The biggest combat simulator of all time. Fight anything, anytime, anywhere by any means necessary! Battle your way through a massive game universe full of epic battles, massive first-person ground assaults, fierce naval engagements and tense dogfights above the planet's surface.

Average Customer Review: ( 23 customer reviews )
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Being a devoted grognard, traditional wargamer, and military studies aficionado, I can tolerate a steep learning curve and less than obvious interface, all plastered over a hardcore simulation. But Universal Combat failed to live up to any of the developers' promises or my expectations. Thank god the publisher had the presence of mind to realise this was a budget title. If Derek Smart had his way, I'd be about $29.95 more ticked that I bought this game.

Right from the rocky start just trying to get the program installed, to the option controls that don't respond or revert to previous settings, I realised I had been promised a ship and a star to sail her by but had chugged off in a lemon once again. And then the game continued to perform like a "champ" throughout, frequently crashing, misplacing interface elements, and otherwise dying in its own misery.

The game manual is as convoluted as all the other battlecruiser titles, riddled with acronyms whose definitions are buried in pages and pages of small type. There is some semblance of organization to the thing, but the biggest problem is that there is no connection between using the bogglingly complex interface and actually accomplishing something with the systems simulated in the game.

As in the more poorly executed Battlecruiser Millenium, the ground, sea, and air combat modes seem to be included as pure gloss. None of these modes function well or gave me any reason to come back for more. Most annoying was the complete absence of any sense of physics, especially on the ground. I've seen graphics driver demos with more realism.

To Dreamcatcher's credit, the graphics are far superior to any other game in the Battlecruiser series. However, the problem is that Dreamcatcher seems to be developing all the graphics for games in the series with a 2-4 year shift back in time. While occasionally pretty, I couldn't help feel that I was playing an old game, even though the brand new box was sitting right on my desk.

The ultimate flaw in the game itself was the total absense of any sense of progress. After many crushing engagements where my ship (pick any class, type, or purpose) was routinely destroyed before having built up enough resources to repair it or refit, I began to succeed in ship to ship combat. But beyond that, there was absolutely no sense of having any kind of impact on the game world. It seems the game developer expects one to gain a sense of accomplishment from figuring out the game interface and pretending one is involved in some kind of greater conflict. The convoluted campaigns seem to have no ultimate point. While you can, as promised, go anywhere you like and do whatever you want within the large scope of the game, what you do matters little and has no identifiable outcome. There is nothing to draw one in on any side or measure effect; playing one ship, exploring a planet, or fighting any one battle is pretty much like another, and none of these gives any sense of having accomplished anything.

The final straw for me was the developer's support. Let's get this out right now: Derek Smart is mad at the publisher for cutting the price of his game, so his development team is not going to support it. The site is filled with Derek's diatribes talking this game up as being the biggest masterpiece of mixed gameplay, massive scope, and rewards for everyone, and explains how angry he is that his work of art is not universally loved and appreciated except by his fans who understand him and what he is trying to do. In place of support, he condescendingly criticizes those who say anything different or can't solve their own problems. The theme here is that it is not the game or the developer who have failed; it is everyone else - the players, the publisher, the market. Don't expect to find a solution to Universal Combat's myriad problems here.

Bottom line: This game could have filled a niche that is empty in the industry - a game with huge scope, complexity, and challenge extending beyond mere shoot-em up. Instead, this game is a barely functional shell that promises everything but delivers little.

10 of 11 found the following review helpful:

Yikes!Feb 15, 2004

I played and enjoyed Smart's Battlecruiser Millennium Gold, and hoped this would be a solid update in the series. Boy, was I wrong. This game is a mess - incredibly buggy, the graphics are a little better than BMG but not by much, and it lacks the stately, thoughful pace of previous games that allowed the player to immerse himself (or herself) in the Battlecruiser universe.

Please, save your money. If you want to play a game where the concept worked much better, buy a copy of Battlecruiser Millennium Gold. It's a bit dated, but thoroughly enjoyable.

12 of 14 found the following review helpful:

When Good Ideas are done shotyFeb 12, 2004

I've been watching the progress of Universal Combat for a long time. Now that i finally have it i can say this. If you are looking for a stable well put together game that mixes planetside and freelancer, you will be thourghly sadened.

No one will like this game. Those that like the slower pace of the BattleCrusier Games, you will find that this game is unplayable. The game is buggy and terrible.

I know the amazon blerb says physics engine but this is not true. There are animations for the deaths, not physics based, and more importanly, the game has no way for you to go into bases. There is no crash ditection! your character can "go through" bases, trees, vehicles, its terrible.

