Tom Clancy’s End War-It’s what happened while you played GOW2
I’m not a big Gears of War fan for some reason. Not that I’m a huge Real Time Strategy guy either, but I did decide to download the demo for End War. It looked interesting and I liked StarCraft on the ole PC back in the day. Had some great, never-ending games that kept my adrenaline going for hours.
The demo for End War did it little justice. The thing I liked best about the demo, which drove my buy decision, was the voice commands. I tried some other RTS’s on the 360 and couldn’t handle all the action at once with the controller (yeah, I’m old; so shoot me). With voice commands, you simply control a unit by holding down the right trigger and saying, “Unit 2, Move to Alpha,” and your unit moves. You can attack your enemy by saying, “Unit 8, Attack, Hostile, 3,” and off to an attack it goes. It picks up your voice easily and rarely is there a mistake in what you want it to do. Even when you’re hammered, it still interprets what you are saying.
When you have the full game, you can go into the “Theater of War,” which is basically the online mode. It’s a world conquest online multi-player mode kind of similar to Chromehounds. From there you can choose where you want to play against the enemy.
“Skirmish” mode lets you play unranked games against your friends, random players or even the AI. Play modes include Open Match, Single Player, and Private Match.
Last, but not least, is the Solo Campaign. You start with the “Prelude to War,” which is kind of a training ground before you get into the fighting of World War 3. It’s good to get you acquainted with the different units you have and the different ways to control your troops. You have seven different types of units; command unit, riflemen, engineers, transports, tanks, artillery and gunships. Each unit has its vulnerabilities and efficiencies.
The main objective in most games is to secure uplinks. As you gain uplinks, you may have the ability to upgrade them with Electronic Warfare (crashes enemy uplinks), Air Strikes (HUGE help in the game), Force Recon (allows regular Army forces to defend an uplink) and the best of all, WMD, otherwise known as Weapons of Mass Destruction. This kills an uplink and takes it off the map so neither team will get it, while also killing all the enemies -- and your own troops -- if in close enough proximity.
While you are playing the game, you don’t just take the same guys in and expect the same results. You can upgrade your units attack, mobility and defense. For instance, five different attack upgrades will give you more firepower, allowing for quicker enemy kills. These upgrades will not work with all units. It will take the units showing themselves off in battle and getting promoted before they can use these upgrades. After each win, you get money. The more you win, the more upgrades you can afford.
As far as graphics go, they’re pretty good. Don’t expect any huge explosions or anything of that nature; after all, it’s an RTS. The scenery is pretty good and when you do battles in towns, the buildings look nice. There really isn’t much to say about the graphics or sound. They’re as good as any other RTS on the 360.
The controls are simple to use. Basically,the right trigger to speak, D-Pad to choose units and X button to view the unit do most of what you need to do in the game. Not very complicated or confusing even when you’ve had a few.
Overall, if you like real time strategy this the game for the 360. If you aren’t sure, or on the edge about buying it, check out the demo. It will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect from the game. At the very least, give this game a chance through the demo once you get burned out and tired of GOW2. It's a refreshing change of pace and you can enjoy a night of using some strategy with or against your friends.
