Universe at War: Earth Assault

2007 was a pretty productive year in terms of strategy, in the sense that I can’t say that I missed them. We had Supreme commander, Tiberium Wars and in a happy ending World in Conflict. Of course we can’t say that we had something original, because in this group of games you can’t do too many things. Each game, except for Tiberium Wars, has brought something to make us say that these guys gave their interest in amazing us. But eventually neither of these games has kept me in front of the computer for more than a few hours. We can say the same about Universe at War; the limit has been reached.

When talking about the story line, the year is insignificant, and the operation theatre is in the same country, which by the way now is in the economic census. Here finally has come The Independence Day in which things go bad, and the specific American heroism is shattered. Nothing escapes the humans from the new race which has descended from above. The aliens are called The Hierarchy; they have buildings with legs, they are red and black and shoot lasers. In only a few days of air visit, there is only one American hero left who you must keep alive in order not to loose the mission. And the scene in which the White House is destroyed could be placed in Top Destructions of the White House. Luckily in the last moment from a vortex an angel appears with a rifle big as the World  Trade Center and begins to clean the hierarchy.

Since I was a child I noticed a ridiculous similarity between a classic RTS and an agricultural campaign. Initially a superior forum sets your objectives. Then, you go and put the men to work and build factories and propaganda centers. Then, the tractors are being build, the harvester and thrashers. Then you must be careful because the thieves may steal petrol from the tanks, pieces, straw bales, irrigation systems and they are urging the staff to steal too.

What is cool in Universe at War is the fact that instead of machineries you have robots. You shoot with lasers and positive or negative energies. What is weird is that you have lots of possibilities, like putting white coats with working glasses to discover better costumes and more performing machines, but these are missing from the campaign. They are present only in the skirmish mode, a very similar mode with the nowadays Risk. But we will talk about that in another article. Following this good classic campaign sample, we suddenly realize that we have played it before somewhere, more precisely in about 10 – 15 games of this genre. I do not say it is good or it’s bad, I’m saying it because I don’t agree with it.