The Outset

There’s a brand of game that is often overlooked, and to be brutally honest there haven’t been many of these games around recently. It seemed back in the day that you couldn’t move, walk or talk without hearing about a slew of space sims and trading-style games but none of them quite got near the simple pleasure of Elite and even to this day – not many games come close.

Elite was /the/ space sim and only X2: The Threat after quite a few patches, ever got close enough to give me my fix. I have however recently been playing Universal Combat: A World Apart and this is one game that actually surprised me quite a lot.

I warn you now however you’ll need a lot of patience to get the best out of it - so if you’re an action/thrill/FPS/Instant adrenaline junkie – best to stop reading this review and find something else to do. Also, if you don’t like 3000AD or Derek Smart I don’t want to hear it, there are plenty of other sites out there to haunt. This is a review about the game, not the man.

A World Apart

There’s a certain group of gamers out there, rather like me, that don’t mind if the game they’re playing isn’t up there with the latest HOO-HAH release of EYE-POPPING graphics and special effects (usually with lack-lustre gameplay and extremely short as is the trend of our industry these days). As long as the game is playable and they enjoy it – they could care less if it boasts billions of terraflopmegatripixelations.

These are the gamers that will like UC: AWA – I happen to fall into that rare breed and I love nothing more than huge amounts of controls, buttons and systems to look after. I adore flight sims and space sims with that kind of depth. I adored the Jane’s Combat Sims and the Falcon series.

What UC: AWA is

To miss-coin a phrase from a recent successful movie, no one can tell you what UC: AWA is: you have to experience it for yourself. I can only really give you the bare-bones from my experiences with the game so far, since I have spent a fair amount of time playing it.

UC: AWA is a huge game in the mould of the glory days of Elite. It is a game that actually sets out to do what it says on the box, a game that makes no pretence about what it offers and delivers everything that Derek Smart and his team said it would. You can play this game how you want to, as part of the Military or as an Independent faction, with a huge choice of ships and a variety of characters.

But for people like me there’s only one way to play, as a Commander of a massive warship (of which there are quite a selection). This is where you’re going to either love or hate the game, because you have complete control over the ship/functions/systems and crew management.

You can assign fighter squads, security staff and manage every kind of system you can think of that might be on a massive battleship of the future. All of this is done through a number of screens, which might seem complicated at first but like anything – practise makes perfect.