I have an Xbox 360 Elite. The Elite and Arcade units have an upgraded chipset, and see much fewer crashes than the other bundled units. If you have an Elite or Arcade, you should be okay playing this game.
SupCom for Xbox uses quite possibly the most innovative and thought-out control structure I've seen yet on a console. The controls not only make sense, but they're easy to LEARN, and they WORK. You select your unit, press a direction on the D-pad to bring up a wheel menu, then use your left and right sticks sometimes together as needed to highlight an option which you select with the A-button. It also has a relatively simple method to assign and select groups. There's a short learning curve to remember which direction on the D-pad accesses which menu, but if you get it wrong, just press a new direction and the menu will adjust.
Unfortunately, the instructions that come with the game as well as the in-game tutorial do a lousy job of telling us how to actually play the game. For example, we are never told how to make a level-3 construction unit build level 1 or 2 structures. Secondly, while the game tells us we can outfit our commanding unit with upgrades, we are not told how! In both cases, you access the unit's build menu, and use the right control stick to select an inner-wheel of the menu, which will change the icons at the outer wheel. Once you learn this interface, it also becomes easy to use, but I literally found it out by accident.
Controlling your units is relatively easy, though the one thing that SupCom does different is that it stacks commands. Each command to a unit is put into queue it will perform that command after it finishes any other commands you've already given it. If you want it to do something right away, you first have to hit the X button, then issue the new command. This takes a longer adjustment than usual, as no other console-RTS games work this way.
I prefer skirmishing to a storyline, so I can't provide much insight there, but skirmishes work well, with the ability to play against the computer or friends, or against the computer WITH friends, providing a much-needed, coop-skirmish feature.
As far as cons go, there are a few. The camera is weird, especially once the unit count starts to climb. When zoomed all the way out, the cursor moves without the screen moving much like a mouse on a PC game. When you zoom in, the cursor becomes static and the entire screen scrolls. Sometimes, however, when zooming in, the cursor becomes "stuck" beyond the edges of the screen. You'll zoom in, and can scroll the screen, but there is no cursor, and thus no way to select units. You have to zoom out, "free" the cursor, then zoom back in. In addition, the zooming is very touchy it's very easy to zoom far beyond where you intended to be. And since there is no mini map, you can't just set the zoom where you're most comfortable and leave it you'll be forced to zoom out from time to time. Sometimes the camera will just jump around on you as you're trying to control it, causing you to end up viewing parts of the map you had no interest in viewing.
Once you get a feel for the controls and log some time with the game, this will become less of an issue you get used to it. But it still remains confusing and at times, frustrating. You don't always have time to be playing with the camera.
The games visuals are... ...difficult to review. Units look pretty nice up close, but seem to blend together at a distance. Everything starts to look the same. Level details are very sparse, with most of the maps simply being open space. Compared to the popular Universe at War game which has detailed landscapes and tons of scenery and foliage this game feels rather barren.
SupCom's selling point besides the fact that it actually works on my console is it's control scheme. No other RTS is as easy to play. It can be had on Amazon for pretty cheap (my copy was less than $20, shipped) but again, if you're using any other console than the Elite or Arcade, you might want to stay away.
Happy Hunting.
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This game scored a 90/100 on the PC windows platform. the gaming sites scored it on the XBOX 360 at 50/100.WHY?......because its got lots of technical problems. they may (hopefully) patch the bugs thru Xbox Live over the next few weeks or months. if they do....then it will be worth buying at that time.
Check out the big review sites(gamespot....1up) for yourself before you hand over your hard earned money.
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Well, I picked this game up a couple weeks ago even though I read the, in my opinion, little harsh reviews. I never played this game on the PC and I think the problem is people are trying to compare this game directly to the PC version and you just can't do that with an RTS. Sure, the game technically isn't superb, but it hasn't made me not have fun playing it. I guess I didn't really have that many expectations buying it and I just took it for what it was...a rts game on the console..and I have had fun playing it. If you have THAT high of expectations for type of game on a console, then I think your better off sticking to the PC.Honest reviews on Supreme Commander - Xbox 360
I love this game. A lot. There are plenty of reviews out there that cover the game itself. So I'm going to just address the bugs. Or rather, bug. But it's such a biggy, that I'm knocking the game two stars just for one bug.This game requires you to save frequently. Normally, not a big deal. Except probably 50% of the time, when you save, the game crashes. Sometimes you can get back to the Xbox dashboard, but often you have to reboot the console. Extremely annoying. The save game doesn't get corrupted or anything, or I'd be rating this one star instead, but it's still a very serious bug. Worse, it's been out for months, and I'm not really holding out much hope that the bug will ever get patched at this point.
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When you see several reviews that glorify a game to no end you can be wary if they are telling the truth or not. You can only tell if a review is being truthful if it overviews the game and tells about its flaws.I am on the same position as many other reviewers for this game has said about the glitches and bugs this game is plagued with. To manage to get any progress in a game you occasionally have to save and that risks the game screen to freeze and start flickering, or just go dark altogether. Also after prolonged play the game will start to fail loading unit textures, so eventually all your units can just turn into bland moving Grey blocks.
Several contacts to Aspyr media about the game ended with no success, and it seems that Aspyr has no intentions of patching the bugs in this game... so just don't buy it. If you have a good gaming computer that has moderately good graphics, plenty of processing power, and RAM you should get this game for PC because it will make your life a whole lot better.
I'm also one of the people that played Total Annihilation quite often and this game is a great modern reincarnation of it. You can still see the same style, can make hordes of units, make cannons that fire great distances, and giant experimental units. I enjoyed this game too much that I often deal with the Xbox360 bugs just to play it. Now since I have a better gaming PC I plan on getting it for PC. This game isn't crazy hard to learn and my advice would be to play a skirmish game against an easy AI and figure out how the game goes yourself and you'll learn to love it.
So.. long story short... This game is very fun and entertaining... just sucks for the Xbox 360. Get this game for PC instead if your PC can handle it. I have played many RTS games ranging from the command and conquers, starcraft, warcraft, age of empires, empire earth. I feel Supreme Commander is really in a league of its own, it does share some qualities with other RTS games, but you just won't find another game just like it.
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