When we got a first look at EndWar at the end of last year, it certainly looked the part. One original feature we noted was the persistent online world war as part of the multiplayer game. Taking into account every multiplayer battle that is waged in the game across Xbox Live and PSN, EndWar hopes to graft the results onto a World War III battle map of Europe that's updated daily. The other innovative feature on show was the voice command system that Ubisoft Shanghai is employing for all levels of unit control on the battlefield.

While the full extent of the online world war won't be realised until the game is released (for the simple reason that it requires huge numbers of players), there was the chance to go hands on with the voice command system (on Xbox 360) at UbiDays last month and we snapped up the opportunity. Having seen the system at work during our first look, it appeared to work quite reliably with only a couple of very minor glitches during the demo. Having now applied our own ears and mouth to the system, we can happily inform you that it works even better than we had originally anticipated.

Sierra, Mike, Oscar, Oscar, Tango, Hotel

On sitting down to play EndWar, we expected to be prompted with some sort of voice calibration screen. We weren't expecting anything extensive - perhaps just having to utter the key commands in the game to calibrate the system with our particular voice pattern. There was none of this. It was simply a case of slipping on the headset and talking away - the voice recognition software did all the hard work for us. Not only that, but there were very few occasions (if any) when the system failed to register our commands. More often than not it was our fault for getting lost in a command string because we hadn't made commands in the right order (i.e. getting a little over excited and shouting "Attack" without specifying a particular unit).

It's these command strings that are the basis of the interface. You start off by specifying a unit, then telling that unit what to do, and finally where they should do it. An example would be "Unit 1; Attack; Bravo", with Bravo being the enemy base that you want your unit to attack. Although the end result is one coherent command, that command is actually broken down into three separate strings. The first string is selecting from a list of units, you're then prompted by a list of actions (e.g. attack, engage, move to, etc.), and finally the various options of where they should perform that action (e.g. an enemy unit, a base, or just a position). It really is that simple. Ubisoft Shanghai seems to have crafted both a simple interface and rock solid voice recognition software to boot. What's more, it has the potential to solve the age old problem of crafting a decent control setup for an RTS game on consoles.

Our demo took place on the Paris map (fitting for UbiDays) and on the game's Conquest mode. A basic base capturing mode, the aim of Conquest is to subdue enemy forces by securing a majority of the map's bases. The more bases you secure, the more command points you receive to enlist further units with. Ubisoft reps also described some of the other modes that will be on offer in the final game such as Assault (an all-out deathmatch), Siege (where you have to defend/invade a capital city), or Raiders (which challenges players to get behind enemy lines and sabotage an enemy structure). Get used to these modes because they will be used in the massively multiplayer online offerings. Just imagine successfully invading Paris amongst the Louvre and Eiffel Tower as the Russian Spetsnaz Guards Brigade, thereby helping to push back the European Federation Enforcers Corps frontline into a tiny corner of the continent - priceless gaming gold.

A Turf War On A Global Scale

Where this illusion of a vast world war may fall down though, is in the presentation of the game units and the environments they battle it out in. Make no mistake; EndWar will not be an RTS that provides the epic battles of a Creative Assembly Total War game. If our hands on was anything to go by then there certainly won't be choppers swarming the skies like a plague of locusts, thousands of soldiers tearing up the urban environments at ground level, and tank rushes that re-define the term Blitzkrieg. There were some pretty fearsome WMDs on display in our demonstration (ranging from the odd tactical nuke to a laser beam from the skies that resembles the Hammer of Dawn on steroids), which definitely upped the World War III ante, but no swathes of troops or vast artillery deployments unfortunately.

Having said that, a brick for brick recreation of the world's capital cities or armies that reflect the full power of the US military clearly aren't what Ubisoft Shanghai is gunning for here. Instead, the emphasis is on basic RTS gameplay tenets by offering units and locations that make for a good skirmish rather than all-out war. In city locations, for example, roads form the channels through which battles are fought on the ground, thereby giving obvious advantages to helicopter units that can scour infantry from above the rooftops (just make sure the choppers don't get caught in artillery fire). In other words, the gameplay will rely heavily on the traditional rock-paper-scissors relationship between units in battle and the game's environments have been crafted to suit this.

In the Conquest mode we played, units were hardly plentiful. There were three available unit slots to play with, from which we could select infantry, engineers, mobile artillery units, helicopters, and tanks. As far as the artillery, tanks, and helicopters were concerned, one unit consisted of three vehicles/aircraft, while infantry units amounted to about a Platoon of soldiers. Once you accrued more command points in a Conquest battle, you could eventually open up four or five unit slots to play around with, but even with that extra support the battlefield was hardly bursting at the seams. However, it's important to remember that this RTS game has been built specifically for the consoles (rather than from the PC down) and utilises some innovative voice recognition technology. Fewer units are actually more likely to benefit the gameplay by stopping battles from becoming too jumbled and confused.

Visuals aren't going to be EndWar's strongpoint. The Xbox 360 build we saw displayed some fairly drab environments and although they were destructible, none of the buildings on show elicited any wow factor in our eyes. Similarly, the units were pretty square and lacked the sort of polish in some PC strategy titles (e.g. Company of Heroes) that put the icing on the cake of a well rounded strategy experience.