The graphics are way past dated. They resemble Quake 2. The information that you see long distance about objects ubstructs the screen. The text has a background so you can't see verywell.

The learning curve is off the roof, this is hampered by the fact that alot of things don't work properly. When colliding with anything your character lays down. And if you go through something, you start to sink into the floor.

This is the shottiest game i have ever seen.

Idea wise its great, but the steap learning curve and gameplay issues kill this game.

Alot of the originally proposed ideas from Battle Cruiser Generations never made it in. The half assed job done by 3000AD is evident when you start the game and the startup image is of Battle Cruiser Generations, not universal Combat.

Please do not get this game, your throwing your money away!! Get the demo from 3000ad.com and try that, if for somereason you like it then get the game. But for those looking for a tribes/planetside/freelancer crossover game don't get this!!

9 of 10 found the following review helpful:

Avoid at all costsFeb 06, 2004

This game is horrible! It has frequent crashes, sub-standard graphics, and an impossible to decipher interface. The game crashed on me 4 times in a row within 5 minutes of starting it up. The graphics are nowhere near games like Homeworld. It's almost impossible to figure out or remember what keys do what in this mess of a game. Avoid like the plaque, throw it out even if you got it for free...your time is worth more than the suffering.

11 of 13 found the following review helpful:

My honest opinion about UC...Feb 11, 2004

I bought this game a few days ago. It was a classic story that just made me want to buy the game: Game developer with a great deal of pride fighting his greedy publisher. the developer was a complete underdog in my eyes. Heck, I was about to send him directly a 20 dollar money order to make up for the way his publisher treated him.

Then I loaded the game.

UC loaded fine, but when I went to run it the problems began. I received a codec not found error, then after I continued through I received an error stating I had a debugger running? Well, I went to the developer's website and forums for aid only to find new registrations were closed and I could not post for support. I did read through the posts, and what I found was a bit disturbing. Everyone walked on eggshells in how they worded their posts, and the developer would routinely insult and berate his customers. He seemed to not like people who couldn't figure out problems themselves. I did not feel comfortable at all and left.

I resolved the problem myself, as it was a conflict with the DIVX 5.1 codec. (thanks to google.com. ;) ) I entered the game, and I was very dissapointed with what I saw. The game has a *very* steep learning curve if you didn't play a previous battlecruiser game. The manual seems to be organized well, but it is laid out in a manner that requires a more in-depth study to figure things out. Anacronyms fill the game, and rudamentary definitions are provided for them. There are NO IN-GAME TUTORIALS. Up until recently there weren't any out of game tutorials until the developer rushed to create a PDF file along with the demo. The graphics aren't bad, but they are far from current technology. I would gladly accept the graphics as is if gameplay wasn't so awkward. The user interface is horrible. it is not intuitive, there are graphic glitches with the GUI(flashing poly's, misplaced indicators), and there are layers upon layers of awkward menus that take you away from the main screen. This would all be fixed with a customizable user interface similar to a lot of the online MMO games where windows could be positioned and layered. The game crashes to desktop regularly. The feedback system from your crew in commander career mode is poor. It took me a few hours for everything to sink in as to who was telling me what. Allied crafts don't always do as they are told. sure it may be a touch of realism, but there isn't any feedback as to whether it's "as designed" or a glitch. This game is rife with glitches. This game touts air-sea-land-space combat. the physics engine for land is based on the space engine. flying a craft in the amosphere feels like flying in Zero-g. It's not a flight sim, it's not a true first person shooter. The shared engine for all combat modes needs a better physics engine to make each mode enjoyable and realistic. I found no entertainment in any profesion besides commander. Perhaps multiplayer is a different story, but I didn't try MP.

Some die-hards out there will really love this game as I suspect there is a redeeming value underneath the very rough appearance. However many will not stay long enough to find it. I am still playing the game, or attempting to... it crashes to desktop a lot. in a two hour session, about 4 times.

Oh, and this all was verified with the new patch. the latest 2/10/04 patch did little to help the game stablity.

This is a niche app, and a budget category game. There are lofty dreams by the developer for this game, but in my opinion it has a very far way to go. Casual gamers looking for a fun story driven space game, do not buy this. Hardcore space combat fans might love it if they are willing to wait on the fixes for the glaring errors, crashes, and glitches. But I'm not rating this from the perspective of a die-hard, but from a casual gamer and consumer. I think dreamcatcher did right by making this a 20 dollar game, and even at that I don't think it's right to release a game with so many bugs and stability issues.

Needless to say, I no longer feel as if I should send the extra 20 dollars. Infact I'm seriously considering contacting my state attorney general to see about getting my money back on this game, as it does not deliver as advertized.

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