Universe at War: Earth Assault (Xbox 360)

Petroglyph's attempt at the definitive console RTS: so close, yet so far
4/15/2008 2:44 PM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3

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.