Tom Clancy’s EndWar Demo on XBL Marketplace
Posted on Oct 15, 2008 01:18:36 PM
Good news everyone! Earlier today the Tom Clancy EndWar Demo found its way onto the XBL market place, with one campaign and one skirmish mission available to play. The game is based around a World War 3 on an unbelievable scale and level of intensity. With a original and innovative voice command structure, the RTS genre may have found a solution to the “Mouse and keyboard” style of play that seems to be the only way to manage large numbers of units usually associated with titles such as this.
More information and a “first impressions” after the jump!
World War’s, are the foundation in which so many of modern and truly amazing games are based.
The story so far;
The year is 2020, with resources growing scarce and nuclear war all but eliminated thanks to a grid of satellites that now protects the earth, every nation must look after themselves. Tensions between the US, Europe and Russia (The three superpowers) are near a breaking point. One spark will ignite a war to end all wars. In light of these growing tensions, Russia spends billion on its armed forces, (Including creating the Thermobaric missiles, WMD’s of which I’ll get to later.) And at a cost the likes have not been seen since the cold war itself. In response to this new threat, America and Europe uses its orbital supremacy to create and build multiple giant Orbital Military stations, their own WMD’s to match the Russians power. (The EFEX Laser Sat for Europe, and kinetic energy strike satellite for the US.) With this shaky peace and tensions running ever high, an unknown enemy attacks the JFK Space centre upon its final launch to complete the K.E.S….
My first impressions were built upon starting the campaign mission included. The game explained the new “Voice command” system, and explained in a very simple and informative way how to direct commands. After a short practice directing pictures, you’re told you have already mastered the system, (No, really, you have. It’s genuinely that simple.) and are made to set about the campaign.
As i started the mission and game, I was greeted by some truly beautiful HD graphics in the video sequences. The short intros really are some of the best things I’ve ever seen from a console, with it all played to you in a TV report kind off style. The in game detail though…oh dear. The in demo’s detail is spectacularly bland in places and especially on close up views of units and terrain. Calling in units is good though, because apparently your drop off units fly through each other with no problems at all….Yeah bad animation, anyway.
The sound quality in the demo isn’t anything special, you pretty much listen to artillery that makes a loud bang but no real details has been put into the sound effects. You feel a bit like you’re listening to people fighting with cap guns and men with drums whenever a big fight kicks off, and the sound effects are poor if you’re used to the reassuring explosions on Call of Duty, or big explosions on Crysis.
Game play Weise this demo is quite hard to really capture in words, you can be sat wondering why you’re in a constant time consuming tug of war, or why you just can’t seem to keep track of all your units and sometimes it can get confusing. (No more so than any PC RTS I must admit) and on the Xbox 360 playing a demo with no chat can be quite lonely (You can use the controller to command units, where’s the fun in that?).
But what it doesn’t have it makes up for in many other ways and trust me, they are good. With my fight starting to draw out and my resources getting low i stumbled upon a new unit, and upon deploying my ”Godfather” the tug of war started to turn in my favour! (I’d like to add the way you feel knowing you’re in control of everything makes this game one of THE most immersive I have ever played, i was genuinely excited to have literally ordered this unit which was now turning the tide of battle.) And with the enemy finally on its back foot I felt I’d finally won….Until one of the most AWESOME things I have ever seen was sent dead centre of my entire attacking force, the enemy WMD. The game went on and eventually I was the victor but I mentioned my experience for the game play. Immersive, exciting and with a enemy which genuinely felt like it was struggling against my horde and then even sacrificing most of its little remaining units just to hold me back this demo really is a must play.
