Perhaps one of the weirdest things that happened last year was when Ubisoft bought the exclusive rights to Tom Clancy’s name for video games. The Clancy brand has always been pretty strong for Ubisoft, and now they’re trying to expand beyond the tales of Ding Chavez, Sam Fisher and Scott Mitchell in order to get the most out of their investment. Tom Clancy’s EndWar is the first real time strategy game to come out of the House of Ubi bearing the author’s name, and while it’s not going to blow your mind, it does introduce plenty of intriguing ideas.

EndWar looks like your standard real time strategy game, but it has been developed with the console-playing audience in mind. That means that missions have been designed to be short and sharp. Most of the complexity that players demand from their strategy games has been removed. There’s no base building, tech trees or even much unit variety. Heck, the game doesn’t even look all that great. Sounds pretty bad so far, but EndWar has a hook – voice command. Real time strategy games on consoles have often been burdened by the lack of commands one can dictate using a controller. EndWar eliminates that by allowing you to tell your troops exactly what to do using a headset.


Setting up the voice command system is pretty simple. A tutorial will get you to say a few basic phrases into the microphone, followed by a few commands the system uses, basically so it can calibrate the system to work with your voice. I was armed with the new Bluetooth headset for the PlayStation 3 for this review. Initially, the headset’s performance was disappointing – while attached to my ear, the game complained that the volume of my voice was too low, even after turning the inputs all the way up and screaming into it. After moving it off my ear and using it as a microphone, everything was dandy. One would think that Ubisoft could have included different modes for the different headsets, especially since the special edition of EndWar comes with the new Bluetooth headset. I’m willing to bet that EndWar is much more at home with the standard Xbox Live wired headset on the Xbox 360 version of the game (given that the wireless headset is a load of junk).

The voice command system works pretty well once you’re in the game, provided you speak clearly and enunciate your words correctly (you can actually speak to the game pretty quickly, though). Pretty much everything you could want to do in the game can be done through voice communication. Orders have a specific way of being given; you state the unit number, the specific order and the target. To attack, you’ll say something along the lines of “Unit One attack Hostile One”. To move to a predetermined spot, it’ll be “Unit One move to Alpha”. Voice commands can even help with interface matters like zooming (“Unit One camera”), deploying reinforcements (“Deploy gunships”) and ordering airstrikes (“Airstrike Hostile One”). It’s fortunate that the voice command system is so well integrated in EndWar, because playing with the controller is a cumbersome mess. The game’s camera is just too close to the action – you’ll always be fighting it to get the enemy in view to issue the necessary orders.

EndWar’s story setup is pretty cool, but the game never really takes it forward. A war over resources takes place in the middle of the next decade after oil companies are revealed to have overestimated their reserves. Russia becomes the world’s number one supplier of oil and gas, and uses its newfound wealth to exert its influence on world events. A nuclear war between Saudi Arabia and Iran kills 20 million, causes the oil price to explode to $800 a barrel and destabilises the European Union. The E.U., sans Britain and Ireland, reforms into the European Federation, but destabilise their relationship with the U.S. and start a new arms race in the process. To get the upper hand in the race, the U.S. moves to militarise space by launching the Freedom Star space station, a research station which would also house three companies of Marines that could deploy anywhere on Earth in 90 minutes. The project causes an irate response from the E.F. and Russia, causing the former to withdraw from the remnants of NATO. Terrorists launch an attack on the station as it is due to being launched into space, and the subsequent investigation results in the U.S., E.F. and Russia starting World War III.

The single player side of the game is broken up into two campaigns, one leading up to the war, and the war itself. Each battle you fight has a larger effect on the world as a whole, turning the war in your favour. EndWar attempts to tie Ubisoft’s various Tom Clancy franchises into the one universe . The Ghosts of Ghost Recon appear as the U.S.’s Special Forces unit, with former leader Scott Mitchell now the general of the joint strike force, Third Echelon provides battlefield intelligence, and aircraft units are set to appear in next year’s Tom Clancy’s HAWX. There are four different game types incorporated into the war; Conquest, where you fight to control half of the uplinks (capture points) on the field, Assault, your basic fight to the death, Raid, where you attack or defend key buildings for a period of ten minutes, and Siege, where you must secure a main uplink and hold it for ten minutes while reinforcements arrive.

One of the more disappointing things in EndWar is the lack of units. Perhaps as a measure to reduce balance tweaking, the game’s three factions only have a total of seven units. Combat works in a rock-paper-scissors fashion – tanks beat transports, transports beat helicopters, helicopters beat tanks. This simplicity seems to go against some of the other features in the game, such as upgrade system. You can spend credits on the units that survive each battle to upgrade their capabilities. Units gain levels with each battle they survive, so the longer they live, the better the upgrades you can buy for them. Apart from their WMDs, the three factions are indistinguishable, which is a baffling design choice.

The online multiplayer aspect of EndWar is actually pretty intriguing. The war itself is persistent, and every match between players has an effect on the world itself. The results of the matches each day represent a turn. As a side advances in the global theatre, new multiplayer matches and game types open. Sadly, the simplicity of the combat and lack of meaningful differences between the factions means that much of the effect is lost.


Tom Clancy’s EndWar makes significant progress for the real time strategy genres in a number of ways, yet also manages to fail to deliver the level of complexity necessary for a compelling experience. EndWar’s use of voice communication is really well implemented, and works much better than expected in action. However, when you take away that voice communication aspect, EndWar is just a very simple real time strategy game with horrid controls. It brings in some clever ideas and a good story, but never makes the most of these opportunities.