Gaming preview: Ubisoft shows us how World War III will go down

Last week, we brought you new details on two games from the Ubisoft press event held in New York City--Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Far Cry 2. Today we wrap up our coverage with a look at Tom Clancy's EndWar, a new franchise from the publisher.

At first glance, we were quite skeptical of a real-time-strategy game on a console. However, after about two minutes of watching one of the developers play the game using only his voice, we were convinced that the team at Ubisoft Shanghai might be on to something here.

World War III on your console

(Credit: Ubisoft)

Let us clarify the whole voice control situation---there was barely any manual controlling needing to be done besides aiming with a crosshair and adjusting the camera angle. Other than that, our developer friend was able to switch cameras, attack any location, and summon back up all using voice commands. We know what you're thinking: "Voice commands never work in video games." While we first shared those same reservations about the technology, we were proven dead wrong as the game did not even skip a beat. Every command he put out was followed through with great haste, overall impressing the hell out of us. That being said, we really didn't get much of an impression beyond the voice control aspect of the game. The demo we saw was quite short, with the battle only taking about 8 minutes. We're still left wondering whether or not there will be a solid balance of difficulty and strategy with or without voice control.

EndWar will also have a deep online multiplayer component where you'll essentially be carrying out battles with players over Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Tom Clancy's EndWar is scheduled to hit store shelves in Q2 of this year.