Review: Tom Clancy's EndWar

One of the best selling franchises of all time, it is almost a guarantee nowadays that, if you put the Clancy name on your game it’ll certainly sell like hotcakes.  While Ubisoft’s breadwinning series of games has earned them untold billions in revenue each game has stuck to traditional values while at the same time changing the landscape with nothing short of addicting tactical gameplay.  EndWar, the first new Clancy series in almost six years, looks to shake things up once again thanks to a very different take on the real time strategy genre.  But is it all talk?

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The Beginning of the End

The Clancy franchise, though based upon dozens of games, follows a singular storyline.  While there have been convoluted hints throughout the series that point to an eventual culmination of the various series there has yet to be such a title released, though we all know that that would sell a bazillion units.  EndWar seems to be the first true step in this direction with characters, and units from the various series set as key players in the overall story.   While it’s not very relevant to the average player, seeing familiar faces like former Rainbow and Ghost operatives as commanders in the field gives a bit of a nostalgia trip to veteran players.

If there’s one thing that the Clancy name is known for its creating scenarios based in reality that are as realistic as they are addictive to play.  EndWar is no exception.  Set in the year 2020, the game tells the story of how the world went to hell in a hand basket in just four years.  In 2016, following a terrorist detonation of a nuclear weapon in Saudi Arabia that kills over six million people and cripples the world’s oil supply, Russia almost overnight becomes the world’s leading supplier of oil thanks to massive fields in Eastern Siberia.  With its newfound wealth the country quickly begins to reconstruct its army with modern weapons to levels that haven’t been seen since the end of the Cold War.  Meanwhile, as the rest of the world copes with the economic crisis, several remarkable evens begin to take place.  The European Union finally unites under a single banner to become essentially a united states of Europe, placing their capitol at Paris.  The following year the United States and Europe align to launch the world’s first global interlocking anti-ballistic missile shield, dubbed SLAMS.  Russia quickly reacts by building their own ABM system, effectively ending the threat of a nuclear war.  All sides dismantle their missiles and the world revels in the newfound sense of peace.

The world stage begins to change once again in 2018 as the United States announces their intention to begin construction on the Freedom Star, a military space station that is able to deploy up to three companies of marines anywhere in the world in just ninety minutes.  Shocked at the militarization of space, the European Union and Russia protest this sudden gambit to regain dominance on the global stage which is promptly ignored in Washington.  On the day of the final shuttle launch two years later a series of terrorist attacks break out across the three nations, culminating in the destruction of the Freedom Four launcher.  This sparks a chain of events that culminate in all out war between them.  And so the final war begins.

It is worth noting that there is no one good side in this war, given that both Europe and the United States are the victims and Russia is secretly the aggressor.  Each side has their own intentions but Russia is clearly once again the bad guy as they both aided the terrorist factions as well as launched an all out invasion of Eastern Europe.  While very little story develops after the first bullets start to fly little snippets appear between missions giving you a sense for how the world state is rapidly deteriorating.  Learning of events like assassination attempts, riots, food shortages, and even the destruction of the Vatican due to a terrorist nuclear detonation give you a strong sense for how frighteningly realistic a Clancy apocalypse could be.

The Tools to do the Job

The Tom Clancy name signifies a franchise that is very distinctive in the realm of video games.  EndWar is no different from the other series in this regard.  The game shares several distinct features with new-age RTSes like World in Conflict.  The game attempts to give an alternate take on how real time strategy games should be played and, surprisingly, it does quite well.  The first thing players will notice will be the way the game’s camera system works.  Rather than sticking to the traditional “god eye” system, EndWar places the camera on the ground with the units you are commanding, limiting your movement to within a small distance from your unit.  Since the game does not incorporate a “fog of war” mechanic (though there are draw distance limitations) you have to play the game different from any other RTS on the market.  By placing your camera next to the units you command you get more drawn into the action and desperation of the moment.

Instead of employing traditional resource-gathering gameplay that you would find in roughly nine out of every ten RTS titles, EndWar goes a very different direction.  The game chooses to utilize what are known as Command Points, which are constantly earned over time but can be given bumps by meeting certain objectives.  Command Points can be used to call in off-map support such as air strikes and electromagnetic pulse strikes.  Force Recon, this reviewer’s personal favorite support option, calls in off-map army units to a designated location and, once powered up, can rival that of all your units combined.  The majority of the points however will be spent on the deployment of units.  As players are put in command of an entire battalion, the player can deploy a set amount of units, depending on their Command Point value.  Players can command up to twelve units at one time and you are not limited on having a set number of the same unit type.

