I finally finished Universe at War: Earth Assault this weekend. The single player campaign was a lot longer than I anticipated, but it was a lot of fun. The game’s graphics, especially during cut-scenes, are not that great, but they are not terrible. Since this is a real time strategy game the graphics don’t have to be spectacular. They just need to make it easy to see which units are doing what, and that it does just fine. The sound gets a little irritating at times because you’re units respond whenever you highlight them and they pretty much say the same thing every other time. This would not be such a big deal except the AI is iffy and aggressive at times, and needs your attention to not wonder off and attack passing troops. So, every few minutes you need to call them back if you don’t want them half way across the amp chasing some enemy who moves faster than they do. These little things aside the game is a lot of fun. They really nailed the controls for playing an RTS with an Xbox 360 controller. Everything can be accessed quickly using the triggers and bumpers without highlighting specific units or buildings. This makes it nice because you can watch a fight and build more troops at the same time. Additionally, they let you move around the mini-map very quickly which makes it easy to jump between fights.

The campaign lets you play as each of the three races for quite a while to get a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. First, you play as Novus which is an all robotic race whose sole purpose is to protect planets from the Hierarchy. The move very quickly and while their individual attacks are not very strong, but when you get a lot of them together they are very effective. The Novus are the most traditional type of unit from the other RTS games I play where you build a base and then start training troops.

After Novus you get to play as the Hierarchy. Instead of the traditional base building the Hierarchy build giant walkers. They do have a few building they can make, but mostly you make walkers who generate troops. The walkers are essentially walking and attacking bases. There are different types of walkers who have different strengths, but all of them you can build weapons and upgrades onto. I found the Hierarchy to be a lot of fun to play as because they were so different. It was a blast to get a couple walkers built and leveled up and then walk them into an enemy base and just start leveling the place with their powerful weapons. Actually the most fun might have been the Science Walker because you can upgrade it to have mind control. Once you have that it will take over the enemy troops and make them attack each other.

The Masari are the final race. They are more traditional with building regular bases and then troops, but they can switch between light and dark modes. In each mode their units have different attacks and specials. While you can win with them by staying completely in light or dark mode it is by effectively switching between modes that they can be truly devastating. For example their planes can only fly in light mode, but in dark mode they become artillery units that have very powerful attacks. So, you can fly them quickly behind enemy lines in light mode and then switch to dark mode and pound on their base from behind in dark mode.

The achievements are mostly for multiplayer but there are a few for playing through the campaign. Plan on spending a lot of time playing multiplayer if you want to get all these achievements.

If you’re a fan of RTS games I’d recommend giving Universe at War: Earth Assault a try. The controls work well for a console the three distinctly different races make for a lot of great strategies to try out.