Under the Knife: Universe at War: Earth Assault

By Kaiserhawk

(More useful than the human race)

Did you know the world is supposed to end in 2012? Well according to Petroglyph it’ll happen via an Alien Invasion. With three different factions battling for the planet, the fate of mankind hangs in the balance. This is Universe at War: Earth Assault

Universe at War is the latest RTS title from Petroglyph, who’s last title was “Star Wars: Empire at war” and it’s expansion. UaW is very similar to EaW in terms of gameplay, mainly due to is running on the same engine. The game offers great graphics, unique factions, and different game modes that will keep a budding general entertained for a while. However like a beautiful rose the game has a number of thorns.

The story behind UaW is that the Alien faction named the Hierarchy has launched an invasion of earth to harvest all worthwhile resources on the planet. However those pesky humans won’t let the Earth fall without a fight, well it’s just too bad that the Hierarchy is WAY more advanced than humanity is and so Earth is on the brink of collapse and humanity is in danger. Mankind needs some kind of miracle. Cue the Novus. The Novus are another faction based entirely on Robot, as their creators were destroyed in a previous Hierarchy conquest and the Novus vowed revenge. To Novus arrive on Earth to defeat the Hierarchy invasion, however it is not in their program to safeguard the interests of humanity. However there is one lone organic among the Novus, a clone of one of their creators named Mirabel. Mirabel feels some connection to humanity and often bend the rules to help protect them. As the game progresses the Hierarchy trigger some kind of ancient alarm system and another Alien faction arrives, or remerges. You see the Masari have been on earth for eons, retreating there after their ancient war with the newly emergent Hierarchy. Also it feels as if we should mention the other faction, the humans. The humans are playable for two missions in the prelude before the arrival of the Novus and way before the reawakening of the Masari. In these two missions you must rescue and safe guard the president of the USA. Humanity can barley stand up against the Hierarchy’s lowest units and at times lose a lot of men just to take down a handful, and while their tanks and Apaches are somewhat effective against these units, they pale in comparison to the Hierarchy’s vehicles, namely Walkers and saucers. Other than these two missions in the beginning, they are a non-playable faction in the others campaign stories.

The three factions are unique and balance, and have a role in which they can excel. For example the Hierarchy are a large tank like faction, in that they are slow but powerful. Given the warlike nature of the Hierarchy they don’t build stationary building but rather large walkers. The walkers can be equipped with a number of different things, which can enable a new unit type or increase the walker’s effectiveness in battle. On the opposite end of the scale are the Novus. These robots prefer a guerrilla style of attack and due to this they can build pylon like structures which, when linked, can transport infantry and resource collectors quickly and easily to flank you opponent. The Masari are something altogether. Due to the nature of their factions being great masters of energy they can toggle between a “light mode” and a “Dark mode” which can be translated to an offensive mode and defensive mode. In Light mode you units deal more damage and have a faster rate of fire, whereas in dark mode your units develop and additional shield that protects them even more from attack, however in dark mode your units move more slower and your air units are grounded and basically act like heavy infantry. Also the Masari are the only faction that don’t have to convert human structures or cars ect into resources but rather build matter generators which gradually build up resources overtime. I my opinion the Masari are the better of the three faction but this is just my opinion.

Graphically the game is well done, the units are detailed and pretty cool. There are just subtle details in the game that impress me for example the swaying of the trees and grass, while not being an important factor into the game it just goes to show that they cared to add in these little details. The best way to get a view of all your units is in the games “Battlecam” which is a feature that you can access by holding the Left trigger and selecting the option in the little menu. However you cannot control this cam unfortunately and at times it doesn’t go to where you wanted it, only going through in a cycle. Which leads me to ask what was the point of implementing this system if you can’t control the camera, or at least choose which unit you want to look at closely. Also the detail and design of the game also is the cause of one of the games biggest weaknesses, which comes in the form of horrible frame rate issues. At times it doesn’t seem so bad, however is you have a large attack force engaging another army it can lead to frustration due to the great slowdown. Petroglyph acknowledges and has come up with way to prevent this such as emptying the 360’s memory cache, but to me this just acknowledges that they screwed up. Another problem I had was with the story itself. While I’m not going to give anything away I’m just going to say that some parts of the story are not very well written and towards the end just felt rushed. The story lead to predictable plot twists which just annoyed me greatly. Also the final strand of the campaign in which you play as the Masari is just abysmal. While the Hierarchy and the Novus get about 7 unique missions the Masari get two and the rest are made up with what feels like skirmish missions, and you have to play about 5 of them to get to the final mission.

Now while the story of UaW may be a bit lacklustre it’s soundtrack is anything but. Frank Klepacki who previously worked on the Command and Conquer soundtracks composed the soundtrack. The Soundtrack does have a C&Cish vibe to it, but is unique and awesome in it’s own right. Some the tracks are essentially remakes of old C&C titles but it doesn’t matter because they are so sweet.

There is one mode in the game that I haven’t mentioned yet but is a highlight of this title, and that is the World conquest mode. Found under the name scenarios, which give you different starting points on the map. You essentially pick one of the three factions you with to play as and annihilate them from the face of the Earth. In this mode you move your heroes fleets to different territories on the globe, while trying to defend your territories from the enemy. What’s different about this is that in most games the globe screen would be turn based. But in UaW it’s all real-time. Different heroes move at different paces, so if a slow inbound fleet is moving in on one of your territories you can rush a hero back to defend it or you can use the hero’s speed to attack the territory in which the invading fleet is coming from, which if successful you prevent the fight on your turf. However my gripe with this mode is that only heroes can move across territories, where as in Petroglyphs Empire at War you could create fleets of ordinary troops to move and attack territories. However this is probably a balance issue and it’s not that big of a deal. This is probably one of the best modes in the game and you could probably lose yourself for hours just trying to conquer the world your race.

While I myself have not tried the Xbox live matches (mainly due to my principles that RTS games usually amount to “who can rush whom” gameplay whereas I prefer to turtle up) it is worth mentioning because it’s one of the only other games which is the new “cross platform support” system in which 360 player can battle with PC players via Xbox live. While this is a great step in that direction I feel that PC players have the edge due to mouse and keyboard support. However since only “Shadowrun” has this cross platform support I felt that it was worth mentioning.

In the end Universe at War: Earth Assault is a pretty good title. While it has issues which frame rate and the story, the “Conquer the world” mode and the ability to play with PC gamers is something that hasn’t been offered to console player before. I would recommend this title to RTS gamers who’s PC can’t run it or to people who played and enjoyed C&C3 on the 360. However I feel that only people who like this type of genre can really enjoy the game.

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