14 DAY TRIAL // 
EndWar could be the future of real time strategy on consoles. Or it could be just a dead end in the evolution of console videogaming. I believe the fate of EndWar could be decided by the way reviewers and gamers approach it in the long term. Tom Chick seemed to like it. Others noted that the game was limited, repetitive and, ultimately, boring. I believe that it works in what it's trying to do but it fails in creating a real shift in the relationship between real time strategy and home gaming consoles.
Voice command is nice but the way EndWar is building itself to allow it to work is easy to see. This is not a critique but rather an accurate observation. The failings of the game are elsewhere: in the limited scope, the illusion of choice and the limited combat space. Still, multiplayer works nicely and, overall, it's a very good game to go for if you want tactical battles with a strategic layer on a home gaming console.
Story
Well, I really don't know whether Tom Clancy had to come up with the driving plot behind the worldwide warfare EndWar chronicles. In the near future, resources, especially oil, are drying up and the remaining world powers, the usual suspects, the United States of America, a revived Russia and a more integrated European Federation, are in a race to exploit what is left, while developing alternative energy sources. With anti ballistic missile shields up and running, the USA and the EF are trying to develop space based weapons, while Russia is scheming behind the scenes.
The Prologue, which teaches the players how to approach the game, tells how the three superpowers get to blow and initiate open combat operations against each other. From that point on, the player, as a commander for one of the sides, will create history by leading their chosen country to victory in a number of linked tactical engagements.
Concept
Endwar, after the comprehensive Prologue, presents the player with a choice of sides and then of battalions. The player can then choose a mission on the strategic layer and fight it in a tactical engagement. Following the battles, money can be spent to upgrade units and buy new abilities for them. During the battles, there are seven types of units you can command, several abilities that you can use and a few surprise moves the computer will pull on you.
Unfortunately, I found myself facing a lot of illusions when attempting to enjoy EndWar. The first illusion was strategic choice. The theater of war comprises all of Europe, most of the Eastern seaboard of the United States and the Eastern vast spaces of Russia. All is covered in nodes representing the essential regions, which are the ones where you will be doing the fighting. The bad news is that there's no real choice. You cannot raid a supply region lying to the back of the front, even if the delivery of most hardware to the battle is done via helicopter. You can't even really choose your fights, you can only choose from a list offered by the game itself.
The second illusion was that of scale. A total war, where the three powers are bent on destructing the others, should be bigger. In each battle, you'll be using 12 unit slots. No more. I often got the felling that I was just a side show, the real combat being elsewhere. Even the maps are small, with network nodes close together and it's easy to blaze a path to the point where enemy units enter the map.
What does make a difference is always bringing the right unit for the job. The rock, paper, scissors system is in full swing here. Transports and engineers take out choppers, who can make quick work of armor, which rolls right over transports. Sure, artillery is useful against all at long range, while the command vehicle is only there to allow you a bird’s eye view. But I feel the game could be a little more forgiving with miss matching troops and allow you the time needed to get out of a hairy situation.
Controls
One of the big selling points for EndWar was the voice commands. They work well enough, especially if you speak proper English but the problem is that, again, voice commands are basically an illusion. The game itself is set up in such a way as to make this implementation possible at all (thaks, steveroger). If there were more units on the field or if the variety of units was greater, voice commands would quickly be overwhelming. In this limited setting, it's intuitive, quick and effective. It remains to be seen how it will scale for other strategy console titles or how Ubisoft can compensate for keeping the limited scale by adding more to the top strategic layer.
Visuals and sound
Well, kinetic shot from orbit has never looked so good, that much I can tell you. EndWar has a very Tom Clancy look, with most of the hardware which makes an appearance based upon modern military combat and a whole interface built around easy access to the important elements. The settings of the tactical clashes are varied, ranging from the launch pad of a space shuttle to oil refineries and urban spaces. There are no civilians and the buildings and forests seem to be the same, with little variation or personality. It's a good looking PlayStation 3 game that doesn't amaze with its visuals.
The interface and presentation are well put together. The main interface adds tidbits of information about the war and keeps you very much in the game world. The look is very techno thriller, very Tom Clancy, while the battle interface is smart and allows the player to quickly asses the information and respond to threats, either by using the controller or voice commands.
The sound elements are well produced but, again, nothing to dwell too much upon. The sounds of battle are well captured, even though there's curiously low chatter between the various units that you can bring on the battlefield. The pre battle presentations are a bit too verbose, with a commander even telling the player which enemy leader he will face on the battlefield (more like in a fixed match of wrestling than in an chaotic all out planetary war).
Multiplayer
There's a lot of potential for EndWar as an online skirmish game. It's very easy to go into multiplayer. The limited scope battles that can become boring and repetitive against an AI opponent are much more engaging and intense against a human opponent who could be half way across the world. It's easy enough to launch a multiplayer match and the games are quick enough to serve as a nice diversion from playing other titles. Just don't count on always finding people to play with, especially if you want to play a certain map.
Conclusion
EndWar is not, by any standard, a bad game. It's just that it tries to create an illusion of being much more than it can actually deliver. On the one hand, it's not varied enough to engage an experienced player for more than ten, maybe 15 tactical engagements. On the other hand, it's a real time strategy that debuted on consoles and will only arrive on the PC sometime later in 2009, possibly March, which means that its biggest potential audience might miss the game because it will have lost interest in what it has to offer.
If Ubisoft thought of EndWar as the first in a series of strategy games, then its shortcomings are nothing but speed bumps on a possible road to greatness. It could even become the top layer in the multitude of Tom Clancy games Ubisoft is sure to release in the future, tying together H.A.W.X, Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfigfhter. The voice command concept is sound and the in game implementation works surprisingly well but only because of the rather limited scale. In its quest to create a unique game for strategy on consoles, Ubisoft might have only produced a one trick pony that will never spawn a following or a successor. On the other hand, we might just be looking at the future of console strategies. Let's see whether there will be an EndWar 2.
