Tom Clancy’s Endwar

Great for strategy fans but a little too much for the casual gamer!

Posted 4 years ago By - Kabir Singh

Another multi-platform release has come our way and this time it is Tom Clancy’s Endwar, developed by Funatics and published by Ubisoft. Console versions of this title have received much praise for the innovative voice command interface and for the deep and engaging strategy involved. Let’s see how the PSP version holds up!


The back story starts in 2016 where a nuclear war in the Middle East disrupts oil production setting the Russians up as the wprld’s main oil/natural gas supplier, allowing them to become an economic and military superpower. U.S.A. creates a massive military space station that threatens to tip the scales of power in their favour. The European Federation withdraws from NATO and tensions are high between these three superpowers. Now with the chess pieces are set for Endwar to begin.

Gameplay

In Endwar you can control one of 3 factions: Russia, European Federation and the U.S.A. The core gameplay takes place on a hex map of sorts, moving a variety of units around the board. Different units have different ranges of motion and of fire. Some units get defense and/or attack bonuses depending on terrain or type of enemy you are engaging. It is all pretty much standard fare but becomes quite intriguing and involving for a short period of time (please read on). Definite thought must be taken into what type of unit is engaging who: infantry units are quite vulnerable but are needed to take over enemy bases; tanks are durable but cannot retaliate against airborne units, artillery units cannot defend themselves, etc., etc..

The positioning of your unit is of key importance in Endwar, which prompts you to “jam” or surround enemies giving you attack bonuses. Failure to “jam” results in a swift death as the computer AI is very effective at jamming, in fact it quickly becomes almost flawless in its strategies. It is in this flawlessness that Endwar falters. For the first few hours I felt that Endwar was a very accessible title for a hand-held. Maps tended to play out in 5 to 20 minutes segments, which is a perfect amount of time to play while you are commuting to work or school (it is assumed you aren’t playing while driving because that would just be plain silly). The difficulty seemed challenging enough to be engaging but not overwhelming, and I had a great first impression of Endwar. Then things went sour fast. What was once fun became very unforgiving and rigid. The best strategy games whether it is “real time” or “turn based” manage to keep a sense of fluidity to them, but this is not the case in Endwar. Your turn is split into a movement and attack phase, and to end each phase you must hit the “end phase” button in the command menu. But during the planning phases of your motion or attack, once you input a command you can’t change it, even though you haven’t hit the “end phase” button. What this means is, if you set a unit one hex to far by mistake and you can’t change it, even though you haven’t officially moved your piece or ended your turn.


Endwar tries to bridge the gap between “turn-based” and “real-time” strategy by allowing the AI to plan its moves and attack while you are doing the same. Sounds good right? Wrong! Let me explain: an enemy unit may appear to be 7 or 8 hexes away and you plan your “movement” phase accordingly; your units move to a strategic position, but out of nowhere the enemy unit is attacking you; the unit you thought was 8 hexes away has already moved in the “background” and you are unable to see it happening. It becomes extremely difficult to get a sense of the enemy movements or stratagem. Grasping the “big picture” of the battlefield becomes a chore instead of a joy. The end result is very discontinuous and very laborious combat.

The AI in Endwar is near flawless which can be taken as a positive or a negative. For those who can get past the gameplay issues and love a challenge, Endwar will provide that challenge! But for gamers like me who use their PSP on a commute and not as a serious gaming console, Endwar may be too much of challenge and thus lose the ability to provide quick, fun gaming that suits a hand-held. It’s worthwhile to note that when you do get utterly destroyed in a mission (which will happen often), Endwar will allow you to replay the same map with extra reinforcements. This is a welcome bonus but it comes a little too late in terms of keeping the fun level high and frustration level low.

On the plus side Endwar provides a decent map editor which can add many replay hours to a title which can easily take 15 – 20 hours to complete. Unlocking medals (akin to XBL achievements) for completing secondary objectives also adds to the replay value of the title. To top it all off there is an ad hoc two player mode that enhances the experience.


Graphics

The PSP is a powerful little system capable of putting out some very impressive visual titles such as God Of War: Chains of Olympus, MGS: Portable Ops. The bar has been set high and Endwar provides satisfactory visuals at best. The maps are bright, colourful and easy to read but the graphic resolution is slightly greater than what I would expect from a DS. That being said though, the visuals succeed at being highly functional and I stopped noticing the lack of visual flair as I started focusing on how to outsmart my opponent.



Audio

Submarines units “ping” out sonar, infantry call out “Commander?”, guns “rat-a-tat” all with clear, pleasing sound. The in-game music is accordingly dramatic and sweeping in its scale but quickly gets repetitive and annoying. There is nothing groundbreaking here but all in all, Endwar sounds pretty good.


Value

With easily more that 15 hours of gameplay, 90+ maps, 3 factions (each representing a different difficulty level), map editor and ad hoc multiplayer, there is a lot of value to be had in this title. Strategy fans will find themselves challenged and engaged in an interesting story.


Conclusion

There is a lot to like to this about this title but there are some serious gameplay issues that hurt the experience as well. Short, quick maps at the start make the game perfect for travelling/commuting but the gruelling difficulty and choppy turn-based/real-time system make the game unsuited for a casual gaming experience.

If you love strategy titles I would definitely recommend Endwar on the PSP. On the other hand, if you are more of a casual gamer I would pick up something else this Christmas season for your PSP.

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