So what have you been
doing with your spare time? If you’ve been gaming, you’ve probably been
trying to save the world, or some such noble pursuit. Not me. I’ve been
controlling the fates of millions, and trying to take OVER the planet,
living out my megalomania fantasies through DreamCatcher’s strategy game
called SuperPower.
Come to think of it,
perhaps I should clarify. In pursuing my goal of world domination, what
I’ve ACTUALLY been doing is pouring through reams of statistics, charts,
maps, and reports. In between, I’ve been making vital decisions that show
why I could let a political dynasty be overrun by a well-disciplined troop
of Girl Guides, given enough time. For that matter, I’d probably
inadvertently fund them through excessive cookie orders. Yes, if there’s
one thing I’ve learned, it’s that as a politician, I make a wonderful
reviewer.
SuperPower is a
modern day military and geo-political world simulator…. I know, I know –
unless you’re the type of person that reads spreadsheets for fun, you’re
thinking that this isn’t the most entertaining way of spending your
leisure time. Certainly this was unlike any game I’ve ever played. My
idea of following the news consists of headlines, sports, and comics…
usually in reverse order. What’s worse, my understanding of global
politics includes questions like “So what’s happening in the Soviet Union
these days?” On the other hand, I do like strategy games, so I was
willing to step outside my comfort zone to try something new.
The premise of
SuperPower is to put the player in the hotseat of running an actual
country, with the emphasis on realism. Developed by GolemLabs
using official data from the CIA and United States Naval Institute,
SuperPower boasts of having the largest database ever used in a strategy
game, and they ain’t whistlin’ Dixie! There are 140 countries in the
game, each with a simply staggering amount of detail, conveniently broken
down into colour-coded demographic, political, economic, and military
themes.
Aside from a
relatively small number of pre-defined scenarios, the bulk of the game is
open ended, allowing you to choose any country you wish. The only
mandated condition is that you manage to stay in power. However, you may
also select objectives which include conquering the world, eliminating
armed rebels, and/or balancing resources over the course of 1, 5, or 10
years, or even for an unlimited amount of time. Experienced strategy
gamers will wonder about a difficulty setting, but that’s getting away
from the ultra-realistic nature of SuperPower. These are not imaginary
countries of relatively equal strength, but actual countries defined by
their status in our very real world. So the difficulty is inherently
established by the country and objectives you select. In a smart move,
the game offers a meter which indicates the degree of difficulty of the
options you’ve chosen.
Needless to say,
being a Canadian, I opted to be a homeboy. Not only is Canada the
biggest military juggernaught outside of, well… maybe Papua New Guinea,
we also have the kind of financial and political clout that, say… at least
3 or 4 other countries can only dream about. So okay, maybe we’re not
that dominating on the world stage, but I stuck with what I knew.
The other 139
countries are governed by the EHE, or Evolutionary Human Emulator, which
GolemLabs claims to be an artificial intelligence that LEARNS. Rather
than have pre-programmed behaviour models, each computer controlled
country in SuperPower is an independent entity that analyzes the actions
and patterns of its opponents (including you), and responds with logical
problem solving. For extra realism, the developers claim to have added
some “human” factors which also impact on the decision making of the EHE
countries. This is incredibly ambitious, and I commend them for the
undertaking. Unfortunately, since no one has yet been able to develop an
accurate model of international relations, it’s no surprise that
SuperPower’s attempt is a flawed one. Even I, with my complete lack of
political savvy, could identify EHE behaviours that made very little
sense, most noticeably in certain countries declaring war on others.
Gameplay starts you
off on January 1, 1997, and takes place largely in “turns” representing a
one week block of real time. Visual presentation is simply a genuine
topographical world map, with numerous subscreens accessible through icons
along the top and bottom. You’re free to take as long as you want to sift
through any and all relevant info about your own or any other country, at
which time you can select orders from various menus. Unless you’re
engaging in warfare (which I’ll cover in a moment), once you’ve confirmed
your choices, each country’s actions will “play out” behind the scenes, in
the order of richest to poorest, and you’re presented with a written
update of the main changes on the world scene. When you feel sufficiently
briefed on what has occurred, it’s time for a new week (your next turn).
