Earth finds itself in a heap of trouble when a group of aliens called the Hierarchy, bent on exterminating all life, makes first contact in Universe at War: Earth Assault. Luckily, humanity isn't doomed, since a robotic race called the Novus pursues them while waging a guerilla war campaign. Later on, a mysterious humanoid race called the Masari enters the fray in an all-out battle for control of the planet in this high-destruction real-time strategy (RTS) game.

The campaign borrows quite a bit from games like StarCraft, where the story is told successively from each alien perspective, and although players use humans in the tutorial, they only make cameos during the rest of the game. The story is decent, moves swiftly and contains a variety of mission types until the Masari campaign starts. At that point, the game switches into Global Conquest mode, where the world turns into a large map divided into territories like a game of Risk except the game still operates in real-time. Players must take over a string of territories and dedicate them to gathering resources or researching technologies. Although players don't have to take over as many territories as a full Global Conquest scenario, moving from one spot to another, in addition to waiting for armies to build significantly, slows down the game's pace.

It's hard to think of a game with three factions as widely varied as Universe at War. The Hierarchy exploits planets by sucking up raw materials (buildings, junk yards, animals, etc.) and converts them into resources. Their builders carve glyphs into the ground to call down structures from the mothership, which includes massive autonomous structures that players can customize to produce units. Although they need time to set up, they can become a near unstoppable force once they gain momentum. The Novus produce light armored, robotic assault forces that can quickly get from place to place on light wires that connect buildings to a central power source. However, in a very Protoss-like fashion, players can render their buildings inoperable by cutting the power. The Masari balance between offensive and defensive strategies by switching between light and dark modes. Light mode ups the damage output while switching to Dark energies covers units and buildings with a protective armor, grounding flying units. Light and Dark modes also determine the types of powers units have access to.

Each faction can be custom tailored to a player's style with research upgrades that unlock abilities or grant bonuses. There are twelve technologies available across three trees, but players can only have six researched at a time. Fortunately, gamers can delete technologies and pursue a different branch as the game dynamics change.

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