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Starcraft on Earth

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This RTS title is at heart an updating of Starcraft for the 360. If you played Starcraft for a few thousand hours way back when like I did, it will all be very familiar to you.
You might think it would be unplayable without a mouse on a PC, but they have devised a control system that is fairly workable, the trade-off being research trees and building/unit options that are a little less detailed than you'd like.
Actually, most everything about this game is a trade-off:
It can run slowly even in solo mode when your screen gets filled and complicated, but the unit designs and landscapes are all vastly visually superior to most titles of this type, and you can smoothly zoom in and out of your overhead view to get a good look. You have little control over the marching order and formation of units into battle (which can be really irritating when weaker units constantly run out in front,) but there is also a battle-cam for when you'd like a more exciting view of the action.
The three battling alien forces are unique and all have their own learning curve, though the story missions are very short and can be completed in a day.
But as any Starcraft fan knows it's all about the multiplayer. And even solo scenarios you choose versus AI (outside of the story mode) can last forever if you set them up right. Think of the story mode simply as training. By the time you complete it you will have a good idea how to use all 3 forces and what they are capable of.

This is a timeburner for sure, the trade-offs make this a workable solution for this type of RTS on the 360, and gives me some hope for Civ-Revolutions. I took off one star for the lag I experienced at times (even off-line), and the lack of control over certain things.

[Seeing as the new generation of consoles are basically PC's themselves, someday maybe TPTB will come out with a wireless-mouse equivalent for their products, maybe something like a light pen that you can draw on any surface with, with a button or two. Then they could port all of these games over easily. Why not?]

Pretty decent console RTS from the makers of C&C

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

First off, any game that Petroglyph makes I'm down with. I pre-ordered UAW:EA and I usually don't pay games at the 60 dollar price point but I'm glad I did. These guys are the original C&C fans and they know how to make good in depth RTS games and I love to support such a great team. Unfortunately they sided with Sega which is not a publisher that I would care for. However overall this game is a ton of fun to play and the gameplay is great. The game is well balanced as with no patches at the moment and that is rare for many RTS games. I'd rate this game a 4 out of 5 being great but not perfect.

So a little of the story, Universe at War is a homage to Starcraft with three radically different races, you always feel like you are playing a different custom and culture when you play the Novus, Hierarchy, or Masari. The Hierarchy are an alien race moving from one planet to the next gobbling up the universe of life and now they have invaded Earth. Luckily the Novus are right on their trail and you find out that they have been fighting the Hierarchy for some time now. Later on you find where the Masari come into all of this but I don't want to spoil it for you and it is better to experience the story playing the game.

At first I played the game and had a bit of slow framerate issues and it happened to lock up on me twice. Then after checking out online references I found that there was a fix to this. In order to get smooth uninterrupted gameplay you have to clear your cache on your hard drive and turn up tactical speed, (speed when fighting in matches) which is located in the options menu of the game. After doing these two techniques, wow, the game runs smoothly and has never locked up on me since and I can't complain. A patch is in the works to fix a few things like allowing hackers to auto defend areas they are set to, fix the framerate issues from the start and mainly to add in the cross-platform playability.

One really nice feature here is how they made a PC RTS play and work on a console. The 360 controls are very intuitive but may be a bit of a learning curve to understand. The basics are the same, press A to select unit(s) and press A again to move them to that position. You can hold down the Right Trigger and this will blow up your map so you can see details and also allow you to order units using the minimap. I don't know how many PC games don't let you do this and it's a must in any RTS. Also all of your units are grouped in the beginning, all one type infantry, all one type anti-inf vehicles, anti-building vehicles, this type air units and your hero. It is all grouped for you so you don't have to make groups of similar units as you do in my PC RTS games or click and drag to select your army. The bumpers are used to select your research and your army. The LB allows you to scroll through the UAW themed circular interface to see what patch or upgrade you want to implement, what research you want to do, what super weapon ability you want to use. Accordingly the RB allows you to scroll through a similar interface and pick grouped units, the ones that have been grouped for you, and to also deselect those units. One advanced feature I found out was if you select all your units on the map and then hold down the RB and place the screen over the units you don't want, say units defending your base, and hit X you will deselect these units but not all of that unit type. Most of the people I've talked to about this game didn't know that and I find it is crucial to a good microing of your army. The controls are taught to you as you play the campaign so don't just jump into skirmish mode and think you can play.^^

Visually the game looks great, the graphics are top notch and you would have to have a high system PC to run it at the settings it is set for the Xbox 360. There are plenty of explosions and lush environments to make playing this on your TV or LCD monitor, (I play on the big TV in the living room and also on an extra LCD monitor in the den) a blast to look at. In audio terms, fans of Frank Klepacki can take a sigh of relief as the composer creates a slew of great sounding tracks for each race and the game uses an adaptive music system so it will change on the fly when you attack the enemy or it attacks you. I was really disappointed with C&C3 due to the repetitive dull environmental music they composed for it but you have the great electronic rock and roll sound you have come to love from Frank Klepacki in Universe at War. Also the game's voice overs are done well and the many other audio sounds of the game add great depth and feel to each race.

At the moment we're all waiting for Sega to ok the patch to allow cross-platform play as well as many other needed tweaks but overall the game is very fun to play and the amount of gameplay really adds to this fun. Playing as the Novus with their flow conduits and guerrilla warfare, the Hierarchy and their enormous Walkers that act as their movable assault bases, or the Masari with their enormous potential to harness nature and switch between light and dark mode all feel very different and not just different unit skins for each race. There is a 90 unit population cap, similar to Warcraft 3, and this is set in place to make games playable on the console, (the PC version also has the same pop cap) but to employ a good amount of strategy for the player to decide how and which units to use against their opponent be it AI or human. I can't really talk about the multiplayer as this option is not available to me due to the lack of broadband options for me, (only one I have is satellite which doesn't work well with games) but this game was created to be played against humans and with the real time strategy in mind. The single player allows you to play through the campaign of each race and to attempt to "Conquer the World", where you are taking place in a real time game of "RISK" fighting over one territory after the next. You also are given the typical skirmish matches with a ton of maps to choose which I haven't even delved into but will probably as I finish the scenarios conquering the world. Did I mention achievements yet?! lol

So overall this isn't the console RTS that will make people say yea this can be done on the console. It had a pretty rough start and the fact that when you make your units move to the location on the map the fastest by doubling clicking A, (instead of just hitting A), and your units move to that spot but don't stop and pursue any enemies on the way can cause some unrest in a few gamers. Personally I'm good a micromanaging since I've played RTS games on my PC from Dune 1 and it should be said that vehicles and air units will attack on the way but infantry will not. Really the game is a ton of fun to play, the controls are great and allow you to micro on a console, playing RTS games on your big TV are great, and the soundtrack for the game keeps you pumped and motivated to defend or take over Earth! Hope you enjoyed my review or it gave you a bunch of important info on the game. Don't take my word for it, give it a rent, you'll be glad you did.

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