It’s similarly demanding on your PC. Even the dual core monster (sporting two GB RAM and two Geforce 7900 GS running in SLI) we keep in the back of the office to scare freelancers saw some slowdown - particularly toward the end of a game when a couple of hundred units were trading blows. On a lesser specced PC - in this case a not-unreasonable P4 3GHz with 1.5GB of RAM and an X1950 3D card - we fought a dogged, constant battle, not with Cybran infantry, but with framerates.

Even the opening, smaller maps ran at about ten frames per second until we were forced to drop the resolution. The reason? SupCom is the first PC game we’ve really seen to be built for multi-core processors, and it eats them like cornflakes. Beware. Another upgrade cycle is inbound.

Having said all that, when you begin a map, you might be surprised just how staid, how close to a standard RTS, SupCom feels. All this tech, for the same game we’ve always played? Securing resources by dropping down mass extractors on defined points, whipping up a power-station, and a few factories? Yet gradually, as you take care of the early house-keeping, SupCom begins to show its ambition.

Once a factory is up and running, you can play with some of the automation built into the interface. A repeat button on your factories lets you queue up construction tasks indefinitely. In SupCom’s Einsteinian world, mass and energy are interchangable, and there’s no resource cap. You can throw down as many power stations, as many factories, and as many mass fabricators as you like. Infinite resources are yours, if you wish. We’ve been in battles where we can produce a heavy tank every ten seconds. It sounds like the domain of the pure tank rush, but consider this: it takes a good two minutes to move an early force to your opponent’s base. And by the time they’ve got there, your enemy has invariably invested in a tier 2 defensive line (SupCom ’s units and structures are built in tiers - each improving accuracy, range, potency, speed and armor) that outclasses your expeditionary force.