Now that the world's most brilliant minds have worked out Fermat's Last Theorem, it's time to move on to something more challenging: How to Adapt Real-Time Strategy Games to Console Systems. Currently up at the chalkboard is developer Petroglyph, attempting to calculate Universe at War: Earth Assault onto the Xbox 360.

On the PC, Universe at War was nothing if not promising. It was an intriguing RTS that pitted three unique factions against each other. In addition to the typical story-driven campaign, it featured a strategic mode played out on a global map. It was an early adopter for Microsoft's Games for Windows Live, the PC version of Xbox Live, and it had giant stomping walkers, swarming anime robots and magical divine chariots. Those are always a plus. Never mind that the PC version pretty much fell apart under the weight of its bad artificial intelligence, bad interface and bad multiplayer; four months later, here is Petroglyph's second chance to get it all right.

Square peg, meet round hole

The good news is that this is probably the best adaptation of a conventional RTS to a console controller. Electronic Arts has been struggling mightily with the issue, starting with Battle for Middle Earth II and most recently with Command & Conquer 3. They were both noble attempts that still fell short, but here comes Petroglyph with a single important twist that makes all the difference: the mini-map.

In Universe at War, a pull of the right trigger refocuses the cursor on the mini-map, which expands to fill up a larger portion of the screen. This makes it easier to see what's going on by the mini-map, which is normally swallowed up in the less-than-ideal screen resolution. While holding the trigger in, one control stick will move the view on the main screen, while the other stick will move the destination point for the selected units. This nicely mimics the way you use a mini-map on the PC. It makes a huge difference when it comes to playing the bigger picture, something that tends to suffer without sufficient mouse access or screen resolution. With this simple and effective twist, Petroglyph goes to the head of the class in Console RTSes 101.

The rest of the controls are pretty standard by now, duplicating a lot of the tricks EA uses. It's worth noting that there's no way to queue up unit movement, which is particularly a problem given Universe at War's wretched pathfinding AI. For the most part, short of building an RTS specifically for a console system (hey, Ensemble, hurry up with Halo Wars!), this is the best you can expect trying to play an RTS on a console system.

Jane, stop this crazy thing!

Unfortunately, Petroglyph has done nothing to adjust the pace and style of gameplay to their interface. Universe at War already suffered from a gimped interface on the PC. To now expect players to twirl through various icons for unit abilities and spell powers and upgrades is sheer folly. The Novus suffer the most with their micromanagement-intensive patches and virus powers. Any faction trying to target the shifting hardpoints on a Hierarchy walker will curse the control scheme, and don't expect to be able to take advantage of your heroes' powers very often: Trying to pick a target out of a mess of swarming units is an absurd proposition.

At least Electronic Arts has been adapting RTSes that already play fast and broad, which made them well-suited to the limitations of a console's interface. Petroglyph, on the other hand, has created a very fussy RTS that demands lots of pinpoint button-pressing and targeting. Even with their better attempt at a console interface, it simply doesn't work. All their fine gameplay -- and it is pretty fine at the design level -- is reduced to broad sweeps of units swarming around and squandering their special powers, dying and killing before you can get in there and play properly. Even more so on the Xbox 360 than on the PC, Universe at War blithely runs away with itself. Hang on!

What's worse, all the undocumented units and powers in the PC game are even more difficult to suss out on the 360. The 15-page pamphlet that passes for a manual is a travesty, especially considering the tactical depth in Universe at War. There are tooltips that come up after an annoying lag, but the cramped text is hard to read even when you scoot up closer to an HDTV. Does Petroglyph really expect everyone to play through the tedious single-player campaign to learn how everything works for each of the factions? Are we supposed to be taking notes as we go? Or is the assumption that console players don't care how stuff works and will be content merely building units and throwing them at each other? For shame, Petroglyph. All this trouble to design three unique factions with cool units and powers, yet you barely lift a finger to teach console gamers how to play?

F-f-f-framer-r-r-r-ate

Then there's the framerate problem. Here is a game that doesn't play nice with the 360's hardware, as is made clear by the frequent and egregious slowdown. Okay, let's talk. Seriously, Petroglyph, what happened here? You go to all the effort to adapt your control scheme to an Xbox 360, yet you can't even get the graphics engine to work? Isn't that one of the first things you want to do before porting your game? You must have noticed the problem while you were testing the game, yet you chose to release it this way? The state of Universe at War on the 360 is utterly unacceptable. It's been a long time since I've seen a game from a major publisher that was this poorly optimized.

Given its current condition, it's hard to know whether Universe at War could have been a more successful multiplayer game. It's entirely possible that the interface problems would have been an equalizing factor online, where all the players have to struggle with the interface equally. Sure, a micromanagement faction like the Novus would be at a disadvantage, and you wouldn't expect anyone to actually bother using a Masari Architect to rebuild Avenger chariots, for instance, but at least the other guy wouldn't be doing those things, either.

Given the framerate problems and the occasional lock-ups (most of which I experienced during online games), who's going to play Universe at War online? Right now, a week after its release, the answer seems to be "pretty much no one." On Xbox Live, you might find a single player if you're persistent and patient. The online Conquer the World mode, which lets players fight for factions on a persistent global map, is a ghost town. It's a pretty sorry world that no one is interested in conquering.

This leaves the tedious storyline campaign, skirmish games against dubious AI, and the single-player Conquer the World mode. If you're up for some terrible graphics slowdown and gameplay sacrifices as a result the interface, these are viable ways to push around cool units and watch them blow up. Mostly, they're a reminder that Universe of War should have been much better than it actually is.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.