Gaming Generations :: Tom Clancy's EndWar

NickD · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 10:57 am Post subject: Tom Clancy's EndWar

Tom Clancy’s EndWar

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai
Official Website: http://endwargame.us.ubi.com/
Release Date: 11/4/2008
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Number of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: Teen
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REVIEW

To be honest, this is a game I initially had no interest in. I essentially asked for requests on what to review, and I got this. Normally, I’m not a big real-time strategy fan in general, let alone for consoles. Turn-based is a little more my style. But, when I heard this game had a voice-command system, I knew that this was a game to try out.

PLOT

There isn’t a terribly large amount of plot. A rogue military group called the Forgotten Army begins attacking strategic locations in the U.S., Russia, and Europe (which is completely united), which leads the U.S. to think that Europe is the culprit. When the U.S.’s military space station is about to launch into space just to be destroyed seconds after take-off, the U.S. declares war on Europe. That’s really the end of the story, unfortunately. But, the way the rest of the game is handled, allowing the player to choose where they want to strike next out of a set of options, there isn’t necessarily a better way to tell the story.

After that, the Single Player Campaign allows you to choose a side, pick your battalion, and start taking over the locations nearest to you as you see fit. It essentially becomes Risk, but with real-time skirmishes to determine who controls a spot.

SETTING

The setting is cities and strategic locations across the eastern U.S., Europe, and western Russia. On any given location, you may see building that look at least slightly familiar.

GAMEPLAY

After the “Prologue to War” in which you get to try out each faction, the Single Player Campaign allows you to choose a side, pick your battalion, and start taking over the locations nearest to you as you see fit in order to win WWIII. It essentially becomes Risk, but with real-time skirmishes to determine who controls a spot. As mentioned before, the game allows you to pick from a list of options of fights you can participate in. The thing is, the other battles still take place in the hands of A.I. commanders. This almost forces the player to think strategically about where he or she feels is an important piece of real-estate.

Within each battle, there are often certain points, called uplinks, to secure. Often the mission objective is to take and hold the most uplinks, kill the whole enemy force, or destroy target buildings. Despite the other objectives, most of my matches, both online and off, ended up being more like “kill all enemies” matches than anything else. This happens because you can only have 12 units out at any given time and you have a limited amount of reserves. Reserves can only be deployed if you have enough Command Points. Command points constantly increase at a slow pace, or which can be earned through securing uplinks.

Command Points are also used to perform airstrikes, use electronic warfare (disables enemy shields and halts movement of vehicles), or launch strategic WMD attacks in certain situations. Command points can also be used to strategically add sentries to guard uplinks, move your deployment locations forward, or add a few non-commandable rifleman and tanks to an uplink location.

World War III mode is not very long though, taking potentially less than 9 hours to complete and the results aren’t really that rewarding. Throughout WWIII, you are allowed to upgrade your units using credits. These credits are gained in each battle and are based on how well you did. The upgrades can be applied to a specific unit of Rifleman, Engineers, Gunships (helicopters), Tanks, Transports, Artillery, your Command Vehicle, or general Mission Support.

Each Unit has its own advantages. Only infantry can secure and upgrade uplinks. Riflemen are good at securing uplinks and taking down engineers. They are fairly balanced against vehicles if they are in cover, but are very vulnerable otherwise. Engineers are good at upgrading uplinks, which allows you to use stronger air strikes or electronic warfare. They are also great for taking down vehicles while in cover.

The main 3 strike vehicles, meaning tanks, gunships, and transports, have an essentially rock-paper-scissors strategy to them. Tanks beat transports who beat gunships who beat tanks. All 3 of these are incredibly useful. The gunships are fast, which allows you to fly over to check out an opponent, then fly back. The transports can transport (obvious?) infantry to a location, and tanks have a more power and can take more damage from infantry, artillery, and other attacks.

