PC SuperPower 2 Preview - ( Review, Preview, Article, Interview, Q&A;, Buy, Game )

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Available :10/7/2004

SuperPower 2 Preview © DreamCatcher Interactive By: Scott “TheGoodEvil” Allred

Have you ever woke up one morning with a burning desire to... well... nuke the world? I bet the guys at GolemLabs did when they thought up the concept for SuperPower and now the sequel SuperPower 2. SuperPower took us into a part of everyday happenings unseen by most regular Joes and allowed us to run a real world country and effectively blow everyone up (if you were strong enough). What SuperPower didn’t have though was a great interface and stellar globe of the world (SuperPower had a 2D flat map of the world, Superpower2 has a 3D globe) however it did give you a great fix of “blow somethin’ up” though it wasn’t nearly as pretty.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of “which ever nation I choose”

The staple of any world simulator is the political atmosphere. SuperPower 2 takes the player into the spectrum of world politics like no other game has ever done, and it does it all with real world information! Everything from political parties, weapons systems, and even economic structure are all well sewn into this fun yet still serious feeling game. You heard me right folks, this game has just about EVERY weapons system in the world packed into it. You can buy Leopard 2 tanks as the Germans, F-22 Raptors as the Americans, or Migs as the Russians, if that doesn’t fill your appetite you can also research technologies that will actually allow you to design your OWN WEAPONS!!! You heard me, no more “I guess I’ll build the light tank” or “only one kind of fighter”, there is now an infinite amount of weapons at your disposal... if you get tired of the thousands the game already offers.

Weapons are great fun but there is much more to this Sim than simply waging war, the economic structure of the game mimics real world economics but in a dumb downed form so the game is still enjoyable. You can manage trade, budget, and internal revenue to halt inflation, raise minimum wage, and also raise taxes, HAHA “penny for the poor?” “Go get a job, minimum wage is $30 an hour!”. You can’t just freely wield your magical wage increases and decreases though, if you do you could see your country in economic ruin within months, it’s much more advised to be cautious instead of throw caution to the wind. Did I mention you can make basically anything illegal, or legal? Yeah YOU CAN MAKE ANYTHING LEGAL.... I’ll leave it at that.

The political structure is equally complex but in a simple way. It only took me an hour to catch on to the whole game despite the size and scope of SuperPower 2 (this without a proper manual for my preview copy, though I was informed that the manual for the complete game will be much more technical and helpful). In the politics department you can shape your country further by creating some of the many treaties at your disposal. Don’t like China? Sanction them! Is Korea busting your marbles? Declare war on them! You can also change your country’s freedoms, chauvinists can remove women’s rights to vote, Christians can disallow gay marriages, and people can silence me by taking away the right of free speech (yeah right who would silence me *looks at editor*).

The game allows you to run a country and pulls out all the stops to make sure you really feel like you’re running the country, but if you don’t feel like doing certain things you can easily let the computer play that role for you i.e. you hate economy, click on the computer to run it and you stay running the government and war or any combination will work.

The strategic warfare portion is sweet to say the least. You go into this defcon mode where you select the nation you wish to annihilate and the style of which to do it in (land ICBMs or sub launched) once they’re in the air you’ll see them streak over the globe and strike their targets, it’s a fine way to bring a smile to your face (even though your enemies are crying).

“The moon is made of cheese” “nah ah” “prove it” “fine I’ll zoom out”

This game has one of the coolest globes I’ve ever seen, it is a full globe that can be zoomed in and out of to awesome degrees. Just to let you know what kind of view you can get I’ll try to key you in. I zoomed in enough to see the major roadways all around my hometown of Lafayette Louisiana. I then zoomed out enough to see the moon rotating around the world. The nations are separated into real world territories, oceans, seas, and lakes are visible, and while one side of the planet is alive with color the other side is dark courtesy of the sun. The game is beautiful, sure it doesn’t have major detail like many other games but this game isn’t trying to be like other games. Superpower2’s globe is an awesome looking replica of the world and will be admired by many fans, even though there is no fancy buildings to build or actual cities to see.

You are awarded a graphical representation of the warfare you wage if you click on the battle though it isn’t the cream of the crop. You can’t control any individual units and make them attack who you think they should but it’s better than seeing a rumble of smoke as you would from the globe view. It’s particularly funny when you attack a 3rd world country with your standing army of 8 million troops, 300,000 land vehicles, and 20,000 jets as was the case with my France takes on the world game, France never surrendered but I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter by the rest of the world “stupid rest of the world”.

I came I saw I had an overall good time.

This isn’t a game for the Warcraft 3 crowd, there is more “sit and think” and less reflexes in SuperPower 2, but when the heat is on and you are at war with every other country on earth because you “liberated” half of the 3rd world countries on earth every second counts.

Make the right moves and you will be fine but try to go out of your way to do something like “liberate” half of the worlds 3rd world countries and then everyone gets a hair up their butts and slaughters you. Good game, kept me up until 9:00 AM because there was no save feature in the preview and I really wanted to help all the poor people in those 3rd world countries.

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