Universe at War: Earth Assault [X360]

Universe at War: Earth Assault faithfully brings Petroglyph's vision of a sci-fi Earth onto the 360. A flight of fancy for slumming StarCraft fans, UaW retains the Ed Wood charm of the PC original. Unfortunately, it also retains the wooden mission design and overly demanding, underperforming visuals, while adding in 360-exclusive technical issues and a so-so control scheme.

If they're mortal...

The game begins with humanity crushed underneath the alien boot heel of the Hierarchy, an amalgamation of various conquered alien races who have decided to conquer more alien races. Shortly after that, the anime-styled Novus robots arrive to fight the Hierarchy. And a bit later, it turns out that the Hierarchy's old gods, the Masari, have been hiding out on Earth for a few millennia as well. Amongst all these powers, humanity is basically an afterthought.

Each race provides a meaningfully unique play experience, with their own upgrade trees and styles of micro-managing. The Novus forces can apply army-wide "patches" on the fly, changing anything from their rate of resource acquisition to their fire resistance. The Hierarchy lacks traditional bases, operating out of up to three tremendous walker units; these can be modified with weapons and troop production options on the fly. Lastly, the Masari can switch their entire army from "dark" to "light" at will. The reversible switch gives them the choice between heavy, force-field defended units and faster, flying, farther-sighted units.

The entire late-night movie mashup, joined to unique army mechanics and units, gives Universe at War a great start. The variety of units is dazzling, and the designers at Petroglyph have done a wonderful job of creating iconic, visually interesting armies. The armies' asymmetrical line-ups are accentuated and drawn pleasingly out by their unique micromanagement options, creating respectable tactical options in combat. The game's strategic world map is more fun than most RTS-Risk crossbreeds, and there are plenty of skirmish maps.

But once you begin the assault, problems in the plan start appearing rapidly. The single-player campaign consists of three arcs, one for each race. But virtually every mission is a puzzle type, with limited resources and specific, straight-jacketed goals. Rather than letting you play with the races and their tactics, Universe at War's campaigns force you to follow the one, narrow path to victory to proceed. These sorts of missions are great to flesh out a traditional campaign, but they fail as the meat of the single-player. The storytelling is just as bleakly insufficient, taking the great set-up of the game and turning it into a limp piece of Prequel-trilogy bunk.