The last two vehicles are more strategic than simple blunt instruments. The artillery can take down anything, as long as the opposing unit isn’t right next to the infantry. Because of their long range, things rarely get too close to the artillery anyways. The Command Vehicle is easily one of the most useful vehicles in the game. Having a Command Vehicle out allows you to be able to send drones or UAV out to attack or scout a location so that you can see enemy troops that are outside your normal range. The Command Vehicle also lets you go into SitRep mode, which gives you a top-down view of the whole map and shows any enemies on the map that are in your range or have been spotted by UAV.

Units can be grouped in any way you see fit. The Task Groups can then be issued commands. Commands can also be issued by unit type, or to any specific unit. I found it very useful to make at least one task group consisting of an infantry unit with a transport. That way, it is much easier to take over farther away uplinks.

The only problem is that the single player portion of the game gets stale. The limited unit types cause the battles to start feeling the same, especially when they’re all becoming slaughterfests. The upgrades you make to your units hardly feel useful in single player since the enemies seem to scale with you. However, the game luckily has a solution to this:

The online component of the game is fun. Whether you’re playing in Skirmish mode and just doing one specific fight at a time or you’re playing the much cooler Theater of War mode, the online play against other live commanders makes things feel fresh and exciting. When going online in Theater of War mode, you again get to pick a side and a battalion. This is the battalion you will be able to upgrade as you battle against other players online. If you’re interested, you can even fight in a 2 vs 2 battle, in which you and your partner each can control up to 6 units. Like in single player, your units can be killed in action, eliminating the promoted unit permanently (the one that can use the better upgrades) and replacing with a fresh noobie unit.

Theater of War mode is especially interesting because it employs a persistent online map. What this means is that, like in WWIII mode, players’ choices will change the map on a day-to-day basis. If a faction has more wins than losses in any given, their faction will gain control of that space on the next day. The front lines move every 24 hours, and player actions actually count for something.

GRAPHICS

For a real-time strategy game, this game looks great. The troops and vehicles all move realistically and the buildings take damage well. The explosions and electronic warfare look cool and all of the landscape is well-designed. The game just looks polished and feels like part of the Tom Clancy universe.

SOUND

The sound is great. The guns and explosions are loud and seem chaotic. In a heated battle, units will be calling out to you about their current status and other important updates will be heard to let you know to check up on a unit.

On the other side, the voice commands work extremely well for the most part. The biggest problem with recognition would have to be the game recognizing Alpha as Delta. When you’re trying to Airstrike a target, it is helpful if the target isn’t the uplink you already control. Still, most of the commands go through clear. The voice commands allow for a very quick reaction time to enemy movements and help you move your troops faster. Voice commands can’t do everything though, as things like telling your infantry to take cover or enter a building must be done by switching to their camera. This is also true of special attacks earned by units. Many times, you’ll have to switch to the tanks’ camera to use their BA heavy shell attack. For the most part, the sound does a great job of making you feel like you’re an actual battlefield commander.

SUMMARY

This is another game with not a lot of story. If you like RTS games, you’ll definitely have fun with this game for a while. The limited number of unit types and the fact that you can only have 12 units out at once often make the single player campaign feel less epic than you would hope. However, the online multiplayer offers better and more fun commanders to fight against.

The voice command system is a great tool and is something that could be very useful in the future, and hopefully not just by Tom Clancy games. The voice recognition does have some room for improvement, but definitely improves the potential for RTS games in the future.

The lack of story was still somewhat disappointing since an overall story during WWIII mode could have been presented. A story that changes at least somewhat based on player actions would have also been nice. But, because the voice command is cool and because the online mode saved it, I had to increase the rating a little bit. Being able to simply say “Unit 5, attack hostile 3” or “Task group 1, secure Delta” and then see it happen is just too cool to pass up.

This game is good, but it’s definitely not great. It’s definitely worth giving a shot though. RTS fan or not, you should try to this game for the voice commands. If you don’t have an XBL Gold account you might just want to go for a rental.

Overall Score: 7.5/10

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Pictures courtesy of GameSpot.com
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Nick
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Finished Reviews:
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (DS)
Ninja Gaiden II
Battlefield: Bad Company (360)
Gears of War
Too Human
Dead Space (360)
Legendary (360)
EndWar (360)
Fallout 3
Fatal Frame II

Writer, Actor in Flingshot Productions