Summary
They tried to cook a sweet cake, but a bitter one it was.
The Good
Although is an extended opinion that SP is confusing, I found the interface is easy to handle and can take you where you want in one or two clicks. The game offers a wide array of options to manage your country, from economy and politics to military and secret operations; technological research is also present. The game also lets you design military units through and abstract system based on tech levels. Given that, at first glance this title seems to provide an enjoyable and deep strategic gaming experience.
The Bad
However, the dark underground caverns of Superpower are hardly enjoyable to visit. The game is abstract, too abstract; a true piece of dry ice. Most of the time, all your tasks are reduced to pay attention at bars and indexes, or adjusting them in some obscure way; obscure, because it’s difficult to get some feedback from the game: you really don’t know the exact results of your actions; sure they had some impact, but you aren’t informed. This is particularly true when speaking of civil technological advancements: you set some funding to an area, and supposedly it is improved… but you don’t know when and how much. This makes the player think if his/her actions really serve a purpose or not, and if he/she is really managing or controlling something or simply sitting and watching the show.
And for deepness… Superpower is supposed to be a deep game, but leaves many areas unexcavated. To name examples: diplomacy cannot be set aside in a simulation like this, but unfortunately options are reduced at most to make/break some treaties: no options like “stop attacking that country” or “support us against that country”. Pressure on foreign governments is abstracted, again, to a slider bar. The game does not include cultural or religious factors and their impact both internal and on international affairs, save perhaps starting relations between nations. Pollution and contamination aren’t covered, except as a result of nuclear strikes.
Strategic warfare is perhaps one ot the most annoying areas, as to invade a country you have only to move troops there: terrain, borders… don’t matter; you simply move them like pieces in a boardgame. Well, to be honest, this was corrected in a patch, but to make such a decision for the initial design tells nothing positive about a designer.
But the worst part are bugs: tons of them, and of all colors and tastes. To date, four patches (maybe five, can’t remember) and still many of them. Some simply forget to betatest, as out of the box the game was unplayable. And I mean unplayable.
The Bottom Line
Before SP was released, few games were covering modern-time strategy at a global level (as far as I know); Shadow President and Balance of Power come to mind, and saw the light in 1994 and 1985 respectively. SP tried to fill a long-time void in the genre, but an army of bugs and questionable design blocked its way to success. Since it seems an SP 2 is planned, your best bet is waiting for it and see if SP developers have learnt the lesson (or check it if at the time you read this review it’s been released ;) ). But SP 1 is an amateur work, and a mediocre one.
