In the campaign you'll notice it at work immediately - replacing the dirty great bar that hogged half your screen and rendering it an entirely cleaner affair. But the principal reason Forged Alliance won't have you reaching for the brown paper bag to de-stress too many times is its revamped and improved UI. The six-mission campaign tosses you right into a massive battle with tons of units at your disposal, which, after the original's slow and drawn-out pacing, is a welcome introduction in itself.
Bizarrely, though, despite the fact that we were slightly unnerved by the somewhat unforgiving learning curve of the original, Forged Alliance manages to provide a much more enjoyable single-player campaign by throwing you straight into the action and scrapping the training wheels entirely. When you're trying to juggle power management and build queues, cover countless front lines and synchronise air, land and sea attacks, the idea of stepping away from the PC to do a day's work at a lumber mill seems like quite an appealing alternative. At Times, Supreme Commander can be bloody hard work.
