Universe at War: Earth Assault

Rating Teen Genre strategy Publisher Sega External Links Official Universe at War Website

Dear Game Developers. I have one simple piece of advice for you, and I've said it time and time again: Stop making RTS games for consoles! When you take the quick and easy to use keyboard and mouse and try to condense those device's input onto a small controller for any system, you are guaranteed to loose a lot of functionality, fluidity, and playability. This of course doesn't stop Sega and Pertoglyph from porting Universe at War: Earth Assault to the Xbox 360.

The game revolves around three factions: the robotic Novus, the Eygyptian-looking Masari, and the slow and purposeful moving Hierarchy. The three factions offer slightly different playing styles but overall don't really stand out from each other. Your choice in what faction you play mostly comes down to aesthetics. One thing that is done well about these factions in that they are well balanced, which is one of the musts for any RTS.

There are several problems for Universe at War: Earth Assault though. The first thing that is noticeable is the graphics. There is no reason that a PC to Xbox 360 port should look so grainy and unfinished. Units are a bit hard to make out form each other. On top of that, when you inevitably have one large army fighting against another, the framerate slows to a crawl. This tends to make gameplay a pain and online play downright unbearable. Of course, controls could be better, but as I said above, this is an issue for all RTS games on consoles. The campaign mode isn't really that interesting, rather simply an extended training exercise to get you to distinguish between the different units in the different factions. AI can be a bit odd at times, and kind of pitiful as well.

From what I have read, it seems that the PC version of the game faired a bit better, with less graphical problems and better online play. I will continue to stand by my belief that a console RTS simply cannot be done properly and Universe at War: Earth Assault is just another reason on top of that pile.