14 DAY TRIAL // To some, the most exciting thing about Tom Clancy's EndWar is that the game can be controlled via voice, without the need to actually tap buttons and move controller sticks. In my opinion, the biggest draw to the Ubisoft release, developed in Shanghai, is that it's yet another real time strategy title which aims to convince gamers that consoles can rival the PC as the realm of the RTS. With a demo available on Xbox Live, I jumped at the chance to see the game in action.
The demo offers players the chance to experience one mission from the campaign, which is build around the JFK Space Center and play a skirmish game on the same map, with the United States and the European sides taking turns as the attacker and defender.
The game looks very good. On a wide screen TV that is holed up to the Xbox 360, war has never looked as beautiful as seen from the point of view of an attack helicopter. One of the most interesting things in the game is that you can choose to watch the battlefield as seen by each of your units. Simply selecting them and pressing X will move you to them and you can afterwards move around and give orders mapped to the face buttons of the controllers. You can also choose to cruise over the battlefield in a free view but I would have liked to see a bit more of zoom out, as sometimes I felt the camera was too close to the ground in order to give me an overall view of the battlefield.
All the sides share pretty similar hardware, with infantry, APCs, tanks, artillery units and attack helicopters being the tools you can work with to remove the opponent from the game. It's basically rock, paper, scissors with top notch military hardware and you have to build a combined armed force to be successful. The bunkers on the map that serve as control points can be upgraded after they are captured by infantry to provide access to special weapons. Be sure not to leave the demo without firing at least one kinetic shot from orbit.
The game looks and plays well, surprisingly well for a console. I want to see more of the plot, plus complex battles, which means that you can look forward to reading our review once the game ships.