First Impressions: Tom Clancy’s EndWar on Sony PS3
Filed under: Hands On | By: Daniel
Posted on: November 8, 2008 | 5 Comments
This is our first impressions of Tom Clancy’s EndWar on the Sony Playstation 3, and we knew we were in for something different before we even opened the case.
EndWar is designed by Ubisoft Shanghai and is not only for the Sony PS3 (the version we reviewed), it’s also Windows platforms and the Xbox 360.
The moment after we played the disc in the PS3’s Blu-ray drive we noticed one thing straight away, the game install time was massive. We are not saying this is a problem just with the PS3, but we have never known a PS3 game to take this long to install before. It takes me back to the Commodore 64 days but without the tape deck.
The case we got with Tom Clancy’s EndWar looks really slick and we took the time to read the controls and instructions during the long game install time. We recommend you do the same.
One of the first things you will have to do is run a voice test so that the software understands you better, this is when we got to hear “That was not understood, please try again” until it drove us mad.
What did we learn here? You need to talk as normal as possible so that your voice is in the “Optimal Level Zone”, one tip we can give is to make sure your microphone is not set too loud or you will always be over this level and not understood.
Once we mastered this then we hit another problem, this is more of a personal one but it may affect you as well. This was trying to talk in your normal voice and not like a robot, for some reason we felt the need to talk slower and this does not work. You need to relax and speak normally when giving voice commands and then it will work perfectly.
When wearing headsets it’s normal to talk louder than you think you are, in EndWar you must make sure you talk softly so that the commands are understood every time. Voice commands get easier with practice and when you know all the commands it’s fantastic and easy to use.
The good news with voice control is you don’t have to use it; you can use normal controls although when you’re in the middle of a battle it’s much faster to control many units and direct them to targets via voice. It’s easy to switch to normal controls when voice does not work, but give it time and you will find it the option that gets the best results.
In summery: we are extremely impressed with Tom Clancy’s EndWar and the game looks great on the PS3, this is a game that the PS3 lacked and needed. Sadly to get the best from the game you cannot have noisy kids in the background or other noise, if so you will end up with voice commands misunderstood.
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I’ll give this one a miss, I wasn’t overly keen of the idea of voice command to start with but a 5GB install!!!! For me a big instal = a lazy port, it’s about time the PS3 stops getting the shaft when it comes to installs.
When it’s required - like MGS4 - it can be forgiven (and the MGS installs aren’t that long). But there are enough great games on the PS3 (where the PS3 has been the exclusive or lead platform or where the devs has spent more time with the PS3) that require little or no installs.
A HDD install shows a lack of optimization and a lack of understanding of blu-ray and/or the cell - Little Big Planet doesn’t need a big install, Uncharted Drakes Fortune doesn’t need a big install, and neither do countless others.
If the PS3 didn’t have a HDD as standard then this game wouldn’t require a HDD install, and who knows if the 360 had a complusory HDD maybe that would have a 5GB install too!!! Lazy developers don’t deserve my cash…
I reason I want to actually play this game is for the voice control interface, to me this could be a bigger step in how players interact with games.
In fact voice combine with the eye toy 2 could interesting, especially if they were to including talking or making sound give away your location to the enemy and in some situation to used hand signals.
@PS3 Owner
Large installs have more to do with the PS3’s 2x Blu-ray read speed than “lazy ports”. The PS3’s Blu-ray drive reads at a pathetic 9MB/second, barely half that of the 360. BTW, as an owner of Uncharted I can say that I wish the game cached to the HDD, the load times are too long.
its not letting me choose a factoin it is making me play as all the factoins not what i expected
PS3 wont let me install Endwar. It keeps telling me that there is not enough space on the HDD. What is going on? What can I do?