Tom Clancy, best-selling novelist and mastermind of various video games, has hit gold with yet another game/novel combo. EndWar hopes to be the future of real-time strategy (RTS) games. The book is a chilling play-by-play based off of an entirely possible scenario.
The game is going to be like one of the current Madden football games in terms of presentation. The difference is, rather than being set in a stadium and having two teams beating the hell out of each other for the score, it is the military. Rather than giving just a sky-high view of the battlefield, camera angles will be placed within units. This gives a more televised, realistic look to the face of war-videogaming. Much like in reality, what seems to be destructible will be.
The gameplay is rumored to have taken a revolutionary turn. Rather than being a game full of point-and-click death, orders will apparently be given by the player’s voice. This means you will be entirely justified swearing loudly at your TV when your troops act like total idiots. As for paying for reinforcements like other RTS games, you won’t have to do resource harvesting. Rumor has it that you will gain money through capturing/destroying strategic points in a city.
The story is, World War III has broken out and is raging in its full fury by the year 2020. The three playable factions are: the Russians, who are trying to rebuild and surpass the strength of the Soviet Union, the European Union, which has completely united Europe and is trying to ensure continental economic superiority, and the United States, which is trying to keep their status as a world superpower.
Both the book and the game tie in certain aspects of other Tom Clancy games and stories. They both make some references to events from Rainbow Six: Las Vegas, Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon. Some characters, like Scott Mitchell from Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2, make occasional cameos in the game.
The book is a bit more interesting than the game, though. Iran and Saudi Arabia have nuked each other off the map. Meanwhile, Russia has been doing a better job of utilizing their oil reserves, but they want to rebuild the power they once had, so they are trying to start a war between America and
the European Union, known in the book as the European Federation. If they are successful, Europe, and eventually the world, will fall to Russian control.
The story starts off with a group of American soldiers going into Moscow to capture a Russian officer with important strategic information. The information is such that might be able to quell the Russian onslaught from the west in Europe, and push back the Russian troops that aerial transports are dropping into Canada. Sacrifices will be made for the greater good. American, Russian and European soldiers will die in battle against each other. A terrorist organization is succeeding in creating a high level of global instability, which happens to be straining the alliance between the United States and the European Federation. Cities will fall into enemy hands and possibly be regained.
The book is definitely worthwhile to read. The game, when it is released, should be a good new spin on the war-videogaming genre. EndWar, the book, gets five kinetic strikes on Paris out of five.