets you zoom out – all the way out – and view the battlefield as if some kind of god looking down on little blobs shooting each other with smaller blobs, makes the cut. You still have to gather resources – in this case “mass” and “energy” – build bases, and make the most of the strengths and weaknesses of the three playable factions: UEF, Cybran, and Illuminate. But SupCom 2 is still bloody huge as far as RTS games go.

There are fewer units, the levelling up system has been chucked out in favour of a tech tree in which you spend research points to upgrade your units and structures, and the user interface is more accessible and easier to manage. The crux of developer Gas Powered Games’ effort with its sequel is to make SupCom’s huge mech-tacular scope and scale less complex – that much is obvious. SupCom 2’s Xbox 360 incarnation doesn’t quite match the excitement of Halo Wars, nor does it include anywhere near as comprehensive online functionality, but it does a great job of making real-time strategy on console intuitive. This well-worn argument suffered a severe dent on the release of Halo Wars, the Halo-themed Xbox 360-exclusive RTS the intuitive radial menu and stripped down gameplay made controlling multiple units with the 360 pad feel less like holding a bunch of thorns than previous console RTS games did. Don’t waste your time forcing round PC pegs into square console holes. ‘Just stick to making it work on the PC’, you think. Sometimes you wonder why developers even bother. What a strange beast the console real-time strategy game is.

Supreme commander 2 pc gamer review