Sobering reality check: No matter what Independence Day, War of the Worlds, or even Transformers tells you, we are so not prepared for a full-out alien invasion. If some bad dudes who have the technology to zip across the stars decide to target us, we are toast--no handy computer virus that we can upload to the mothership, no assurance that a sneeze can kill a spaceship, and no fancy energy cube to blow them up with. We got nothing. Petroglyph (a company full of former Command & Conquer developers, whose last significant title was Star Wars: Empire at War) seems to be the only developer to realize that, as us humans get ended quite easily in the opening of Universe at War: Earth Assault.
The single-player story campaign starts with the Hierarchy (one of UAW's three playable factions), an alien race best summarized as "the one with the huge war machines," crashing down and pounding on the Earth. This prelude puts you in the shoes of Colonel Moore, a tough guy with a minigun and a promotion to General by virtue of being the highest-ranking person to avoid annihilation by the Hierarchy. Your first mission, controlling Moore and his puny army of Marines, is to rescue the President. A lot of traditional RTS mechanics are taught here, such as "click here to attack dudes" and "use this special ability to get past these guys." While Moore and his cadre of Marines and tanks can put up a fight against a few Hierarchy grunts, when a Hierarchy walker enters the picture, they pretty much can't even dent it--which is right when the Novus appear in a last-minute save against the Hierarchy walkers that have been trashing Moore and his truly ragtag army.
After a whopping two missions, we Humans are relegated to "second banana" roles, and the story shifts to the Novus. The Novus are robots that have been waging war against the Hierarchy for years and years. For the Novus portion of the campaign, you mainly control the Novus hero Viktor/Mirabel. Mirabel is the (sole) humanoid in the Novus race, and she pilots the Viktor battlesuit. While Mirabel shows you how to play as Novus--with their funky use of patches and "network flow"--and do traditional RTS things like blowing up stuff and making armies, she also tries to cooperate with Moore and the rest of the humans. The other main Novus hero you get to play around with in the campaign is Vertigo, a badass ninja/black-ops type of agent who also happens to be a jet. After a few missions in the Novus portion of the storyline, I decided to stop and wait for the real game. So no comments about how the Hierachy or even the last faction, the Masari, fit into the story mode.
f you don't care for the aliens jabbering at each other about wars and beliefs that have been totally made up, there is also the scenario mode, which is essentially a story-less campaign that feels a bit like Risk with aliens. The basic structure of a scenario is a global map where you conquer the Earth one territory at a time, and when two armies happen to land on the same territory, it changes from the global mode to a traditional RTS battle. There are a small number of scenarios that dictate starting conditions; one scenario had each faction exploring Earth for the first time, putting everyone on a mad land grab early on. Another scenario had the Earth neatly divided among all three factions, while yet another had you starting with barely any territory and everyone else occupying most of the planet, which means you focus on graduating from ragtag army to world conqueror.
On this global map view, you use your heroes to grab territory and establish structures. After snagging a piece of land, you can choose what type of base to build there; one type will boost your economy, another will be focused on research, and the last can build units. You can then purchase individual upgrades for these bases, such as defenses that will help out in the tactical mode, or modules that allow for specialized unit, or increased, production. If you have a production base, then you use that to create units to attach to your heroes. These units will be part of your hero's army, and whenever you start a tactical skirmish, they'll be fresh and ready to fight right off the transport. Finally, if you have the scratch, you can also build a superweapon that can wipe out enemy regions (the Hierarchy get a really big walker, the Novus a really big gun, and the Masari a really big, er, energy thingy).
What's interesting is that all of this capture-and-build stuff is done in real-time as well (as opposed to other strategy games that play out in turns). Which led to the humiliating moment: I left my game alone for about 10 minutes and came back to see that most of America had been swallowed up by the Masari in my absence, and that the sum total of the Hierarchy was just Mexico. That was my cue to stop playing for now and wait for the final retail release next month. At least I am now armed with the knowledge that I can't just sit around and think that nothing will happen until I click on "end turn" when I play UAW's campaign mode.
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