User Reviews (1 - 11 of 25)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Forget the rules...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: April 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is what you need to do to appreciate this game:

FORGET ALL THE ESTABLISHED RULES OF MAINSTREAM GAMES!!!

Done that? Good.

Now, the most important thing to remember is to read the manual before you begin. That is what it is for. Unlike most (if not all) other games, the manual actually performs a function. Funnily enough, it tells you how to play the game.

Secondly, make sure you have the latest patch (which, contrary to 'a gamer from Portland', you are not required to register to download. I know this because I downloaded it BEFORE I registered). This will fix many of the reported issues, most of which are there due to development time constraints.

Thirdly, do not expect to just jump in this game and start blasting alien scum within ten minutes. If you do, you will hate this game and, unfortunately, have bought the wrong game for your particular tastes. You will need to spend time learning the control system and basically getting the 'feel' of the game.

Once you have done all this, however, you end up with a game that gives you a LOT. Certainly in the Roam mode, you are basically in the middle of an entire virtual universe where you can do just about anything. Whilst you are encouraged towards combat (as the name would suggest), you can just as easily become a peaceful explorer, trader or miner. What is rather unique about this game, and a very good thing, in my opinion, is the complexity. In most spacey type games, there is no real distinction between your ship and you. In this, you actually play a character as opposed to a ship, so, for example, you can send your AE (Alter Ego, your game character) into a shuttle, launch from your battlecruiser and use the shuttle to do some trading whilst you order your battlecruiser to attack an enemy starbase. The most complex I've had it (so far) is, on a planet, having a naval group giving covering artillery fire to a detachment of infantry marines assaulting a planetary base backed up by armoured cavalry whilst, at the same time, in space, having my carrier class ship attacking a starbase with support from two battlecruiser escorts and using its fighter wings as a guard against enemy reinforcements entering the system whilst my AE was using a shuttle to trade to raise some money and having a couple of drones on a planet doing some mining.

There are some negative points. The first is that yes, the graphics do look a LITTLE dated, but unlike most modern games, it is the gameplay that makes this game, not flashy graphics.

Secondly, there are quite a few bugs, but these are being worked out as I type. This is the only thing that makes me say that unless you are quite patient, you maybe shouldn't buy it....yet. On the other hand, if you are not quite patient, you are not going to enjoy this game anyway, as it requires an investment in time and brain-power to get the most of.

In conclusion, I would say this is a game you would either love with a passion, or loathe with a passion. If you like highly in-depth, complex games that give a lot of satisfaction if you give it an investment of time and energy, you are probably going to be the former.

A complex blend of simulation, strategy, & imagination

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 15
Date: February 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Despite the political problems between the developer and publisher of this title 3000AD has managed to produce a well polished product.

My personal feelings towards this type of title is that it divides the game playing audience into two categories:

1) Those who like flashy graphics and a lot of action and want to sit and be entertained for a couple hours.

2) Those who enjoy a more long term and strategic experience and who want drawn out gameplay.

UC delivers both oddly enough. You can enjoy the instant action scenarios as a marine or fighter pilot and get a quick adrenaline fix. Or if you decide that you want to engage in a larger scale game than you can pursue careers as a ship commander for example. Either way you going to be entertained proportionally to the time you spend playing. To me this is the correct formulae for a successful game.

Graphics and sound in this game are very good and it is refreshing to be able to max out the graphics settings on a new title and still achieve a great framerate. Another nice change is that space feels roomy personally I found X2: The Threat actually gave me a sense of claustrophobia, which is an emotion one should not feel in SPACE.

There is a learning curve associated with this title but there are a few caveats to this. First if you want to play the FPS part the controls are no more difficult than any other FPS. Second, the Battlecruiser part of the game from a perspective of controlling your ship is no more difficult than X2:Threat. The real challenge comes in terms of managing your ship from a tactical and economic standpoint. This is what separates a novice that has played this title for a few hours from an expert that has really spent some time digging into the details.

The manual for this game is actually printed and over 10 pages in length ļ The trend these days has been to save publishing costs by making PDFs of the manual. A practice that drives me insane because I need a manual in front of me while I try playing. I am sick of buying a $50 dollar game and a $40 inkjet cartridge to print the manual. There is plenty of online documentation that details all of the objects that are represented in the game. PC career choices, manual revisions, story, and control details are also included as a set of easily printed hyperlinked webpages.

