[GAME] Tom Clancy's EndWar

This review is for the Xbox 360 version.

I recently downloaded the demo for this game and after playing through two different battles I'm fairly impressed.  This game presents an interesting new take on the RTS genre, with the removal, or limiting of the birds eye view that has been a staple of the genre.  Now we see the battle from the point of view of our soldiers, and their support troops(occasionally things like UAV spy drones afford us a better view).

  We have the ability for use the controller to assume control over a given unit, which works well enough but isn't required.  For a change the AI of the units will follow the overall commands issued pretty well.  And here we come to the real crux.  The primary method for assigning tasks to units is not the traditional point and click, it's voice activated.

  The control scheme is actually very responsive and in a half hour of play I only had two strings of commands go bad.  The display flashes the commands across the top so you can easily spot when something does go wrong.  I find that a cropped military way of barking the commands worked best and my southern drawl seemed to give it the hardest time.  I did find though that when I switched my accents there was a brief learning period where it had to relearn my speech.  Either that or it was all in my head.  Either way its possibly the best speech system I've seen in a game far and away beyond the similar systems in SOCOM.

The game seems to play as a cross between RTS and capture the flag styles, with you having a given number of troops available to you with the formula being dependent on how many flags you have, how effectively you use your troops, and whether or not your infantry is installed into the flags.

There was a blurb about there being an overlay to the game where the individual skirmishes affect an upper layer which can in turn affect the skirmishes.  It seems that the game revolves around WWIII and either side can pick up advantages by being the winning side.  I'm not to clear on this part of the game yet so take it with a grain of salt.