Universe at War: Earth Assault
Platform: Xbox 360, PC
Publisher: Sega
FingerSports Rating: 2/5
‘Pew Pew Laser Beams’
Right, like many of you (I’m sure), I can’t wait for the new Aliens Vs Predator game. I’ve really enjoyed the series and hope this new title won’t disappoint! So I’ve pre-ordered it via Steam out of laziness and habit. For some reason, they’re giving away some RTS I’ve never really paid any attention to with it. Universe at War: Earth assault. Um, well that’s nice.
After a bit more time playing MW2 I got distracted enough to install it. So, here goes: The game is about some resource hungry aliens called the Hierarchy coming to earth and-in true war of the worlds style-lasering everything to death and stomping around in bloody great walking robots. Humanity puts up a stubborn and brave resistance, but we don’t really do much but die really well. Then ‘TA-DAA’ some robotic goodies designed by an alien race arrive to help us and give the Hierarchy a kicking. These robots-the Novus-are basically an anime fans wet dream, but they fail quite badly and the people from Atlantis (the Masari) have to rise from the deep to save earth. They’re also Aliens. Sort of. Total bollocks story then.
Visually the game is ok, some decent explosions and lots of death rays, the super weapons look impressive and destruction of the environment is cool. The races look very different and impressive:
The Novus units being very sci-fi and mostly glowing blue, their shield tech looks nice and their structures are easy on the eye. They are nothing special really. Any 14 year old anime kiddie could probably follow that description and draw most of their units without seeing the game.
The Masari (Atlantians) are quite nice, their structures are ziggurat like golden structures that light shines out of every crack The units are suitably ‘ancient race’ like and seem to have varying Aztec influences. In particular I like the vehicles; they remind me of chariots crossed with battle tanks.
But the stars of the show are the Hierarchy. Their unit production structures are actually massive walkers, so they can stomp across the map spitting radiation and plasma death in all directions. They are well animated; look evil and their death animations are great! Not much to say for the Hierarchy infantry or vehicles though, but they do have cool tripod walkers that turn people into zombies. The show was well and truly stolen by the walkers. Stomp.
The games single player is passable, some fairly difficult missions and archetypically poor script. There are a series of world domination modes that are good fun, but level design seems to be a case of scribbling frantically on a bit of post it, then eating that post it and vomiting on a scanner to see roughly how the map should look. I can’t understand how randomly located resources are.
But these quibbles aside, it really is a good game. The controls are possibly over simplified for my liking, the units are fairly balanced and the game flows quite well. The super-weapons are pretty filthy, but I hate super weapons/units in RTS games anyway, I think that powerful weapons are one thing, but a game winning single gay unit is just not skilled. That said, the super-weapons take a while to charge and are not that hard to destroy (given the right opportunity anyway!). Even the massive Hierarchy walkers are not very difficult to bring down, especially if attacked early in the game before they can be upgraded much.
There are some issues that I can’t forgive though:
Allowing infantry to be run down by vehicles in a game like this is just ridiculous. There’s no option to order troops to scatter (good old c&c had that one) and they don’t even try to save themselves (like Company of Heroes, where it was possible just very difficult to run troops down). What makes this such an arse of an issue is that your troops automatically form up into nice looking formations when ordered to move, a good touch that allows you to move slow and quick troops together easily. These nice formations allow a single enemy tank to very easily take out dozens of infantry with a single move – now when this vehicle costs less that two infantry this slews the game too heavily in favour of the vehicles. There’s just no point in using infantry against the Masari; they will run them over with their super-fast cheapo chariot cars.
Also, there is a fairly redundant ‘research’ element to the game. They actually tote this as one of the games major differences from other games and a big selling point. Now, lets see why it’s not. Global researches allow unit unlocks and abilities, as well as various other enhancements. You are limited to 6 out of 12, but can ‘sell’ them back to change your tree at any time. Kind of like, you know, building advanced unit structures in any other RTS. Or purchasing a unit upgrade at a barracks/science facility. Or taking a certain command chain. Essentially the only thing they’ve done is to put a restriction on your total tech, but a restriction that you can shift around if you’ve got the cash. I should also add at this point that practically none of the super-weapons need any research. You just build up to them.
AI. RTS games can stand or fall on the strength of AI for skirmish games and single player. This game seems totally schizophrenic when it comes to computer control, the ‘easy’ game setting offers very few challenges even to someone who’s never played the game. Good, that’s why it’s called ‘Easy’. Medium on the other hand, is fractured. Some maps the AI will fall on its face and you can walk all over it, sometimes though it will just flatten you.
Finally for me, there is a crippling mistake. They’ve included ‘hero’ units. FFS didn’t anyone learn that hero’s are for single player campaigns and RPG titles. They range from useless to ridiculous, and *shock-horror* they need researching. Also, they can’t be resurrected (which I agree with) but that means you can’t really centre battle plans on them-they’re too fragile. You’ll have more fun if you play with a mate and both agree not to use them.
For a game with so many great moments, it is nearly killed by it’s moments of sheer retardedness. Let me just say that I will recommend it to people, (especially since it’s free if you get pre-ordering on steam!) and that you can have some good fun with it.
Its great fun to play with some mates, I suspect it will be less enjoyable and competitive online. Universe at War: Earth Assault is a quite well made game, with great idea and some really inventive touches. In an ideal world it would borrow more heavily from Total Annihilation, but it is what it is and I can only hope that any further titles in this game are as fun and infuriating.
I really appreciate that you put this effort into such a mundane title.. that is dedication haha. Keep it up.