Universe at War: Earth Assault First Look

The past few months carried a lot of surprise announcements and have also marked an increasing effort to bring strategy games closer to console gamers. So far, the industry has shown a few successful attempts to convey this genre to next-gen consoles (C&C3: Tiberium Wars being the most recent). Petroglyph Games, yet another development team to contribute to the console RTS scene, is working on a brand new game, entitled Universe at War: Earth Assault, which until recently was a PC-exclusive, but is now heading to the X360 as well.

Isn't this where they filmed Return of the Jedi?

This neighborhood is not what it used to be.

The good news is that Petroglyph is no stranger to the development of real-time strategies. Having completed Star Wars: Empire at War, one of the very first "proper" RTS games set in the Star Wars universe (and a successful add-on), they signed a deal with SEGA to work on Universe at War. Yes, so it's another RTS. But at least we know it's being done by somebody capable of making a decent strategy game.

Universe at War starts off during 2012 in an alternate future, where humanity learns it's not alone in space (don't go away, there's a twist). As destiny would have it, Earth got caught in the middle of intergalactic war, as the Hierarchy (one of the alien factions) invades the planet with its colossal robotic walkers. The unexpected twist is that humans proved quite weak to stand against alien invasion. Mankind has pretty much been overwhelmed by three powerful alien factions, which are now fighting to gain control over Earth territories. As a matter of fact, our race has been practically subdued by vast extraterrestrial forces. So, instead of being the heroes, the humans are there to provide a handy, yet somewhat pesky, resource to the alien scum. That's right, our species is a like resource to the alien invaders (hm, Spielberg's War of the Worlds anyone?) and they're mostly trying to avid being squashed or completely vaporized by the overpowering enemy.

The game features a single-player campaign, an open-ended world conquest campaign and a multiplayer mode. Even though you can play with the human race in the tutorial, the rest of the single-player campaign allows you to experience the game from the viewpoint of one of the alien factions - such as the Novus or the aforementioned Hierarchy.

The Hierarchy uses its massive walkers to conquer everything in there path with brute force. Refreshing the gameplay a wee bit, the developers decided to employ the walkers as a type of mobile base. These huge units are extremely powerful, albeit very slow and are often easy targets on the battlefield. Still, their key ability is having various hard points, which players click on to add a bunch of upgrades like weapons, armor and sensing devices. Walkers are also useful for producing bunches of units instantly, used to scout the area or protect their flanks. As you'd think, any modification or upgrade requires an adequate amount of resources in order to be applied. Obtaining these resources is simple. You produce so-called reavers, which are actually smaller walkers, as you scour the map for houses, skyscrapers, farm animals, diverse structures, trees and, of course, humans, all of which are collected as a resource. Converting all this into resources requires constant attention and searching across the map... if you want to prevail against your opponents, that is.

Moving on to more strategic aspects of the gameplay, we should point out that Universe at War features a huge map of Earth, or to put it more precisely, a full 3D model of the globe, where players can see the landmass split into provinces. Much like in the X-Com series, you rotate the globe in search for the next place where you wish to deploy your army. Day/night cycle are also included and may effect the coming battle (playing during the night, for example, may prove more difficult).

Any of you idiots remember to bring a jetpack?

Follow me, worthless grunts!

Other factions, such as the Novus, have their own advantages. They are known for using stationary weapons like the reflector turrets. These little babies come in handy when you wish to protect the base, as they deflect any incoming fire, sending it straight back to the enemy (nice!). Their objective is to build up their base as effectively and quickly as possible. Unlike other factions, the Novus are equipped with a network that stretches throughout the base, allowing for swift unit transfer. With such technology by their side, the Novus can be a very tough foe.

Petroglyph also specified map sizes are going to be larger than those included in the expansion pack, Star Wars Empire at War: Forces of Corruption.

It's still too early to know more, since the PC version is currently in pre-alpha stage. The developers are adding a special feature to help perk up the Xbox 360 version, optimizing the game and making it more adequate for consoles. Reportedly, they are working hard to implement an intuitive and new control scheme, to help console gamers get into the RTS experience more easily.

The game will appear for the PC during Dec 2007, while X360 owners will have to wait until Q1 2008.