One of the more interesting aspects of the game is how the units operate.  Using a rock-paper-scissors rule set, EndWar makes the deployment of your men to the battlefield more a strategic necessity than anything else.  Transports will trump choppers, choppers trump tanks, and tanks trump transports.  The list goes on and on, and with a variety of seven different units the player has to think carefully as to who to deploy and in what order they wish to do it in.  Each unit also has secondary and sometimes tertiary functions, though most involve a quick blast of firepower that affects the enemy unit’s health directly.  Engineers, for example, are arguably one of the most powerful units in your arsenal, are pretty much vulnerable to most of the units on the battlefield until they get into cover, at which time they can slaughter most mechanized units and are dreadfully unstoppable when facing down gunships.  They can also deploy minefields and even restore the shield of other units.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Console RTS titles are still an adventurous type of game to create for developers that doesn’t guarantee success.  Only in the past couple of years have we begun to see the potential of such a genre finally coming into its own on a platform that doesn’t involve a mouse and keyboard.  And while most of the other titles on the market, while being developed for simultaneous release on multiple systems, at the end of the day the resulting console product is not as good as the PC version.  This is not the case with EndWar.

This fact cannot be any more obvious when you examine the game’s control scheme.  EndWar is very ambitious in this regard as almost the entire game can (and is recommended to) be played via voice command.  Using a console specific headset (for this review both the generic Xbox 360 headset as well as the official wireless headset were used) all a player has to do to issue a command his a unit is pull the trigger on your controller, say it, and release the trigger; it’s that simple.  The list of commands that can be given, seemingly taking a few notes on the SOCOM: US Navy SEALs own command system, partitions your orders in a certain order, having you name a unit, give them an action command, and then giving them a destination or target to do said action to.  While such a feature has been tested and tried in other games EndWar is extremely successful in this regard.  Roughly 90% of the commands you issue will work out as planned with only a few small caveats here and there.  The list of commands is made intentionally small and therefore is easy to remember.  Once you have the list memorized you’ll find yourself issuing commands faster than you could possibly have done so with your controller.  Plus, there’s very little else that’s as satisfying as barking orders at your troops.

Tom Clancy’s EndWar consists of three different modes of play: singleplayer, skirmish, and the Theatre of War.  Beginning with the singleplayer, EndWar has two concurrent campaigns to fight through.  The first, Prelude to War, has you jumping around between the three different factions and, as the title implies, playing out the various terrorist battles that eventually lead to the full-on realization of World War III.  Once the second campaign has become available players choose a faction as well as a battalion to use which I’ll get to in a minute.  What’s interesting to note is that the World War III campaign is entirely non-linear and changes based on your progress.  While players cannot choose battles to initiate as the war is far bigger in scope than just you and your men, there is a set list of battles occurring within the turn you are playing you can participate in.  After the conclusion of your battle the entire theatre for the turn is calculated and, in various regions, your front is pushed forward or back.  Your battles will determine the course of the war eventually and to win the player must either conquer either the majority of the map or all three capitols.  The singleplayer can last a very long time depending on your actions and is the longest one this reviewer has ever seen in a RTS title.  The endings for each faction are lackluster but the overall effect of the singleplayer is very entertaining.

Ubisoft knew what they were doing when they were considering long term play with EndWar.  The Theatre of War, the main multiplayer component for the game, is nothing short of being very entertaining.  Similar to the singleplayer in scope, the Theatre of War is a persistent online campaign being fought by thousands of players across the three factions and is entirely shaped by the player’s actions.  A set amount of battles occur each day and, at the end of said day, the total results for each one is calculated and the overall winning faction wins that battle.  The map changes every day and will only conclude when one side conquers most of the map or all three capitols.  Once a faction has won the campaign is reset and, theoretically, different conditions to win are set the change up the pace.  Obviously facing a human opponent is much more difficult than any AI could be but it is still rather fun to play.  I can only imagine the variety of downloadable content Ubisoft could be bringing us.

An interesting aspect to take note of is the battalion you command.  While the units you command are at the end of the day no different from one another their status as veterans is something of relevance to the gameplay.  Your battalion is entirely persistent and units that survive your battles and kill enemies will earn increasing veteran status.  When outside of a mission players can go into an upgrade shop and upgrade the various units in their battalion, giving them secondary abilities, offensive and defensive upgrades, and even allowing you to purchase upgrades to off-map support.  Units that are killed lose their veteran status and therefore all the upgrades you’ve purchased but once the new unit begins to climb the ladder again they automatically unlock those upgrades.  The only catch players might take offense to is that, while the credit’s earned from both the singleplayer and multiplayer will transfer between the two the battalions can’t be.

DEFCON ONE

Tom Clancy’s EndWar is a true example of how to affectively create a console RTS without having to worry about a button layout.  While the integrated storyline will have some players troubled about where the other Clancy series will go, Ubisoft’s goal of uniting them all for one massive war game sometime in the future Endwar clearly depicts a prosperous future for the entire franchise.  For RTS fans out there looking for something different this is definitely the title to get.