Universal Combat

Universal Combat is another space simulation that requires some time to play, and to figure out what you are doing in it. I found this game lacking in many things, and the most important was tutorials.

The game has a good premise, but it needs some work and feels like it was not finished as far as having real people try the game and make sure it works well. I think the whole game would have been better if they had tested the game and then used any advice that testers would have been able to given them, but it seems like they didn't. The minimum requirements are as follows:

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
CPU Pentium 1.0 GHZ or Equivalent
Memory 128 MB RAM
Video 32 MB Minimum
Hard Drive 1 GB
Mouse
Joystick is helpful

The game uses a lot of memory and video memory, or memory on your video or graphics card. I had to adjust some of the settings to get the ground playing as a soldier to play well, the frame rates were slow on the default settings. Several things about the game seem unfinished. I thought it odd to have a game that required so many tutorials that were available from third parties that had written them about Universal Combat.

Then I tried to play it and found out why, the game is very detailed and it takes a lot to play. You need to sit down and spend awhile getting used to how the game and controls work. And you need to get used to all the interfaces on the screen to get to use everything on your ship when your in space. It is kind of confusing and takes awhile to get used to it. I found that another space game was easy to figure out and worked better right from the start.

If you like space simulations that require a lot of time and energy figuring out how to play it, this is good, but I found it a little time intensive and could do without all the tutorials to figure out how to play the game. The game comes with a Campaign, Instant Action and Roam mode. The campaign is just like any other campaign type.