Tom Clancy's End War for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

I've been playing strategic and tactical wargames since the early 70's, mostly the SSI and Avalon Hill board games and found myself really looking forward to Endwar. Considering that Graw2 and Rainbow 6 are perhaps to of the best war games ever created for the console's, I had very high hopes.

The game play and controls are very easy to learn and use but where the game fails, at least in my estimation, is the inability to have a clearer overall view of the strategic situation. The Sitrep map does not show a clear enough picture of what is happening where and does not allow for you to select a specific target to move to when things may be going sour for units where you need to know what is happening.

It is true, of course, that the fog of war is a real concern that should be a part of any game of conflict such as this but considering that we now have, in real life, the ability to see the over all strategic, as well as tactical, situations with advancements in unit connectivity and drone usage, I found it to resemble the C&C type games more than I thought it should be.

The other dissapointment was the ability to easily see where your units where being placed and the inability to quickly and clearly organize your initial units into groups that could be comprised of an initial (which does not necessairily mean effective or the best combination) attack or defense force.

It is good that the game focuses more on the actual combat rather than having to deal with production points and unit creation but without having a better way to see the battlefield overview and to be able to respond by having an effective strategic overview, keeps the game closer to a "fast finger" game rather than the breakthrough to a truer form of strategic warfare for the console along the lines of GRAW2 and the Total War series. With a clear and usable overview map based on real technology, this game could have easily set a new standard besides the great voice command system.

This game offers a more realistic approach to the RTS genre. A mix of voice and remote control is done very well as you give orders to modern military units on expansive battlefields. This is a good start for addressing some of the issues of the controls with console RTS games. Beyond the rock, paper, scissors combat of the units gameplay depth is slightly expanded(or limited) with upgrades for veteran units like stealth and the ability to lay minefields. This is a good RTS game, but could leave vet RTS players wanting more.