Certain games scream cliché from a mile off. Games like Command and Conquer or Crysis. The moment the game starts you know exactly how things will pan out and except for perhaps the occasional twist along the way nothing surprises you. Universe at War suffers from the same malady, at least on the surface. But beneath the predictable storyline and "generic aliens invade earth scenario" lies a hidden depth that just might pull the game out of the grim waters of mediocrity. That is if certain design blunders don’t make it fall short!

War of the Worlds: Part 314

The story, full of clichés as it may be actually takes a slightly different approach than most other strategy game’s narratives. Earth is again the hottest planet in the galaxy as far as alien invasion spots are concerned (you have to ask yourself, don’t these extra terrestrial beings have nothing better to do than invade planets?!). But humans wouldn’t be humans if they somehow didn’t manage to withstand the onslaught, even if this means getting their behinds saved by a second alien race that just happens to come by. Mix in a third alien race that gets stirred up by the conflict and you have all the ingredients needed for a full scale galactic war (fought on our tiny blue planet).

Being full of clichés, the game doesn’t try all that hard to make the alien races original. You’ll be seeing your fair share of giant walkers (reminiscent of the Tri-Pods from War of the worlds), Gundam inspired flying robots and the mandatory interstellar sages that are able to push around mountains with a mere thought… No, Petroglyph didn’t put much thought into the design of the races and their respective units. If they did, their ideas were just a tad too commonly used to be considered original. As it is, the game ends up looking almost like a parody of sorts when I’m sure the developers had an entirely different idea in their minds.

The funny thing about the story is that even though Earth is the conflict zone, humanity gets pushed out of the way early on. The three alien races end up taking the spotlight. This is perhaps the most original part of the games presentation, since every other game on the block tries to serve us humanity as the ultimate race when it comes to survivability. As long as you are not too patriotic when it comes to you being a human that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, now should it?

Free for all

Now, the story and overall presentation might be generic, but when it comes to playing as one of the races, Universe at War turns out to be a completely different kind of beast. Sure, we have played strategy games with more than 2 sides involved, but save for the occasional exception more races never actually meant more diversity. As different as the races usually look, they end up being just mirror copies of one another, with minor changes done here and there. Not so in UaW.

The Hierarchy (my favorite race by the way – there is just something to controlling huge walkers around the map) are your typical galactic bad-asses. Their units all rely on firepower and the fact that they can be upgraded with various modules makes them surprisingly versatile considering their head-on approach. Their infrastructure is also fairly non-standard, since most of their important unit building facilities end up being units on their own. Even worse, these mobile bases aren’t just your run of the mill barracks on wheels, but they pack some serious punch of their own, especially from a distance. As a result, Hierarchy players never really stay in one place for too long and often come knocking on an enemy player’s home base door with guns blazing and new units spewing out right there on the battlefield.

The Novus on the other hand tend to prefer weaker units, but make up for this “weakness” with higher numbers. Their main advantage is their system of linked energy towers which allows them to move about the battlefield at amazing speeds. A good Novus player can move entire forces across the map in seconds. And unlike the slow (but powerful) resource gatherers of the Hierarchy the Novus have countless resource gatherers, which makes putting their economy on hold a near impossible feat. Put these two facts together and you can see why Novus players don’t rely on heavy attacks, favoring beating their enemies down slowly over time, with a constant swarm of units causing mayhem all over the map.

The last race on the list are the Masari. Their play style could be considered the most standard, but only when compared to the Novus and the Hierarchy. They are a very defensive race, so most of their economy revolves around their home base. This gives them a specific edge, since their builder units double as upgrades for the various buildings. If you are low on resource you can just task a few of the builders with assisting the appropriate building. Likewise you can speed up unit training or increase your research speed by shifting some of the builders around. The result is a race that likes to stay on its home turf for as long as possible, prepared to adapt if need be. Once ready however, the Masari are a formidable force, especially with their ability to switch between Light and Dark mode (altering between speed and increased armor).

By now you should have a pretty clear picture about how different the three races actually are. With good players at the helm of each of the combatants, countless tactics can be put into action. As a Hierarchy player, will you use your mobile base units as part of your main offensive force, or will you customize them into self reliant behemoths that can withstand prolonged assault? Or if you will be playing as a Novus, will you keep beating on the Masari to prevent them from building up a sizeable force or will you rather conserve your forces in case the Hierarchy finds your base with its powerful units? The possibilities are countless, especially when you add the 3 unique heroes per side to the equation. The best thing about the whole affair is the fact that the races are almost perfectly balanced. Sure, there are some minor quirks here and there, but nothing to be worried about.

