Why I Don’t Like Tom Clancy’s: Endwar

I don’t really like Tom Clancy’s: Endwar. The idea behind the game is quite good, but I just don’t think it was implemented very well. The game style just doesn’t really suit a console. RTS games are far more impressive on PCs. It is too awkward to try and control all your units effectively without having multiple hotkeys. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough buttons on a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 controller to allow this.

I was particularly unimpressed by the voice control in this game. It was the feature that I had been most eagerly awaiting. All the reviews had said that it no longer a gimmick like in many other previous games. I found this to be downright false. The voice controls aren’t at all natural. They don’t function quickly. You have to wait between each section of an order for the game to catch up. Just to tell your unit to move to an objective takes a few seconds, even though you could say it to a real person in under a second.

The graphics were also disappointing. I’ve always thought that games like Endwar need graphics to make up for some of the more basic elements of the gameplay. There isn’t really that much interacting to be done with the environment, and you never get too close to any parts of the map. As such, it should be pretty simple for the game to have beautiful graphics, considering you normally see them from a distance.

The variety of units was also quite disappointing. There really are far too few unit types in the game. Imagine a racing game with only 8 different cars. That’s what this game is like. There isn’t that much strategy to use, because there aren’t enough unit types to provide any real variety in terms of unit choices.

This game really could have been much better, which I expected it to be. Unfortunately, it wasn’t, and I was left quite disappointed. Don’t make the mistake of buying this game if you’re looking for a great RTS. There are more than a handful of better RTS games available in the bargain basement of your local supermarket for the PC.