I have owned this game for 2 days and have played it more than X2 & Freelancer combined. For $20 the value per dollar of this game is very high. From a moral point of view I feel the developer did a better than $20 dollar job.

I will leave it to others to do a more technical review.

In summary this is a niche title and like an independent film you are going to either love or hate this game. One thing I can guarantee you is that as an "indie" game the developer has made design choices that are unorthodox when compared to a mainstream title. Like an "indie" film director these choices reflect a more risky and artistic statement rather something that a marketing firm has deemed safe and appealing.

Looks Very Interesting

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 19
Date: February 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The only Battlecruiser game I ever played was Battlecruiser Millenium. Universal Combat is the next game in that series, but the name was changed to kind of reintroduce the concept to the public.

Universal Combat will allow you to do a wide variety of things. You can fly and manage space ships, land on one of the numerous planets, drive around the planet or walk around, and blow up buildings on the planet. Planet surfaces in BCM where very! dull. In UC at least they have added some vegatation and animals to planet surfaces.

The multiplayer could be what makes this game really worth playing though. A multiplayer add on was supposed to be released for BCM but never was. This upset some people, including me. But UC is supposed to have multiplayer right out of the box!

I certainly hope the first person elements in UC are alot stronger then in BCM. Even if it was nothing more then a more fancy version of BCM, he added features, updated graphics, and multiplayer make this game a steal...

A great game, tons of stuff to do.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 13
Date: February 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Well, I picked up UC day of release and after playing it for many hours, I am prepared to write my "official" review on the game. So, here goes:

General/Summary: This game is huge. There is so much to do and so many ways to do it. Even playing for 15+ hours I have not even scratched the surface of all I can do and see. I have played as a Commander on a large Star-Cruiser, a small fighter pilot and a ground force Marine, and I am enjoying all facets. Being able to fight a small armada above a planets surface, then take the fight down to the ground is alot of fun and quite immersive.

Gameplay: As was said there is alot to do, which is great, the downside to this, however, is a very steep learning curve. Be prepared to invest a few hours learning the interface before you feel comfortable engaging multiple targets. Unlike some others, I do not feel the interface is bad, just complex. This doesn't bother me, in fact I view it has a challenge and it actually increases the immersion of the whole experience.

Graphics: The space graphics are great. The ships show plenty of detail and the planets, stars and nebulae are very pretty and well done. The planets, once you enter the atmoshere, are well done from altitude but start to show some problems as you get closer to the ground. At ground level they are pretty good, but not as good as most modern day FPS graphics. I have no problem with this as the size of the game and the amount you can do more than compensate for a lack of detail in visuals at ground level.

Sound: Sound is well-done, although sparse as you might expect from a space sim. The few voices are all well done, as are the sounds of blasters. Nothing to truly complain about, although I think the FP weapons could use a "meatier" sound, but that is just a personal preference. The music is very good and goes along with the feel of the game well.

Bottom Line: A very good game, has an immersion that I have found lacking in X2 and Freelancer. While some of the graphics are not as good as the above titles, and the interface has a high learning curve, the amount to see and do more than makes up for it. I heartily recommend the title for anyone looking for a very good space sim.

Double Check System Requirements!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: February 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Idiotically, I assumed that my computer had everything necessary to run this program. I've never had a problem with any other program until now; Vertex Shader 1.1 did me in.

Unfortunately, unless your video card supports Vertex Shader 1.1, you're wasting your money. According to the UC Forum, there is absolutely nothing you can do short of buying a new video card.

...

There is, finally, a tutorial!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: August 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The latest patch (2.12, from early August 2004) includes, in the 'docs' folder, a 60-page PDF which leads you by the hand, step-by-step, and shows all that this rather amazing piece of programming is capable of. As a game, it's not to everyone's tastes, to be sure, and the interface still needs major cleanup, but it's not terrible, either.

Oh, and you DO have to register to be able to download the patch. 3000AD had to send me a new registration code in order to be able to register (the one on the manual didn't work). A pain in the ass, right? Well, cat@3000ad.com responded with hours of my emails, and I was up and running with the new patch and tutorial in hand 24 hours after I had bought the game. Much better service than I normally expect from a game company, I must say.