Being a commander

With all the effort that was put into the races (*cough* even though more time could have been spent on their design *cough*) I’m sad to say you won’t be noticing many of the things I have just mentioned in the campaign. Sure, all of the units will make an appearance, as will most of the technologies. But for some reason the authors decided to go with a more linear and scripted approach, tying the player’s hands as far as tactics are concerned. The versatility of each race takes the biggest hit because of that, so you might just put the game away thinking it is another generic strategy title without seeing half of the stuff it can do.

Multiplayer is not the only way to have the fun however. Even playing a skirmish game lets you experience the full repertoire of the games tactical options, though you’ll have to deal with the occasional AI hiccup along the way. Thankfully (I guess) most of these issues don’t affect the AI of your opponents, which tend to use their race’s abilities to their full extent. Of the top of my head the game has a very problematic AI pathfinding system, resulting in lost units (and I mean literally lost, as in “Hello, is there anybody out there?” lost), entire groups wandering around the map in search of their goal and worse. It works the other way around too – units that should remain stationary wander off due to unknown reasons and even units you explicitly told to go to point A are prone to deciding point B is more interesting. The frustrations don’t end there. The grouping is somewhat bugged (I sure hope this wasn’t a design decision) and you’ll often bind a group of units to a certain shortcut permanently (for as long as they are alive at least). This an a few other tidbits will start getting on your nerves early on, but at least you’ll never have hundreds of units under your command, so things remain manageable.

Multiplayer and skirmish games come in two major flavors. The first is a general one-off battle on a specific map; where you set the starting conditions and engage in all out war. The more interesting game type is the Conquer the Earth mode, where you play on a global map, making decisions in real time. Handling entire armies, resource managing and terrain fortification are all on the menu here, with confrontations played on regular maps (think Total War with the strategic part playing out in real time). It’s nice that the individual territories are bound to specific maps since you can learn the layout of the individual area and have the edge against an inexperienced player. The downside is that after a while the maps start repeating themselves, especially if you and an equally skilled opponent start a drawn out conflict for a certain part of the world.

This would be a good time to mention the Live! integration into the game. Much like Halo 2 or Gears of War, players have the option to subscribe to a Gold Live! membership and gain extra online features. As usual these are limited to global matchmaking and stat tracking. The problem with this whole system is that if you don’t own an Xbox360, paying over 50 bucks per year just so you can track your stats in a couple of games and have matchmaking is hardly a good deal.

DX10 issues again?

If you played Petroglyph’s previous game – Empire at War you probably know that they can make graphically impressive games. Universe at War is without doubt a very sweet looking game. After having their work done for them with EaW, the designers did a pretty good job here, designing a world that makes sense. The maps don’t have that artificial feel they had in EaW even though they use most of the gameplay approaches (bottle neck bridges, ravines for large battles, etc.) used before. The units themselves are equally good looking – zooming in reveals a striking amount of detail on each and every single one of them. Their animations are great as well, giving Hollywood and its digital effect studios a run for their money when it comes to how the walkers move about their daily jobs (squishing stuff and all that). The highlight are the effects however. Be it the explosions or the way certain units envelop the opposition in fire, all of the effects are striking to behold.

Perhaps a bit too striking sometimes, since the performance tends to drop drastically when these effects are displayed. At least in DX10 that is. Reverting to DX9 cures most of these issues, but the game still tends to chug here and there. A high end machine is a must if you want to crank out the details (especially shadows – when will engine developers learn!?) or use AA to smooth the otherwise pretty jagged looks ... perhaps it is all the effects that make  aliasing very apparent in this game.

As far as music is concerned, there are no big surprises here. The high-tech/rock music score that plays in the background sounds good and fits with the action well, but I doubt anyone will remember it a year, or even a month from now. The voice acting is good as well, though it sometimes makes the game look like an actual parody, which brings us back to the question if this was what the authors wanted.

Conclusion

To finish my opening thought – there are games that are predictable, shallow and offer little to no diversity. Universe at War is neither. Yes, the story is riddled with clichés and the design could do with a little more originality. However underneath this, UaW is one of the deepest and most tactically engaging strategy games recently released. Just the fact that the three races are completely different from one another makes this an interesting game. But add the fact that each of the races brings a load of different tactics to the table and you have yourself a winner. Just don’t judge it solely by the campaign.