GamerSushi » video game streamlining http://gamersushi.com Byte-sized bits of gaming news and features. Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:55:42 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 GamerSushi is all about the raw truth of gaming, in byte sized chunks. We are several gamers who grew up with controllers in our hands, raised by a variety of platforms over many years. We’ve been fanboys of different systems at one time or another, and now we just love to write about our love for gaming, new and old. You won’t find many bloated diatribes here- just observations and humor from a few geeks. GamerSushi no GamerSushi unsquare@gmail.com unsquare@gmail.com (GamerSushi) Byte-sized bits of gaming news and features. video games, gaming, xbox 360, ps3, wii, pc, multiplayer GamerSushi » video game streamlining http://gamersushi.com/wp-content/plugins/powerpress/rss_default.jpg http://gamersushi.com What is With All the Streamlining? http://gamersushi.com/2010/03/09/what-is-with-all-the-streamlining/ http://gamersushi.com/2010/03/09/what-is-with-all-the-streamlining/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:32:11 +0000 Mitch http://gamersushi.com/?p=7203 supreme commander
While Bad Company 2 was released last week on March 2, another sequel that I was greatly anticipating came out that day as well: Supreme Commander 2, the follow up to 2007′s large-scale strategy title. I’d been hearing mumblings going into its release that it was going to eschew the heavy system requirements necessary to render the huge battlefields of the previous game, but I doubted that Gas Powered Games was going to stray too far from the formula of the original. After all, there’s something unique and cathartic about building up a huge base, stocking it with top tier defense guns and shields, then pummeling the enemy’s fortifications with a gigantic navy. The game had a charm that could only come from a prohibitive resource management system, but I loved it all the same.

Now that I’ve had a chance to play Supreme Commander 2 a bit, I can’t help but notice how severely pared down it is from its original inception. I wonder when I became vogue to start taking formerly complicated games and trimming all of the fat off of them. While this trend has been seeing movement for a while, there is another recent example of a game series that started off as bloated with genre tropes as you can possibly get then got whittled down to the bare essentials: Mass Effect. Like I mentioned in my recent post about the upcoming DLC, I’ve been playing the original and the differences in the inventory and level management system are staggering. The same thing is true with Supreme Commander in that there are no more tech trees and the unit upgrades are managed through a simple interface as opposed to a constant advancement of technology.
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