At the $19.95 street price, if you're interested in exploring one man's quixotic dream of what the ultimate computer game can be, you won't regret it. Just print out that tutorial first...

Oh what could have been

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Universal Combat could have been the best thing since sliced bread. The scope of the game is absolutely unreal. You can pilot a capital ship, opt for a fighter, cruise around in a transport, defend ground installations in a tank, man a SAM silo, orchestrate combined-arms attacks on enemy installations and much more. On top of that, many of these things can be done in a single saved game. A single character can pilot both large and small craft (in space, air and ground) with relative ease and continuity. This flexibility and diversity of available options could have made for a thrilling game that seamlessly and elegantly rolled together all imaginable forms of combat (from hand-to-hand to cap-ship to cap-ship and any other intermittent combination). Unfortunately, every individual aspect of the game is sub-par (or at the very best, average).

Space-borne ops are the most clearly developed, but even then the design, balancing and interface have a greater affinity for the author's own idiosyncratic preferences than any standard principles of human-computer interaction. While there is an elegant continuity between the capship, fighter and shuttle aspects of the game, there is a haphazard restriction on capabilities between ships and many common activities made difficult by an unnecessarily complex or restrictive procedures. Personnel/Security management abroad the capship is interesting, but actions get bogged down in a clunky UI.

Planetside operations are not very well developed at all. There is tremendous breadth on even a single planet, but not a great deal of depth. Many city structures serve no other purpose than to take up space, and while attacking a defended city may be challenging, the lack of interactivity with different parts of the city leaves one with a "why did I bother" feeling. Complex, ground-based operations are disappointingly difficult due to the idiosyncratic UI - while you can plan a complex op, changing strategy in the middle is absolutely unwieldy. The first-person mode is unforgivably weak, playing more like something from 1996 than anything modern.

The quality of Universal Combat is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The connection, combination and continuity between the different elements is awe-inspiring. However, when I played this game, I experienced each individual part in succession rather than "the whole," and the aforementioned flaws in each individual part make gameplay frustrating as you go from one shortcoming to the next. The game's steep learning curve (a sure sign of pride amongst BC3k fans) is partly a natural consequence of the game's scope and complexity, but mostly due to the game's idiosyncratic design and clunky interface.

It's bad...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've played computer games for about 20 years, and this game is by far the most difficult to play. The 91 page manual is vague and does a very poor job of explaining how things are done. The 69 page PDF tutorial manual that I got with the 2.0019 patch cleared things up a bit. However, the interface is still nonintuitive, filled with three letter acronyms like PDF, and mainly for people who have memorized the reading material.
The gameplay itself is somewhat better. On the ground, it's a simple first person shooter that can be a bit fun if you know how to get into empty vehicles. I haven't seen any navies yet. Air combat is like a simplified flight simulator, but it's fun to shoot things. Flying a capital ship in space is very time consuming. It takes so much time to fly anywhere. Hyperspace jumps that shorten your trips take 2-4 minutes. The game desperately needs but doesn't have time compression. Repairs and crew recuperation require over 10 minutes of real time. The game designer wrote that it's best to do stuff like watching paint dry while waiting and waiting.
I gave it two stars instead of one because I do enjoy the times when I blow up the bad guys' spaceships and fighters. There is a large area of space to explore, and I like trying to increase my commander's level the same way I like trying to get the highest level in massive online role playing games. It's also somewhat emotionally rewarding when I finally figure out how to do stuff like order a shuttle to land a tank on a planet.

Universal Waste of Time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 46 / 49
Date: February 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Having played (and really having come close to liking) every game in the Battlecruiser series and having followed the development of Battlecruiser Generations, I thought perhaps this time around Derek Smart and company might get it right. But, alas, it was not to be.

Being a devoted grognard, traditional wargamer, and military studies aficionado, I can tolerate a steep learning curve and less than obvious interface, all plastered over a hardcore simulation. But Universal Combat failed to live up to any of the developers' promises or my expectations. Thank god the publisher had the presence of mind to realise this was a budget title. If Derek Smart had his way, I'd be about $29.95 more ticked that I bought this game.

