Universe at War: Earth Assault

Gameplay

So, the story is run of the mill in many regards; we’ve got a whole load of radically different aliens going head to head across the globe and their backgrounds and specialities cover the usual gamut of tech, magic and zombies.

Discard all that; it isn’t all that important. What is important in any real-time strategy is the gameplay; how good the interface is, how balanced the teams are and how decent your objectives are. Story and narrative, as proved by the tolerated cheesiness of the Command and Conquer series, is really only a secondary concern.

It’s a good thing then that Universe at War: Earth Assault plays so fluidly and the game really is excellently made.

For starters, the interface is fantastic and really easy to use. The tactical display is kept to a minimum and players can issue orders using the minimap on the bottom of the screen to save time navigating the level as a whole. If you’ve got several platoons of infantry that you want to divide up and send to different corners of the map then it’s only ever a case of selecting them and right clicking where on the map you want them stationed.


Using the tactical display to build and position units is easy too and the game uses a HUD along the bottom of the screen with icons for every unit or building that can create more units, this forms an expanding tree of construction options that can easily be shrunk down when not needed.

Each of the sides, which are unlocked as you progress through the campaigns one by one, are extremely well balanced and fine-tuned too, both in single and multiplayer matches.

Each side has its own advantages and disadvantages, just as you’d expect. Novus troops can zip around the map really quickly by dematerialising and travelling along ‘the flow’, which is the system they use to power buildings and maintain supply lines. The Masari on the other hand can freely switch units between light and dark energy modes, one of which gives troops faster movement but less health and the other the opposite.

As usual, learning how to use and abuse the special abilities of your side is key to winning in Universe at War and most units have their own special abilities too – these are helpful for turning the tide of a battle. The skills can range from useful offensive and defensive abilities, such as missile barrages and sniper attacks, to the fairly pointless Vertigo ability to move upload and download units to different locations on the map – something that serves only to put your heroes at risk.


Heroes play an important part in the game too and each faction in the game has three heroes at their disposal. These heroes play vital parts in the story of each faction and are deemed critical to the game – in other words it's game over if one of them dies. That fact can be awfully restrictive at points and it's frustrating sometimes not being able to use your most powerful unit in a big battle just in case they take a few too many missiles to the face, but it does at least give the game a constant sense of tension.

The missions themselves in the campaign mode are the bog standard and not a lot more. The objectives are never dull, but they rarely stand out – let's face it, once you've done one escort mission you've done them all and there's only so many ways that designers can disguise the fact they want you to blow up the enemy base.

Unfortunately, there's another area where Universe at War falls down to the standard drudgery of the genre and that’s in the sound department. Not only does the game have a mild heavy-metal soundtrack that oscillates in at the most annoying of moments. Also, just as has proven to be the case with virtually every RTS game ever, listening to your troops constantly sound off when you click on them is aggravating to say the least – except now they say some really stupid things to, like "That's a good direction" when you tell them to march pointlessly to their deaths.