The world of real-time strategy titles has been stagnant for a long time. Very little has changed, though recently there has been a concerted effort to bring the genre to the next-gen consoles. That has been met with marginal success. While the mouse and keyboard was easy to use for defining units and issuing orders (just use the mouse to draw a box around the selected units, and then click where you wished them to move to, or to perform whatever action you desired), the handheld console created some interesting takes on that tried-and-true method.

But developers persevered and RTS was doing well on the consoles. Ok, so maybe the stories were not that original, and maybe the overall gameplay was more or less the same, but the games were graphically pleasing and the action evolving.

Now along comes Tom Clancy, a license that is associated more with Rainbow Six titles than with the genre of RTS. But EndWar, while it still treads the familiar, does offer something different and that something makes for a compelling experience – and that something is voice-controlled game mechanics. EndWar, though, has the earmarks of typical RTS titles. There are three factions in a World War III setting where country borders have blurred and there are unions instead of nations.

The game has three modes of play, one of which should turn out to be a robust multiplayer experience with shifting borders and players diving into the fray and winning territory for their collective side.

But what is it about EndWar that will set it apart from the crowd of RTS titles? Well, instead of using the PlayStation 3 controller to select your units, then pinpoint where you wish them to move and what you want them to do when they get there, Endwar integrates voice commands. You are the Colonel in charge of the operations and you speak your commands into the Logitech Vantage USB Headset for the PS3.

For example … as the game’s intro cleverly demonstrates, you have two groups of gunships over a well-designed mapboard. There are tanks below, attacking ground troops. You hold down the R2 shoulder button and speak clearly:

“Unit 1 attack Hostile 3.”

The gunships stop hovering, move toward their objective take up position and start blasting away. It is intuitive, exciting and brings a level of gameplay to the RTS genre that was long overdue. No longer will players have to fumble with controllers. All you have to do is remain calm and level headed, scanning the battlefield (in some scenarios you can speak “Sitrep” into the headset to bring up an overview of the mapboard and then direct units from there) and remembering the rock-paper-scissors format that the game employs – gunships kill tanks, tanks kill transports and transports kill gunships. Of course, if it were that simple, this game would have no depth. There are a host of other commands that come into play, like deploying the camera, calling in surgical strikes and WMDs … all in all, this is an incredibly enjoyable adventure.

The backstory for the game begins in 2016 when nuclear terrorists hit Saudi Arabia, wiping out the oil supplies for the world and throwing unlikely unions together. There is the United States of Europe with its Enforcer Core, the United States (the North American kind) with its Joint Strike Force and Russia with the Spetsnaz Guard Brigade. By the year 2020, the U.S. had established space supremacy, but this merely put the rest of the world on edge and precipitated World War III.

Players can tackle EndWar in one of three modes. Theater of War is a massively multiplayer online campaign with rolling maps, orders of battle and players up to their eyeballs in trying to grab territory from the others. Skirmish is a single-player or multiplayer mission that can take place on any territory in the game. The solo campaign is the place to get your feet wet, learn how to deal with your forces and how to approach the voice command system. You can also earn points to level up your units (this is a predetermined tech tree that requires you to spend the credits you earn to boost individual units above that ugly rookie unit). It begins with tutorial missions that ramp up in difficulty, increasing in number of units on the mapboard while overlaying an objective for players that act as the condition of victory. This goes under the moniker of Prelude to War.

The game actually begins with a quick overview of the voice command system and tests voice input in the headset. You don’t have to shout, but actually maintaining a normal talking voice is best. The game reads the commands and through quite a number of scenarios, it did exactly as ordered, regardless of how inane those commands were in terms of not actually being what should have been done. Plus, even with the sound of the game blaring in the background, the headset still recognized the commands and executed them.

And what that translates to is less hand work with the controller. You can use it to deploy more units when the time becomes available to pull in more, but most of what you will do will be tied to the R2 button and your voice. And you can scroll through units, then deploy them to cover locations, if warranted.

As one can imagine, the sound of the game – considering that it depends so much on the sound of your voice to control it – is very good, but so are the graphics. This is a real-time game, so everything happens and rolls along whether you are paying attention or not. That means vigilance is important. There are some ‘jaggies’ in some superfluous environmental elements but nothing to get nervous about. (It should be noted that the build sent by Ubisoft for the preview was also designated as the review build so if anything changes in retail release, GameZone did not see it.)

So while the graphics, sound and input devices all sparkle, there are a few elements that do not shine as brightly. For one, the game is very simplistic. This is good news and bad. The good news is that anyone, of any age level, should be able to dive in and have some success with the game. The reflexive, pinpoint controller-control scheme has been overwritten in favor of a smart control scheme that relies on the voice. While newer players will certainly appreciate that, veterans of the RTS genre looking for challenges might find this game a little bit of a lightweight.

Another downside is the lack of originality in the game story and mission set-ups. EndWar has a very familiar feel to it. It tries to apply a fresh coat of paint to well-worn ideas, but in the end, this is a game that offers little – aside from the voice commands – that is new.

Is this a bad thing? Absolutely not. In fact, in some regards, it can be a good thing. Players who might never have shown an interest in an RTS will find this title an open and inviting experience.

Gameplay: 8.2
The mission setup is familiar and there are load times, but the idea of a voice-control scheme is very well implemented.  

Graphics: 8.5
Lush graphical elements that look good. The camera can be attached to units and the animations and special effects are well done.

Sound: 7.5
Nothing is here that is out of the ordinary. The audio is well done, nevertheless and supports the graphics nicely.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium

Concept: 8.2
The voice implementation for the graphics is very well done. The rest of the game has a very familiar feel to it.

Multiplayer: N/A
The disk received was for the debug disk and although the multiplayer element was booted up, no matches were found at the time of the review.

Overall: 8.2
This is a solid RTS experience that will definitely appeal to newcomers to the fold. Battle-hardened veterans may find this a little too simplistic in design but kudos have to go to the development team for creating a solid title that is entertaining and brings something new to the genre.