Graphics and Tech

Normally, this is where we’d take an in-depth look at the graphics in Tom Clancy’s EndWar. We’d take dozens of screenshots, then spend ages telling you about them and what performance issues you might face on your PC. The aim would be to give you an overview of how the game might look and run on your PC.

With EndWar though, we aren’t doing that for several reasons, first of which is that the game isn’t graphically impressive enough to warrant it. It’s fine to spend five pages talking about shadows in something like Crysis, but EndWar is hardly of that kind of visual calibre.

The game doesn’t look bad per se, though the colour palette is usually browner than a colonoscopy, but it’s not going to drop your jaw. EndWar was built on the Unreal Engine 3 and optimized for consoles, which means it’s hardly going to be on the cutting edge.

Likewise, we don’t anticipate that many people will have performance problems with the game either. The UE3 engine is widely supported and not very demanding, so there’s little to worry about on that front. The recommended specs for the game are a 2.0GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and a DirectX 9 graphics card with 256MB of memory – an Nvidia GeForce 7800, ATI Radeon X1800 XT or higher. We’ve got more powerful hardware in our pocket calculators, which probably explains why we get all the ladies talking.

The final reason why we aren’t going into all that much detail here is because there isn’t a whole lot of notable tweaking to do with EndWar – fiddling with AA and a handful of textures is about as complicated as it gets, so we’ve decided to stick to just showing you the presets.


The first thing to note in the screenshots above is the shadows, which have softened edges on the High setting, rough edges on the Medium and then disappear completely on the Low. Obviously hitting the High setting will give you a prettier experience, one that comes without a notable performance decrease too, but the Medium and Low settings don’t look too bad in regard to the shadows.

Instead, what makes the lower settings look really worse off is the changes in lighting. Looking at the side of the buildings it’s possible to see that the Low setting doesn’t have any bloom on it, which makes the scene look even more dull and drab than an ocean of gruel. It seems a small change, but once you’ve noticed it then the difference is remarkable.

Other changes on the Low setting include slightly blurrier textures, particularly on the terrain around the tanks and a dip in the view distance. Far off mountains that had previously been dusted with a subtle bloom effect totally disappear on the Low setting, as do a lot of the particles and smoke thrown up by the tanks as they move.

So, there. That’s the graphics done. To be honest, what we find more interesting on the technology front though is the voice control system that’s used in the game to limited successes. It can require a fair bit of tinkering in order to get your microphone setup, but Ubisoft has included a good voice trainer to teach you the basics and is fairly intuitive to use as long as you remember to use the right words and an even intonation. We really can’t fault the game there – our complaint is more that, if you prefer using the mouse or don’t have a headset, then EndWar is left feeling fractured and almost unplayable.


Contrary to what you might be hoping though, the voice control system does require you to use the correct words in order to function. It isn’t as simple as calling out for your tanks to get their transports; you need to actually refer to units by number and structure your sentence according to the on-screen flow chart.

The reason for this is that the game deciphers your sentences by listening for specific phonetic indicators – hard vowels and certain phonemes – and guessing which of the limited selection of words you are trying to say. It’s quite clever actually and, if nothing else, gives me a chance to use my Linguistics degree for the forces of good for once.

Unfortunately though – and we’re admittedly wrapping this up quickly because EndWar doesn’t require or deserve much more critique and to go on much longer would just be cruel – the vocal controls are the only clever thing about EndWar. The voice controls are nice and they work OK if you persist with them, but even at the best of times they’re still an extra, uncomfortable barrier between you and the game. Using the mouse would be easier, more accessible, more relevant and just generally better though.

However, going down that argument leads us onto plenty of other complaints. The camera is clunky and suffocating, the units uninteresting and dull, the presentation trite and uninspired. There are some good elements, such as the somewhat interesting idea of a persistent multiplayer game, but they are remarkably few and often lost in the mess of a game that is at odds with its platform. Besides, if those elements really appeal to you then you’d just be better off playing the console version of the game – because there’s nothing really new here. It's not broken and it's not wholly bad; it's just thoughtlessly ported and terribly bland.

Score Guide