Anyone checked out Universe at War: Earth Conflict?

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Direwolf20

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 10, 2004
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I saw an advert on Steam last night, and it piqued my interest. I went and looked around, and it seems cool. Been getting 'Good not great' kind of ratings. So I played the demo, and it was pretty fun.

Its an RTS designed by the group that originally made C&C and Red Alert. Its got 3 playable factions, each with a campaign in single player. The races are apparently TOTALLY different (think Starcraft as opposed to SupCom).

The story is that some aliens come to take over earth (Think War of the Worlds). Its around 2012. Humanity is getting DESTROYED big time, like they don't have a chance. Then, when all seems lost, another alien group appears and starts attacking the invaders. The first campaign is the 'Good' alien group. The 2nd campaign is the perspective of the 'bad' alien group, invading earth. Then, the third campaign is a group of aliens that laid dormant on earth for thousands of years. So, refreshingly, this all is happening on earth, but except for the Prologue, you're never really playing as humans.

I baught it, and played a bunch last night. Too much actually :). So far (3-4 missions into the first race's campaign) heres my impressions.

The bad first:

Glaringly, theres no 'Zoom out'. You can zoom in a little, but no real way to zoom out any further than what you start at. This isn't SO bad, but after playing SupCom a lot, you miss it. Especially considering some of the units are HUGE, and take up 33% of your screen.

I think this game was designed for XBox360, however it came out on PC first. I hate games that are designed to work on both a console and a pc, because you can see where stuff was built around being playable with a controller. :( -- However, its not so bad in this one really, but at some points you can just feel like 'Yea, this was built around a console'.

Multiplayer: I haven't done multiplayer yet, but you apparently need to sign into Windows Games for Live to play. You can get a 'silver' membership which is free, and lets you play online, or you can pay monthly for a 'gold' membership to have some more online features. Since I haven't played online yet, I can't really speak much about it.

It feels a little unpolished. Not terribly so, but a little bit.

The Good:

Its fun. Lots of fun. Its not deep, its a little silly at times, but thats mostly on purpose. It's definately fun though, and a good throwback to some C&C feel.

The 3 races are drastically different. Seems like a lot of games recently have 2-3 playable races that are 90% similiar to each other, because its easier to balance that way. I can't speak for the balance in this game, but the little bit of playing I've done with 2 of the 3 races shows DRASTIC differences in their style.

The story, while kind of corny yet funny, isn't bad. Its a bit cliche in areas, but theres usually a cutscene and dialogue in between every mission. Thats a plus for me.

Theres a lot of innovation here. Features that I've never really seen before in an RTS. Again, I haven't gotten far, but theres every indication that all of their tricks aren't out of the bag yet.

If you (like me) never heard of this game -- Check for the demo online. It may not be your cup of tea, but its right up my alley. The enjoyability of the game is enough to cover their minor negatives. I agree (so far) with most reviewers that gave it 7-8/10.

Final note -- I'd recommend buying it at the store, rather than Steam. Apparently, Steam doesn't give you the instruction manual. This game has a lot of stuff going on, and I'd really like the manual ;(.
 
it is a pretty fun game , played about 3-4 skirmish battles - To me it's no command an conquer but its fun & good change to play something new :D
 
So I just finished the Novus campaign, and enjoyed it the whole way through. Thats the first one.

The novus are basically robots that have all kinds of neat tricks up their sleeves. First off, their buildings are similiar to the Protoss in Starcraft. They need power. You build a 'power plant', you only need one, but if it gets destroyed you lose power to all your buildings, so its a good idea to build more than one in multiplayer. Then, you build antenna's that distribute the power from your plant. You get a circle around the antenna's that shows where you can place things to get power. Now the cool thing is, all the antennas are connected. Your troops can travel (very quickly) along these power lines. The antenna's are also stealthed, and only some units can detect them. Therefore, you can basically use this network of power lines to send your troops places. When you tell your troops to go somewhere, they hop into the nearest building/antenna, and travel along the power lines to get to their destination, coming out at the antenna/building nearest the destination. Its very cool.

