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 1 of 3

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.