As incredibly complex as this game is strategically, on its surface it’s
just that simple to operate.
The exception to the
turn based rule is when you engage in conventional warfare. In that case,
a secondary real-time map is displayed, and you issue orders to your
troops which they carry out onscreen until the battle is resolved, or
until you issue new commands. I found this aspect of the game to be
rather pointless, as the graphics are laughably simplistic, and the
controls are not up to par with any other strategy war game I’ve
encountered. Fortunately, there is a “quick resolve” button that will let
the computer settle the conflict automatically. I saved my game before
each attack, and used this method every time. If I lost, I simply altered
my initial strategy, so GolemLabs should have stuck with this function.
There’s little use in additional features that aren’t done well.
I should mention that
SuperPower also contains a fairly comprehensive strategic warfare
component that includes pre-targeting, counterstrike and launch orders.
However, without meaning to criticize anyone for doing so, I refused to
incorporate any aspect of nuclear war in my scenarios, and quit out of my
game any time a nuclear weapon was deployed (not often). I can see where
the inclusion of strategic weapons would add a real layer of depth to the
experience, but I simply considered it a little too ugly for my gaming
pleasure. Purely a personal matter.
The real strength of
SuperPower, of course, is in the details. The manual weighed in at over
100 pages, and even then did nothing more than cover the basic game
functions, so I can’t hope to do it any justice here, but I’ll touch on
the main highlights briefly.
Clicking on your
country from the main screen map will highlight your nation’s cities and
military bases. Cities are the center of commerce from which you control
your industry and economy. Only here can you produce the game’s 5
resources of energy, ore, cereals, meat, and wealth, which all have their
own specific purposes and contribute to the Gross National Product (GNP).
Cities can (and should) also produce and host military units, although to
a lesser degree than the bases. One of your cities must be your capital,
and it is imperative that it be protected, as losing it to an opponent
results in losing the game. However, under extreme conditions, it’s
possible to move your capital city – it’ll have consequences in terms of
government stability, but if you’re forced to move it, you probably have
bigger concerns to worry about.
SuperPower’s
comparative geographical menu is great for showing how your country
measures up in terms of population, GNP, technology, resources, and
military capacity, among many others. Each criterion is reflected in a
world map that clearly shows your status relative to the other nations.
For researching more
specific information and taking action, there are 8 main options. In
addition to the Demography, Technology Research and City and Base menus,
the Politics screens list all of your treaties, alliances, and exchanges
with other countries, any foreign pressure, as well as your own population
support and government stability. Economy windows show you your financial
agreements around the world, and allow you to set tax rates, adjust
multiple budgets, buy and sell resources, and make international funding
contributions. The military menus display which countries will house your
units (and vice versa), list all available land, air, and naval units at
your disposal, allow you to ask for military help if necessary, and of
course deploy your units. One nice feature of the latter three components
is an “Advisor” button, which will offer useful advice should the need
arise.
The Unit Design is a
complex area that allows you to essentially build military units to your
own specifications. By selecting ability levels in various categories,
your units are outfitted with the appropriate technology. Of course
you’ll want your units to have the highest levels available, but each
design improvement adds to the cost significantly, so it’ll be a constant
balancing act. Overall, there are over 4000(!) different design
possibilities. In the only nice graphical touch of the game, the unit
models are nicely diagrammed in the design screen.
The field I enjoyed
most was the Secret Service. It is here that you can initiate covert
operations to incite revolts, rig elections, assassinate foreign leaders,
commit acts of terrorism (another one I found myself avoiding, despite
just being a game), or perform sabotage, espionage, and even Coup d’États.
If done right, it’s even possible to select a different country to frame
for your actions. Needless to say, these are all extremely risky, and the
consequences of being discovered can be very damaging (but that’s what the
“save” function is for – didn’t work? Reload!)
