When this first arrived I was quite excited, heard nothing
particularly bad about it, looked alright, and I was really looking forward to
a new gaming experience. Oh how I rue that day...
In reality, in short, UAW is annoying, deep, interesting and
tedious. How so? Well that’ll all be explained...
UAW is a game about an alien race invading Earth. And the
Universe falls into war. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. It’s a Real Time
Strategy game where you have an army and a few objectives, complete the
objectives and hey! That’s the mission done! Simple enough. Or so it sounds...
I loved the opening scene, huge alien monsters in excellent
CGI glory, beautiful it was, beautiful it was. Couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
Ah but then, it started...
First of all, it was... Blocky... All of the beauty and
glory I saw in the opening cinematic was destroyed by very chunky environments,
ghostly citizens that could run through buildings and ghastly character models.
And yet, there was something about it that I was rather enjoying... Seeing my
army rush to what very well could be their deaths at my hands made me smile. Of
course... That could just be me.
The controls are simple enough for anyone who knows how to
use a computer, drag your mouse whilst clicked and you have that familiar
selection box pop up, where everything inside it gets highlighted, drag it over
your army men or vehicles or whatever and then right click somewhere on the map
and your men will go that way whilst destroying anything in their path! You
basic infantry soldiers are absolutely terrible, 5 men can barely take on an
alien, but your commanding officer, who appears to wear his ammo and little
else, can take a lot of hits, and has a gun to be reckoned with. You won’t be
killing anything without him, or your usual tanks, helicopters etc. You can
build men, yes, build men, in factories, building men or vehicles or units in
general take up special points, run out of points and you can’t build anymore
units, simple enough.
My one major quarrel with this game, however, is failing the
missions. Now, in any game, failing your objective is annoying. That much is
obvious, but particularly so in this one... This may seem like an overreaction,
but you really can be on a single mission for half an hour, and fail. Multiple
times. Bits like these made me want to tear the game from the drive, and snap
it in half, only to throw the pieces in a microwave, watched them sizzle, and
they grinding them into a fine powder, only to sneak them into the food of
someone I hate and burning their poo.
Now, this game does have 2-8 player multiplayer over Live,
but it wouldn’t even let me connect to the servers... Probably just my computer,
or connection, but I tried multiple times and it wouldn’t let me, so let’s
ignore that bit.
Now, the big question; is this game worth it? Yes and no. No
in the sense that the annoyance it gives you is equal to the amount of fun, if
not more. Yes in the sense that, if you master all the tactics in the game, it
turns into a fully enjoyable gaming experience. I was in my local game
specialist earlier, and I found this game in the PC section for £10. The
reality is, that for £10 this game IS worth it, but it’s not everyone’s cup of
tea, not mine either, but hell, keep the receipt if you don’t like it and give
it a go anyway.
Storyline 4/10 (Cliché and no-one cares.)
Game Play 6/10 (Nothing wrong with it, so to speak, annoying nonetheless.)
Graphics 5/10 (Oh, how I love those N64 days...)
Sound 6/10 (Missles, alien moans, tank noises, kind of annoying in honesty, but
it does the trick.)
Multiplayer N/A (It’s there. Somewhere...)
Life Span 5/10 (The missions can take ages, and there are a good load of
missions, but I really wouldn’t want to play this more than once...)
