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A Universe at War Review
I am a avid RTS fan ever since the father of all, the original DUNE by WESTWOOD. And I have played most of them, from the COMMAND & CONQUER and AGE OF EMPIRE series to the SUPREME COMMANDER and WORLD AT CONFLICT action-oriented approaches. Under this light, UNIVERSE AT WAR was weighted and measured - and found lacking.
Graphically it is comparable to C&C-TIBERIUM WARS, with the explosions, and toxic clouds more impressive than the units. The later are a bit cartoonist - but, one could argue that this adds to clarity. Zooming-in is adequate, whereas, contrary to SUPREME COMMANDER (where zooming out turns the game to a combat of ...colored tiles), UaW retains its battlefield feeling even if all zoomed out. Later into the campaign game (and similar to EMPIRE EARTH 3 and RISK) there is also a tactical overview map in which troops get moved, territories claimed and super-weapons get launched.
RTS games are sensitive to faulty faction balancing: UaW suffers no such problems. There are three factions: the Hierarchy, the Novus and the Masari - all alien (yeah, the humans are toast). Every faction has its unique units (with their own strengths and weaknesses) and research bonuses. There are 12 technologies available (across three tech-trees), but one can have...only six of those available at a time (luckily these options are editable).
Where the game looses its first rating star is its buggy gameplay: units are slow to get assigned into groups, they seem reluctant to follow orders and there is no way to set up patrol paths for sentries. All very annoying during a fast-paced Real-Time strategy game! On this note, one cannot help but mention (once...more) the AI cheating: no matter where one decides to hide his base and how stealthy his units are, the AI opponent will find them out and pound them with a disproportionate number of firepower.
Multiplayer is through Microsoft-LIVE - a more than spectral manifestation of the usual corporate greed: in order for all the game features to be available online, one has to pay for a Gold...subscription. In effect, buying a game that is advertised to include a multiplayer will only get you far LESS than a complete onLine game. Thus, justifiably, the second rating star was withheld for the lack of half the multiplayer game.
Universe at War is half the game for half the fun is an article about
Universe At War,
submitted or written by or about
Anonymous, posted to Zergwatch on 03/27/2008. It
has an article popularity score of 213 and a rating of
0.00 out of 5. Other similar topics on Zergwatch include:
StarCraft,
Universe At War
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