Tom Clancy's ENDWAR

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So I finally broke down and bought a used copy of ENDWAR for the 360.

For those who haven't played, ENDWAR is a RTS game developed by Ubisoft in collaboration with famous military fiction writer Tom Clancy (who has also helped develop military shooter games such as Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell, as well as other military action games such as H.A.W.X. - all of which are based off of his books). It's the first RTS game in the franchise, and has versions for Xbox 360, PC, and DS.

The premise of the game is World War III; a prediction on how the war to end all wars is going to shake down. Basically the Middle East got nuked to hell and so Russia becomes a superpower again because they're the only ones left with oil. They try to instigate a war between the United States and the European Federation, a beefed-up version of the EU. It eventually devolves into a three-way war between the USA, EF, and the USSR.

The basics are: you take control of one of the three factions and fight for global supremacy. You can customise the battalion you take into battle. Once you pick a spot to invade, it goes to that battle, where you have to defeat the enemy by establishing eletromagnetic supremacy over the battlefield via capturable areas called "uplinks". In addition to standard military units, you have a variety of commands such as EMP attacks, air strikes, and of course the good old satillite-based nuclear missle. You control your units on the battlefield but are also responsible for the outcome of the entire war by choosing where to invade and when, so both field tactics and war-room strategy is required.

The selling point of the game is the voice recognition command system. At the beginning of the game, you register and calibrate the system to respond to your voice. Afterwards, you can use spoken commands to order your troops in battle, almost as if you were actually in the command center running the operation.

Now for my review:

It's not as bad as some people have said. Definately not the best RTS game out there. It's kind of minimal when it comes to what you can do (you essentially are limited to eight kinds of units the entire game), but the strategy & tactics element is challenging and interesting, and the voice command is quite streamlined and works well for manuvering your units quickly and efficiently. I was a bit skeptical of the voice command, thinking that it would be one of those things where it either a) didn't work, or b) was just a gimmick and wasn't useful to the game. But neither of those are true for ENDWAR. Just be sure to speak clearly and keep a bottle of water with you, as shouting orders constantly makes one thirsty.

The viewpoint takes getting used to. Unlike most RTS games, in ENDWAR you have to follow around a single unit (which you can switch easily by VRC or the controller) and you basically get their POV when looking for enemies. If you have a certain unit you can call for a sitrep, which basically shows an overhead view with the units as icons instead of the actual combat area. I guess it's a realism thing, after all in real warfare you're limited to what your units see and report back to you, you don't just magically know where the enemy is.

As for the gameplay, well you're limited to only a few kinds of units, each with their own weaknesses and strengths agains other units. You can only have so many units in battle at one time, and when they get incapacitated you have to evac them out and call in more units (which you're limited on that too). But the enemy has the same restrictions you have on what they can do, so the gameplay is balanced and winning relies on your ability to outmanuver and outsmart the enemy, more than it does on brute force. There are also checkpoints called "uplinks" that can affect battle, for most you have to capture more than half of the uplinks to win, so there's more than one way to win other than take out the enemy. As for the long-term strategy element, winning battles allows you to take over the territory the battle was fought on, with the intention that one faction must control the majority of the world to win. In short, the gameplay is a mixture of Battlefield and Command & Conquer, with a little bit of Risk thrown in.

It's not the most advanced RTS out there, but it wastes valuable lifespan in an enjoyable fashion and that's what really matters in a game.

I don't care much for Tom Clancy games. They pump em out by the dozen each year.