That said, while the Walkers are awesome to behold, when it comes time to fight against them it proves a monumental pain in the ass and not just because of their fire power. The Hierarchy faction is still one of the greatest ever created with a fine selection of kick ass units available. On a more positive note, the units are still as stunning as they were on the PC platform, with the huge walkers taking centre stage. Petroglyph have tried to compensate for this by offering some fine tuning with a magnetism slider, however it is still fiddly and doesn’t resolve the problems. The control method while simplified still has its fair share of problems, controlling units is extremely frustrating particularly when trying to move specific groups in close proximity. The only downside is the sheer amount of options for units and upgrades, meaning that a certain amount of icons will need to be virtually memorised, especially if you wish to be successful during the heat of battle. The game also uses a rather cool wheel ring style mechanism for selecting units, building structures and special attacks, and while it takes a bit of getting used to, after a little practise it works rather well. On the flip side of the coin, they really should have spent a little more time on the camera angle and allowed the gamer to zoom out to a birds eye view. Well, that’s the theory anyway.įirstly, the map interface in Universe At War has been overhauled with a quick-pan function that instantly enlarges the mini map with a simple press of the right trigger button allowing you to scroll anywhere on the map very quickly.
Many strategy games rely on heavy micro management such as Age Of Empires or Command and Conquer, however with Universe At War the focus is much more on combat rather than resource gathering (which is now virtually automatic) so the translation should be rather less painful. PC RTS gamers won’t need me to tell them how difficult it can be to manage units, resources and tactics with a gamepad, however in defense of Petroglyph they have attempted to alleviate these issues, helped in part by some rethinking of the interface mechanic. After spending some time with this game I can say it ends up a bit of a mixed bag with plenty of good points being interspersed with the bad. Most of us would already be shouting a resounding "no!", as a console interface is always compromised to compensate for the lack of a user friendly mouse and keyboard combination control system however Petroglyph games feel the real time strategy audience on the Xbox 360 is broad enough to warrant the risk of a port. With the game being released for the Xbox 360 the question I am here to answer is "Well shucks, can this really work on a console?" Universe At War was a relative success on the PC scene a while ago, bringing a reasonably fresh perspective to the rather staid Real Time Strategy genre.
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