Should you conquer
another country officially by capturing their capital, it falls under your
rule. Unfortunately, you must continue to treat it as a separate entity
from your home country, which makes managing multiple nations a time
consuming and troublesome task. When pursuing global conquest as an
objective, this can get very frustrating when the number of nations under
your rule increases. The sneakier method, brought about by Secret Service
ops, is to conquer a nation unofficially by arranging a puppet government
that you control. This has the dual benefit of fooling both that
country’s population and your opponents that it is still independent,
which keeps the citizens productive and the other nations cooperative.
Is SuperPower as
complex as it sounds? Absolutely!! Does it all work? No. The easiest
criticism is that the release is filled with bugs. I have no problem with
reviewing a patched game, but the patch for this game was a whopper at
37Mb!! (As a point of reference, the entire GAME is only 155 Mb on the
CD; a patch that is one-quarter the size of the game is unheard of).
Being a poor sap still afflicted with dial-up, I attempted to play it
unpatched. I didn’t experience all of the problems I’d been warned about,
such as being unable to complete 2 of the 5 tutorials, but I did
experience enough crashes to drive me to the patch. I was NOT pleased.
I’ll forgive some oversights due to complex system configurations, but
many of the patch fixes were for details which CLEARLY should have been
caught in testing.
I’ve commented on the
visual inadequacies in passing, but I’ll re-establish it here. It was
clearly a design decision to skimp on graphics, which isn’t unusual for war games. But the simple fact is that a few animations, videos, or
even photos would have gone a long way towards creating a stronger
immersion factor. Equally lacking is any type of sound effects. There
are a few basic effects when windows open and shut, and that’s about it.
Instead, the game has an MP3 player incorporated into it, but with the
level of concentration and reading the game required, music was the last
thing I needed…, not to mention the fact that I don’t have any MP3’s. At
least SUPPLY some tunes next time!
Still, I could have
forgiven all this, but my biggest complaint is reserved for how darn
unfriendly this game is. Hey, I didn’t expect being a world leader to be
EASY, but I did expect to get some help. Surely Heads of State are
not forced to sift through their own raw data to figure out a gameplan.
Heck no, they have specialists review the information, present it and make
recommendations… and that’s precisely what SuperPower should have
offered. But aside from a few minor suggestions by the “Advisor” (which
you still have to manually select), you’re completely left to your own
devices.
Even that might be
fine, but there’s simply too much information to digest at every turn
(literally). Need to send troops into harm’s way? Well, should you
deploy your M557, your 105-mm M101, or your UH-1N? Don’t know, or even
what they do? Neither do I! Maybe my military officers would, but I
haven’t got any of those to ask. Want to try driving a wedge between
strategic alliances overseas? Who can I ask about those? Oh right…
nobody. I’m not only the top government leader, but I’m also the general
of each branch of my armed forces, chief diplomat, finance minister, and
black ops director. Quite frankly, it’s entirely overwhelming, and the
developers are unsympathetic. I’ll let the manual speak for itself on the
topic:
“It is the player’s
responsibility to search further for information on conflicts, world
history, and other concepts used in the game…. Explaining the whys and
hows of our choices would take a book in itself. For more information on
the subject, again, look up the different publications and free sites
around the Internet.”
I can understand your
point, GolemLabs (and DreamCatcher), but next time try not to slap me in the face with it.
The slogan “give us your money and go to the library” isn’t going to be a
very popular one.
It’s unfortunate that
the developers opted for a such a complete “do it yourself” mode of
gameplay, because it probably wouldn’t have been that difficult to
incorporate a greater degree of interactivity with the Advisor, even if
nothing else. It’s one thing for the EHE to process thousands of bits
of information per turn; quite another to ask the player to do so.
Though buried in
statistics and bugs, there’s a decent game lurking in SuperPower for fans
of politics, international relations, and military strategy. However,
that’s a pretty limited market, and this game won’t be pulling in any
newcomers. So if you know a Poly-Sci major, grab this
game and surprise them with it. If not, take a pass and don’t give it a
second thought.
Final score: 32%
Played on:
Win XP
Pentium 4, 2 Ghz
512 Mb RAM
GeForce 4
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