Otherwise, they are pretty standard when it comes to RTS races. They have builders that construct their buildings, the buildings make the robots (infantry/vehicles/aircraft). Something cool you get is a 'patch', theres about 12 different ones, and you can only have 1 active at a time. When you build a science center, you can have a 2nd patch active. These patches affect all your troops. Examples include: Faster travel along power grids, resistance to fire, faster building, etc.



Starting the second one now, the Hierarchy. Its quite different:).
 
That is very fun, nice reviews Dire. I just recently got this myself and I can't wait to play it now
 
Its funny, I checked out a lot of gaming forums (here, Penny-arcade, etc) and this game really isn't being talked about AT ALL. I mean, I expected SOMETHING.

Anyway, I just finished the Heirarchy campaign -- Each of the 2 campaigns I've beat so far (on medium) has taken about 3-4 hours.

The heirarchy was a lot of fun. The main aspect of your attack involved Giant (HUGE!) walkers. These are basically buildings that move and fight. They have about 7 'hardpoints' on them, each of which can have something attached to them. For example, one attachment increases armor, while another increases attack speed, and another gives an extra cannon to shoot with. You can customize the 7 points as you wish, so the variations are great.

Also, the walkers are what you use to summon your troops. One type of walker makes infantry, the other makes vehicles, and theres a 3rd as well. This is nice, because your walkers can go into battle with you, and you can reinforce your ranks as you go along. You also have attachments here that let you create other kinds of troops, increase build speed, and reduce cost. So in all, theres about 10 different attachments you can choose from.

Enemies have to destroy some of your hardpoints before they can take your walker down. First the attachment gets blasted, then the hardpoint itself can die. If only the attachment is destroyed, you can make a new one. If the hardpoint gets blown, its gone forever.

So yea, this race was WAY different than the Novus. Masari are next, and look very cool.

(Note I editted my above post to give a recap of how the Novus work).
 
just haven't gotten aroudn to buying it but the demo was fun. It's even like it's almost making fun of itself and the genre with the over the top rockin tunes.
 
No zoom out for an RTS in 2008 is a huge mistake and a total let down. After playing Supreme Commander I cant even go back to playing C&C because C&C doesnt allow you to zoom out and see the battlefield in all its glory.

This game (with its huge units that take up 33% of the screen) wont be seeing any of my money.
 
Just got it and started playing some skirmishes last night, not too bad at all. I think i'll start on the campaign this evening.
 
Honestly, its not the end of the world, but thats just me. No zoom is kinda sucky, but I'll live :).

I just read on their forums that a better zoom-out is coming in the next patch. JOY!
 
Ok, SO I gotta write up whats happening with the Masari! **POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW, but probably minor, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED**

First, about the Masari themselves. They are a race of super-advanced people who created the Heirarchy thousands of years ago. The heirarchy turned on them, and they came to earth to hide out. They've been asleep in stasis all that time. Now that the heirarchy is here, the Masari have awoken.

They have your standard buildings for RTS games. They don't need to gather resources though, you can build these buildings that generate resources, theres a limit to how many buildings you can make (5), and the more you have, the faster your income is generated. Theres also a cap on how much money you can gather, based on how many buildings you have (to prevent infinite resources). One of the cool things, is they have 2 'modes' Light and Dark. Light mode is more offensively oriented, and dark mode is more defensive. When you switch modes, it switches EVERYTHINGs mode, so you can't have some troops on light and others on dark. Its all light or all dark. Your weapons are different depending on what you choose. One of their vehicles, for example, shoots exploding AE damage bombs in light mode, and direct target shots in dark mode. Its interesting. Your super weapon is even different depending on the mode you're in.

