Tom Clancy's EndWar Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 8th December 2008

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We look to End War with Tom Clancy's strategy offering.

Tom Clancy's EndWar Details:

	Strategy
	PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/PSP/Nintendo DS
	Ubisoft
	Ubisoft

16+

Out Now

1-4

The Tom Clancy name in the gaming world is synonymous with espionage, terrorism, conspiracy filled action shooters, so when Ubisoft announced EndWar as a strategy game many fans of the previous game bearing the authors name wouldn’t really have known what to expect. But what we find is a strategy game filled with espionage, conspiracies and terrorism!

Tom Clancy’s EndWar is set in the near future where in 2016 a nuclear attack on Saudi Arabia kills six million people and cripples the world’s oil supply. A year later a missile shield created by the United States and Europe is put into orbit around the earth eliminating the threat of nuclear attack. During this time Russia has established itself as a superpower after becoming the world’s leading energy supplier. By 2020 the countries of Europe have united to form the European Federation and the US is on the verge of completing a controversial space based military platform that will upset the balance of power. As tensions run high between the three super powers war is the inevitable outcome and World War III breaks out and this is the stage for the games campaign.

Playing the campaign at first allows you to play as each of the three factions in the prelude to the war, however once all hell breaks loose you must choose to play as one of the three factions. Each of the three factions obviously has their own unique strengths and weaknesses but in general they more or less provide the same playing experience as each other. Playing through the persistent world campaign mode in EndWar offers a fare amount of variation and unlike many strategy games that have you playing the same missions over and over on different maps EndWar offers four different mission types, Conquest, Siege, Raid and Assault.

The four mission types all revolve around the missile defence shield uplinks with the exception of the assault mission in which you have to wipe out all enemy units. In siege you have to either defend or attack a critical uplink. In raid you again play either attacker or defender. The defender has to keep over half of the critical targets from being destroyed and the attacker obviously has to destroy half of them. The conquest mission type has you trying to capture and hold over half of the uplinks on the map until the timer runs out.

Uplinks also act as command points once they have been secured and can be upgraded to provide powerful support items, such as air strikes, force recon and electronic warfare. The air strike upgrade is self explanatory, whilst the force recon sees your regular army troops called in to reinforce the battlefield. The electronic warfare option comes in very useful as it will disable enemy vehicles within its blast radius.

EndWar doesn’t feature the largest selection of units ever in a strategy game, however this is a pretty good approach as you’ll make proper use of those that you do have at your disposal. There are two infantry units’ available riflemen and engineers. Riflemen are like regular soldiers whilst engineers are heavy infantry units. Infantry units are the only ones able to secured and upgrade uplink. They can also garrison buildings and take cover which gives them a defensive bonus. Other units include, transports for carrying infantry between points quickly, tanks, gunships, artillery and a command vehicle that provides real-time Intel and can be upgraded to support your troops with combat drones.

As the games campaign is set in a persistent world your units that survive each battle gain promotions, giving them access to upgrades that make them more effective on the battlefield. These include things such as accuracy and the amount of damage their weapons make to an enemy.

Unlike many games when things start to go wrong in EndWar the game does give you the opportunity to pull things back as you will gain authorisation to use WMD’s or Crash a Satellite Uplink. This can obviously throw a serious spanner in your enemy’s plans and help you get back on track. However, once you have used one of these two options the opposing side automatically has authorisation to use them in retaliation. Overall it’s a good system that can sometimes allow you to come back from the dead in order to achieve your objectives and claim victory.

Obviously the single biggest feature of Tom Clancy’s EndWar is the voice control system. If I’m honest I was expecting to encounter quite a lot of problems so I was presently surprised when I realised how well it actually works. Yes it can still get confused especially if you speak too quickly, which is something you’ll probably do during the heat of battle. But for the most part the system accurately interprets what you say into the relevant order. If you don’t fancy screaming at your TV screen the game also employs a pretty good system for issuing orders that allows you to easily navigate through a series of pop-up menus to quickly issue commands to your units.

EndWar offers a pretty good challenge, the games early missions are a little too easy giving you false complacency for the later missions which seem to significantly increase in difficulty. Especially when your enemies WMD use is authorised when your victory seemed assured.

Visually EndWar is impressive the game uses a third person viewpoint rather then the traditional top down view used by other strategy titles. This allows you to get a good view of the battlefield and immerses you more in the action, however this view isn’t without its problems as you are limited to only seeing the area that your current selected unit is in, meaning you don’t have a very good overall view of the battlefield. Units feature a good level of detail, whilst weapons fire, explosions and other special effects have all been done well. The games audio is also very good, with realistic sound effects and pretty good voice acting.

Tom Clancy’s EndWar is one of the better console strategy games I’ve played lately, offering a good challenge. Its persistent world campaign mode and brilliantly implemented voice command system really immerse you into the action making you feel like a real commander, despite only being an armchair general.