Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: BattleGoat Studios
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista; Pentium III 800 MHz; 512 MB RAM; 3D graphics card with 16MB video RAM; DirectX 8.1; DirectX compatible sound card; CD-ROM drive
Genre: Strategy
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

I’m sure every neighborhood has one — the outspoken political junkie with a chip on his shoulder and an opinion as big as the national debt. “He’s running this country into the ground!” he says, then offers a billion solutions as to how he would handle things if the charge was his. He plants homemade plywood signs in the front yard which ask poignant and pointed questions of the government, as if the president takes his Sunday drives in Ashtabula, Ohio to gather his approval rating. And although some of his ideas are quite sensible, the man will never get to see any of them enacted. It’s kind of sad when you think about it, until BattleGoat studios shows up at the summer barbeque and drops Supreme Ruler 2020 into his lap, uttering a single word — control.

Well, more like “control part deux,” as this is BattleGoat’s second Supreme Ruler game. The first one, released in 2005, was met with favorable reviews and garnered a following tenacious enough to start their own wiki devoted to all things SR2010. For this incarnation, BattleGoat has listened closely to their fans, addressing old issues and improving/expanding/polishing the series with new mechanics, scenarios and attention to detail that throws others in the genre for a well researched loop.

From a first impression standpoint, Supreme Ruler 2020 is advanced beyond its predecessor in almost every way, adding battle and notification sounds, region specific music and perhaps the most noticeable improvement, the NASA supplied world map. (This not only enables players to pan, zoom and zip effortlessly across the entirety of mother Earth, but does so in near-perfect detail, too.) All of that, plus additional graphical touchups like 3D models instead of sprites for military units and facilities make the new face a lot easier to look at.

Yet I must point out that most of the hardcore strategy gaming crowd doesn’t typically go ga-ga over upgraded visuals and audio magic, they want their accuracy, they want their details and they want the ability to control it all, something SR2020 happily obliges. This becomes more apparent when you realize that all of the resources, their abundance and location are all representative of what is actually available in the world today. There’s even a handy filter system that shows where all the goods and their highest concentrations can be found, allowing for total awareness without the need for a geology degree.