So most people that know me, know that every 2 weeks, a buddy of mine and I have our guys game night. So usually we’ll start around mid to late afternoon and wind up gaming through till the wee hours of the next day–usually stopping for an hour or two to refuel from some of the fine restaurants around us (that means greasy, fatty, and certainly not healthy, but damn good!).

On these gaming nights, we’ll play either MMORPG (Massively Multipleplayer Online Role Playing Games) or RTS (Real Time Strategy). In the recent past, our lineup has been some of the following games:

FlyFF
HellGate London
SilkRoad
GuildWars
Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour

and for the most part it’s been good. But we are always looking for new games to play and expand our horizons. Generally we have been using the guideline that we are only interested in playing Only Purchase Once games or Free online MMORPG games as the subscription based games like World of Warcraft are just too expensive for my gaming habits (his are another story and he games ALOT!).

So we have found a new game for all you gamers: Universe at War. This is put out by a studio that I’ve not heard before (Petroglyph), but published by our good friends at Sega whom we all know and love from the days of the blue spikey haired speed demon! So the advertising for the game said it was for those who are interested in RTS games like StarCraft 2, but do not want to wait for that game to come out. And who can blame us, Blizzard has kept StarCraft 2 in the development pipeline for how many years? I think StarCraft 1 and Broodwars were both back in the mid-1990′s, so we are going on close to a decade since a new release. And the way that they have been developing StarCraft 2, everything is so very hush hush, and for the weekend warrior like myself, we need that instant gratification and gaming fix (we sound like a bunch of addicts!).

At any rate, back to Universe at War. This has turned out to be an AWESOME RTS game. I’ll compare it with Supreme Commander (SC) on a few points. First off, Supreme Commander is one of those games that is just fun. If you played the earlier versions of the game (now we are going back to the days of Total Annihilation here so hang tight), then you know that Supreme Commander is just TA on steroids. Bigger maps, more to build, more options, more strategies. In fact, Supreme Commander almost has TOO MUCH content. We find that our SC/SC:FA games will last in excess of 2 hours, and for game night, that is a HUGE amount of time! But that isn’t to say it isn’t fun, as it is, but you will find that your strategies become very massive and after awhile, everyone has so much in the game, that even the best systems will grind to a halt. The SC/SC:FA are designed to use multiple CPU processors so definitely go out and make sure that your system is dual-core or dual-proc/dual-core so you can run this game in all it’s glory. Also each race is basically a clone of each other, so the diversity in SC/SC:FA can sometimes be challenging. SC:FA does a better job at this as the races are a bit more unique.

Back to comparing SC/SC:FA to Universe at War. So in SC/SC:FA you have a lot of options and massive games, but in Universe at War those are skinned down to a more streamline style of play. You have your 3 races, but they are all drastically unique. One race is built for domination and brute force, the other on technology and mobility, and the last on energy. In many ways, Universe at War reminds me more of the original StarCraft in that each of those 3 races were all drastically unique and the style of your game play was also as equally unique.

If you have played Command & Conquer, you are probably someone who owns either now Command & Conquer: The First Decade, or have independently purchased most of the popular titles within the Command & Conquer (C&C) genre over the last decade. So it was with heavy hearts, that C&C3 was hyped up and when we purchased, installed, and played this game, we were nothing short of bummed out. First off, the maps are TINY! Whereas SC/SC:FA are probably too BIG, C&C3 is just too small to do anything. The game pretty much revolves around your ability to build quickly and rush your enemy as you will soon be fighting for the same tiberium resources because your bases are right next to each other. There are times when you wish Virtual Reality was a thing of the present, cause you could throw a rock from your base and hit your opponents base with ease. Also the game as a lot of cool weapons and builds, but you really never get a chance to use them. An average game will last less than 20 minutes in C&C3. In fact if I had to pick, I would say that of the C&C genre, C&C Generals: Zero Hour is probably my all time favor game to play (also there is a bug in the game where using Windows XP on LAN will crash your game unexpectedly, this has been fixed in Vista, and the game runs FLAWLESSLY–talk about BONUS!).

So in all, Universe at War is basically the middle ground between the two heavy hitter RTS, SC/SC:FA and C&C3. It has nice balance, the game play will last you on LAN with 2 enemies anywhere from 4o-90 minutes, the builds are numerous and within a class you have many various routes that you can take on the resource tree that will change the game drastically from game to game. The graphics are beautiful and the game takes full advantage of multi-core processors. There are a few small hickups in the game, but I expect the fine folks over at Petroglyph studios will be releasing patches quickly to address these issues, nothing major just some game glitches here and there–everything that you would expect from a new game. Who has had a game launch without patches or a few hickups–true gamers know this is to be expected and now shunned.

I would highly recommend that folks interested in RTS go out and purchase this game, whether it be for PC or Xbox360, you can play each other using the Microsoft Live feature, or you can play like I do and just amp up your internal network to a Gigabit connection, and periodically upgrade your gaming rig at the cost of your wife giving you that evil look that you love your computer more than you do her (of course not, but all you guys out there know what I’m talking about!).