Additionally, the game camera is locked behind units, which is more annoying than engaging. On top of the dizziness of watching the camera continuously jump from one unit to another, it can be ridiculously difficult to figure out where incoming fire is originates from, especially if it's from long-range artillery or choppers hovering just out of camera view. Retaliation can be equally difficult, since players can't see the number assignments of far-off units to command engagements. The only option is to move a unit closer, thereby subjecting it to additional fire, until the attacker comes into clear view and shouting something like "Unit 1 attack hostile 3" in hopes that: 1. The game recognizes the command and 2. Your counter forces engage the enemies before you lose your units, which almost never happens.

In some cases, enemy units won't have a numeric assignment at all, which undermines the whole voice recognition feature by forcing players to use the mouse. EndWar includes a long list of possible voice commands, but not one of them includes the word "defend," so that units can follow each other in formation and take out threats as they arrive. The only way to access a top-down map is by deploying a command vehicle onto the field, which uses up a precious unit slot. Furthermore, while the top-down view greatly helps in coordinating troop movements, it's just a boring 2-D map that doesn't provide much more information than the minimap. Players can command units from this view, but it makes for a terrible waste of EndWar's graphics.

The globe is divided into cities for players to invade. Capturing cities brings in additional revenue per turn and opens pathways to invade other nearby points, but otherwise there's not much strategy involved in choosing to invade or protect one over another.

The one part of the EndWar we greatly enjoyed is the persistent veteran units that can be carried over from one encounter to the next. Players use funds from victories to purchase upgraded weapons and special abilities that can only be accessed by units of a certain rank. We also liked the fact disabled units remain on the battlefield for a short time to await extraction, so even though they can't stay for the remainder of the fight, they can still be used in future encounters. Better still is the player's ability to continue firing at disabled enemies to prevent veterans from returning. Underneath the annoying camera and finicky voice command is a pretty decent tactical strategy game. If only the whole experience weren't ruined by things like the WMD's, which can be called in as a last minute act of desperation. The game only provides a second or two warning when a WMD is launched, and the units are so slow to respond to a retreat command that there's really no point. A WMD can destroy half or the player's army or more in a single shot, even if they're in transit, which can completely cripple a player if s/he doesn't have enough reinforcements remaining.

We were initially intrigued by EndWar's voice command system, and the technology definitely makes the game easy enough for virtually anyone to learn, but the game lacks a lot of the depth we look for in RTS games. The sometimes unresponsive unit AI, finicky voice recognition and annoying camera made the game more frustrating than fun. We're sure EndWar played very well on console systems, but it doesn't measure well against the selection of more satisfying RTS games available for the PC. Real-time strategy enthusiasts wouldn't miss anything by skipping out.

Check out all Tom Clancy's EndWar downloads