Universe At War: Earth Assault Review (PC)

Something old,Something new…

Everyone remembers how they felt when the first X Men film came out. We all saw the potential in the franchise, recognised the muted genius, but ultimately thought we weren’t quite seeing what the promise was living up to. Only after the second film could we go back and judge it fairly.

Welcome to Universe at War.

It’s certainly a recommended title, it just needs more

There’s not really a “Universe” here to speak of: The action all takes
place on Earth. And you don’t even get to play as humans, as three rival species from distant corners of the galaxy choose our planet as their battleground. Humanity, for the record, is apparently outclassed by each race in every respect. It seems even local knowledge doesn’t account for all that much. Take that, Tony Robinson.

Each of the three factions varies wildly in ideas and execution, one of the games real strong points. The Hierarchy borrows extensively from War of the Worlds, huge walkers and an emotionless, borg-like desire to destroy everything the meet without prejudice. My kind of people.

The Novus, however, combine anime style mech warriors with swarms of
humanoid, “I, Robot” style soldiers who gang up en mass and overwhelm
the stronger Hierarchy units. They are the most conventional, base
building kind of faction and the starting point for most players.

Finally, and perhaps most bizarrely, we have the Masari, a kind of
techomage, druidic band of futuristic knights who form a rather complex blend of “light and dark” gameplay to offer depth to the patient and something new to the experience. Their gameplay is really the most experimental, having to flip each unit between defensive and offensive tactics on the fly, which can require a lot of micro-management as units attributes vary wildly for each.

This game comes, as the title would suggest, from the developers of the Star Wars game Empire at War. Here we find the same engine, tweaked somewhat but suffering sadly from a camera zoom that’s just a little too close for some of the truly mammoth units. Animations are slick and the sound effects can, at times, be really impressive.

The game is highly polished and casual fans of the rts genre should find it scratches the itch. But the problem is there’s no long term depth.The single player campaign is extremely linear and not very hard. The global campaign mode is much better, reminiscent of the UFO series of games or perhaps Command and Conquer, but there’s no long term research tree. All research is done on the fly during each mission, which doesn’t really make much sense.

As a multiplayer game, this ceases to be a problem, and it’s here that UAW really comes through. But still you get the feeling there aren’t quite enough units to back up what’s there. It’s certainly a recommended title, it just needs more.

There’s a wealth of potential that the opening cinematic, one of the
best there’s ever been, whets the appetite for the kind of battles thatnever quite materialise. Another tech level on each side and it might have been different.

Expansion pack, please. And some proper research trees. Then,dear Petroglyh, you’ll get your 9/10.