Right from the rocky start just trying to get the program installed, to the option controls that don't respond or revert to previous settings, I realised I had been promised a ship and a star to sail her by but had chugged off in a lemon once again. And then the game continued to perform like a "champ" throughout, frequently crashing, misplacing interface elements, and otherwise dying in its own misery.

The game manual is as convoluted as all the other battlecruiser titles, riddled with acronyms whose definitions are buried in pages and pages of small type. There is some semblance of organization to the thing, but the biggest problem is that there is no connection between using the bogglingly complex interface and actually accomplishing something with the systems simulated in the game.

As in the more poorly executed Battlecruiser Millenium, the ground, sea, and air combat modes seem to be included as pure gloss. None of these modes function well or gave me any reason to come back for more. Most annoying was the complete absence of any sense of physics, especially on the ground. I've seen graphics driver demos with more realism.

To Dreamcatcher's credit, the graphics are far superior to any other game in the Battlecruiser series. However, the problem is that Dreamcatcher seems to be developing all the graphics for games in the series with a 2-4 year shift back in time. While occasionally pretty, I couldn't help feel that I was playing an old game, even though the brand new box was sitting right on my desk.

The ultimate flaw in the game itself was the total absense of any sense of progress. After many crushing engagements where my ship (pick any class, type, or purpose) was routinely destroyed before having built up enough resources to repair it or refit, I began to succeed in ship to ship combat. But beyond that, there was absolutely no sense of having any kind of impact on the game world. It seems the game developer expects one to gain a sense of accomplishment from figuring out the game interface and pretending one is involved in some kind of greater conflict. The convoluted campaigns seem to have no ultimate point. While you can, as promised, go anywhere you like and do whatever you want within the large scope of the game, what you do matters little and has no identifiable outcome. There is nothing to draw one in on any side or measure effect; playing one ship, exploring a planet, or fighting any one battle is pretty much like another, and none of these gives any sense of having accomplished anything.

The final straw for me was the developer's support. Let's get this out right now: Derek Smart is mad at the publisher for cutting the price of his game, so his development team is not going to support it. The site is filled with Derek's diatribes talking this game up as being the biggest masterpiece of mixed gameplay, massive scope, and rewards for everyone, and explains how angry he is that his work of art is not universally loved and appreciated except by his fans who understand him and what he is trying to do. In place of support, he condescendingly criticizes those who say anything different or can't solve their own problems. The theme here is that it is not the game or the developer who have failed; it is everyone else - the players, the publisher, the market. Don't expect to find a solution to Universal Combat's myriad problems here.

Bottom line: This game could have filled a niche that is empty in the industry - a game with huge scope, complexity, and challenge extending beyond mere shoot-em up. Instead, this game is a barely functional shell that promises everything but delivers little.

When Good Ideas are done shoty

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: February 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've been watching the progress of Universal Combat for a long time. Now that i finally have it i can say this. If you are looking for a stable well put together game that mixes planetside and freelancer, you will be thourghly sadened.

No one will like this game. Those that like the slower pace of the BattleCrusier Games, you will find that this game is unplayable. The game is buggy and terrible.

I know the amazon blerb says physics engine but this is not true. There are animations for the deaths, not physics based, and more importanly, the game has no way for you to go into bases. There is no crash ditection! your character can "go through" bases, trees, vehicles, its terrible.

The graphics are way past dated. They resemble Quake 2. The information that you see long distance about objects ubstructs the screen. The text has a background so you can't see verywell.

The learning curve is off the roof, this is hampered by the fact that alot of things don't work properly. When colliding with anything your character lays down. And if you go through something, you start to sink into the floor.

This is the shottiest game i have ever seen.

Idea wise its great, but the steap learning curve and gameplay issues kill this game.

Alot of the originally proposed ideas from Battle Cruiser Generations never made it in. The half assed job done by 3000AD is evident when you start the game and the startup image is of Battle Cruiser Generations, not universal Combat.

Please do not get this game, your throwing your money away!! Get the demo from 3000ad.com and try that, if for somereason you like it then get the game. But for those looking for a tribes/planetside/freelancer crossover game don't get this!!

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions