Do we have a serious contender to Command & Conquer's RTS crown?
The game's storyline begins with the Earth being under heavy attack from the Hierarchy, an alliance of various conquered alien races who have joined forces in their quest for dominance of the Universe. Just as the human race looks doomed the Novus robots arrive, the Hierarchy's sworn enemy have been tailing them across the Galaxy. The ensuing battle awakens the Masari a race of alien gods that have been hiding out on the Earth for a few Millennia. The main superpowers in the universe go to war on Earth with man caught in the middle fighting for the future of the human race.
All the races are playable and each provides a meaningfully unique play experience, with their own upgrade trees and styles of micro-managing. The Novus forces can apply army-wide "patches" on the fly, changing anything from their rate of resource acquisition to their fire resistance. The Hierarchy lacks traditional bases, operating out of up to three huge walker units; these can be modified with weapons and troop production options on the fly. Lastly, the Masari can switch their entire army from "dark" to "light" at will. The reversible switch gives them the choice between heavy, force-field defended units and faster, flying, farther-sighted units.
The control system for console RTS games has been a real chore for console gamers in the past and really hindered the long term enjoyment of most gamers. But after playing Universe at War you wonder why, all of your units and their powers are a mere button press away instead of layering these incredibly useful selections deep inside sub-menus. This is a real improvement over EA's console RTS control scheme. Brilliantly, the right trigger enlarges the mini-map, giving you camera and command access through the mini-map. Every console-RTS competitor needs to adapt this system.
The graphics are excellent Petroglyph have done a wonderful job of creating iconic, visually interesting armies each having hordes of different buildings/craft to build and control all in crisp HD lovliness.
One problem I did find in some multiplayer battles when the battles got very hectic with hundreds of on screen charcters the frame rate did drop slightly not to unplayable lows but there was a significant fall, I would imagine this point would be patched soon anyhow.
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Add into the mix the ability to play online multiplayer cross platform games against pc owners and in my opinion you have the best console RTS game to date, while it may not convert non fans of the genre Universe At War is a must own for all RTS gamers.
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