However, thats not the biggest change. The biggest change is once you start the Masari campaign, you start playing a totally different game. Well, kind of. All this time, you've been automatically moving from location to location with the Novus/Heirarchy playing an RTS as usual. Now, you have control of which territories you go to. The planet looks like a big RISK board, with different countries outlined. You have a 'commander' who you can move to adjacent countries. Each country you 'take over' can have a global building placed on it. EXAMPLE: You start with your headquarters, and you travel to the next country. You play a standard RTS game to control that country, when you win, you get ownership of it. You can then place a 'Global' building on that country, which can give you upgrades during your RTS fights.

It's VERY VERY cool, and totally different.

Also, I should talk about research.

Research, I have not talked about yet, because I hadn't encountered it yet. There is no research for the Novus/Heirarchy in campaign mode (but there is in skirmish and multiplayer). Masari has research in campaign mode.

Research reminds me of the talent trees in World of Warcraft. It's basically a specialization for your troops. Theres 3 'research' trees, with 4 upgrades in each tree, for a total of 12 possible upgrades. However, you can only have 6 at a time. An example of the Masari Research trees is:

Light - Rank 1, Rank 2, Rank 3, Rank 4
Dark - Rank 1, Rank 2, Rank 3, Rank 4
Balance - Rank 1, Rank 2, Rank 3, Rank 4

Each of the ranks open up different abilities. Obviously, the 'Light' research tree upgrades your troops while they are in light mode. The same for dark in dark mode.

This opens a whole new strategy. You CAN unlearn ranks, but only one at a time, and then you lose your abilities from it. So you have to decide which way you want to specialize your troops, and this affects what tactics you use in battle.

Remember, each race has their own 'research trees' specific to them. The Novus has other cool stuff :).

Also, research is NOT the same as the patch system that I mentioned above for Novus. Novus has both a patch system AND a research tree.

So thats it for now ;).

Link to the demo

Once again, I'm recommending you check this game out :). It's really pretty neat, and has a lot of things in it that I just haven't seen in RTS games before.
 
Just finished the Masari campaign. I took over each of the countries and wooped some Heirarchy rear. The Masari campaign was much longer than the other 2. Maybe 6 hours of play time? I'd say 15 hours total play through for the whole campaign.

Theres also skirmishes that I haven't touched yet, and 4 (FOUR!) Country-to-country style skirmish like games, where you can choose your faction/difficulty level. At a brief glance, theres one where you start with one country and have to expand outward, one where you start with half the map, and 2 others I forget.

Can't wait ;).
 
That is intense. I skipped the long post with potential spoilers because this is definitely my next game after I'm through destroying Bioshock. I have a bad habit of being extremely thorough in games, and Bioshock is nothing but pure searching for me. But I must say with the intense reviews, and consistent reviews, you must be hooked Dire. <3 a game that steals your soul :cool:
 
Multiplayer uses Windows Games for Live!, which a lot of people report being unhappy with. I haven't tried it yet.

Silver (Free) membership lets you do some basic games, which apparently most people play anyway. Gold (Pay) membership, gives you more online options. If you have an xbox360 you can use your account.

I haven't tried it yet, so I can't really speak on that.
 
Its a shame gold Windows Live is required for the domination mode. :(
 
So, it's basically made by Westwood Studios? That's awesome, the orginal Red Alert and RA2 are so much better than Tiberium Wars. And hell, Frank Klepacki is back :D
 
I dont like the fact that it uses GFW live for multiplayer. This game reeks of console port.
 
I see its now out in the shops over here in the UK.

I wont be buying it though for 2 reasons :

1. No zoom out. Your view is too close to the action, so you cant get an appreciative view of this so called universe at war.

Its a throwback to the 90's.


2. Multiplayer is through MS LIVE via windows. (It does warn you on the box about having to pay via MS LIVE to play multiplayer).


which means... not a chance in hell am I buying this game, and I LOVE RTS games! Hell I even bought Perimiter when it came out, but this isnt getting any of my money.
 
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