Urban Assault
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
Despite its flaws, Urban Assault is a serious next step for the action-strategy revolution that Armor Command, Uprising, and Battlezone began.
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UA was created by three East German gamers who, just days after the Berlin Wall came crashing down, went West to buy Amigas so they could learn to program. When they had a UA prototype, they cornered Microsoft reps at a trade show and showed it to them on a laptop. Microsoft signed them up and has since put nice wrappings around what is a compelling yet sometimes kludgy game.
The setting is 2017 on a ravaged Earth, where the human survivors of an ecological disaster ("The Big Mistake") have formed three warring factions. The Resistance (that's you), the Ghorkovs, and the Taerkasts wage war through robotized armies fueled by plasma energy, and their success or failure is determined by a single human being who undergoes upload surgery and becomes a living, computerized commander/ resource manager.
You begin leading the Resistance just as two new forces enter the fray-alien races determined to pick Earth's carcass clean. Often you'll fight against more than one enemy in a single mission.
The real kick of Urban Assault is jumping into any of your vehicles and leading the 3D combat. The impressive selection of war machines-each of the five factions has its own variation on jeeps, tanks, probes, helicopters, jets, and even Zeppelins-varies in speed, firepower, shielding, and cost.
You'll learn how to maintain a steady supply of energy so you can create new units (they appear instantly) and arrange your vehicles into squadrons to give them orders, destinations, and aggression settings.
Such variety adds depth and richness to the combat-which is definitely tilted in favor of units under your control-and keeps the action fresh throughout the 30 nonlinear missions. The mission-selection screen resembles a Risk map; conquer one territory and adjacent missions become available.
Urban Assault also shines in multiplay, with almost no noticeable lag over the Internet. The action unfolds more methodically than in most action games, but the pace is quicker than in most RTS games, so you won't be battling in one game for hours on end. The result is an entertaining blend of armchair general and in-the-trenches grunt.
Urban Assault's biggest hurdle is its learning curve. It's very tough to pick up, even with the three training missions. Early discouragement is almost assured, as there seem to be just too many options and features and too little time to master them before getting clobbered by the relentless enemy. Even when you have the interface and its features down cold, it's a very challenging game-and there are no difficulty settings. But it's worth sticking with for its addictive gameplay.
A host of irritants-control difficulties with certain vehicles (why can't helicopters hover in one place?), occasional AI oddities, and the inability to access the control-config screen from within a mission or choose the same faction as your opponent in multiplay-detract from what is otherwise a rich game. Good (albeit boxy) graphics, atmospheric music from X-Files maestro Mark Snow, and inventive design make Urban Assault a strong package for action and strategy fans.
