Universe At War: Earth Assault
Universe at War: Earth appears to be, at first sight, an attempt to deliver and old style RTS game, with some innovations. Petroglyph developers have introduced three new alien races, two of which never seen before in RTS gaming.
Plot
“And the earth stands on the brink of destruction…” it’s the year 2012 and the alien forces called The Hierarchy have descended upon the planet earth destroying everything in their path. As human force prepare for strikes back, a new mysterious alien force arrives: the Novus. Novus are sentient machines whose only will is to destroy their nemesis, The Hierarchy. The true war begins and suddenly appears, from the oceans a third alien race: the Masari. Aliens who fled to earth millennia ago, during the Hierarchy’s first rise to power. Who’s gonna win the battle?
Races
Surely the most interesting feature of this new game is the introduction of three new alien races. Let’s analyze them:
Novus
A race of sentient machines, Novus employs trickery, hit-and-run tactics and high-tech weapons to defeat their nemesis, The Hierarchy. They build a network node through the entire map, which has the double function of allow them to move quickly forces around and distribute the power energy. Their heroes categories are: The Founder, the leader of Novus who can reconfigure its material shape at will for speed and power when attacking the enemy; Vertigo, is a sentient communications protocol built in a light-weight fighter jet and protected by an advanced cloaking device; Viktor Mirabel, is the clone of last known organic survivor of Novus’ original creator race. Novus units are: Constructor, OHM Robot, Hacker, Variant, Anti-Matter tank, Field inverter, Corruptor and Dervish.
Hierarchy
The Hierarchy is the most powerful force in the entire Galaxy. They scour the map for raw materials while their powerful Walkers war machines destroy everything in their way. Their heroes’ categories are: Orlok the Eternal, is the military commander that invaded the earth with the Hierarchy’s army; Nufai the Skinwalker is a treacherous alien who sold out his home world to the Hierarchy; Kamal Re’X the Adubctor, is the leader of the harvesting operation on earth, he use his mental powers to destroy enemies. Hierarchy units are: Grunt, Lost One, Glyph Carver, Monolith, Saucer, Reaper drone and Phase tank.
Masari
Few but powerful, they wield the power of light and dark energy to save their adopted world. The Masari have the most powerful and expensive units and they can alternate between two modes: light and dark. Their heroes’ categories are: Zessus, the son of queen Altea, who has the power to teleport friendly units across distances and create massive explosions; Lord Charos is the most powerful warrior among the Masari, with his searing aura he can burn nearby enemies; Altea, queen of the Masari, she has the power to disassemble matter. Masari units are: Architect, Disciple, Seer, Sentry, Conqueror, Figment, Inquisitor and Skylord.
Single player
Universe at war single-player campaign follows the traditional campaigns of most RTS games. You begin the game with the Novus race, as the game story becomes more warlike you move onto the Hierarchy. Finally, in the third act, you pick up as the Masari and the game becomes more strategic. You can choose which territory to invade and you can play battles in real-time. It’s not a completely new cliché but it’s surely helps to break the monotony. When you’re done with the campaign, some new scenarios would be unlocked.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer mode is definitely the best feature in Universe at War. In this mode you can explore in deep each faction's advantage and fight against a human opponent. AI intelligence knock you around in minutes if you don’t prepare well battles, but most of the time it don’t has too much variety in tactics. So, facing a human opponent can be very interesting. Universe at war has a standard battle system in LAN mode, but in the online mode you can play with conquer-the-world and try to take over the world by yourself. If you already have an Xbox Live Gold account you can you use it with the PC version of the game, otherwise you have to create a new one (paying for it).
Graphic
Graphically, Universe at war looks pretty good. Units are well done, for example Walkers seem really organic. But nothing special at all, characters have too old polygonal look and generally the game has bland textures. Universe at war supports DirectX 10, but we didn’t notice any reasonable improvement using them. From the other side enabling dx10, the gameplay becomes slow and almost impossible to play even on high end PCs that can run latest games at maximum details. This happens even with all the graphical settings to lowest. For this reason we suggest to play this game in dx9.
Sound
Soundtrack is sufficient but too much repetitive; any race has his own theme, but nothing more. Sound effects during battles are good enough but you’ll quickly realize that they're the same for every single map. No matters where you’ll battle, you’ll hear the same sounds.
Conclusions
Universe at War does his job but, excepting for the three new races created by the developers, it doesn’t introduce anything new to the genre. Petroglyph, developers of the RTS Star Wars: Empire at War, are the same of C&C, so we understand why they used so many old style clichés. |
zsinger - 12/03/2008
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Title: Universe At War: Earth Assault
Platform: PC
Release date: January 2008
Genre: Strategy
Author: zsinger
Vote: 7.6
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Universe at War: Earth appears to be, at first sight, an attempt to deliver and old style RTS game, with some innovations. Petroglyph developers have introduced three new alien races, two of which never seen before in RTS gaming.
Plot
“And the earth stands on the brink of destruction…” it’s the year 2012 and the alien forces called The Hierarchy have descended upon the planet earth destroying everything in their path. As human force prepare for strikes back, a new mysterious alien force arrives: the Novus. Novus are sentient machines whose only will is to destroy their nemesis, The Hierarchy. .... |
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