Rush, Boom, Turtle: The EndWar Way

10 ways this is an RTS unlike any other RTS
3/25/2009 5:01 PM | 6 Comments | Page 1 of 3

I figured the PC release of EndWar would give Ubisoft's brave new real-time strategy a shot in the arm. And I'm not just saying this because I'm the president of the EndWar Appreciation Club and the registered owner of the iheartendwar domain, which cost me 15 bucks. I'm saying this because PC gamers are a special breed. Unlike console philistines, we can appreciate stuff like Kohan, Freespace, chess programs, and Java apps that run tabletop wargames over the Internet.

So I am happy to report that attendance was doubled at the March meeting of the EndWar Appreciation Club. Granted, that's only because my cat wandered into the room during roll call, so I counted him. Unfortunately, despite the increased attendance at our monthly meetings, it seems like there isn't a lot of EndWar love even after its PC release. It's got a big, fat, steaming 68 on both Metacritic and GameRankings. It doesn't seem to be very online. Looking for a multiplayer game of EndWar on the PC has a very "I Am Legend" feel.

So to help build enthusiasm, I'm working on a list of the 10 ways EndWar is like no other real-time strategy game. I'll be reading this list at next month's meeting, which will hopefully boost attendance. Here's a preview of the list.

10. EndWar doesn't mess around with asymmetry. Now I know that asymmetry is all the rage these days. All the kids are doing it and who could blame them? After all, asymmetry is inherently interesting. Zergs vs. Protoss, or Space Marines vs. the Eldar, or the Vinci vs. the Alin. Exciting stuff! But asymmetry is often a cheap and easy alternative to good design. In fact, far too many RTS designs have simply stopped at the fact of asymmetry, which has helped ossify RTSes for many years. But EndWar will have none of that. It's built for players to each use the same tools, much like the two sides in chess. The gameplay comes from how they use their tools, not what their tools are.

9. There aren't many units in EndWar. In terms of the types of units, you get two kinds of infantry, two kinds of armor, an air unit and an artillery unit. That's it. Each unit has a very specific purpose. This means sometimes a unit will be utterly useless; other times, it will 100-percent trump the other guy. And you will never get to play with more than 12 units at a time. EndWar is never about armies. It is about a handful of individual pieces at a time.

8. Simplest resource model ever. Your resource, command points, steadily trickles in over time. A new any unit, no matter what kind, costs four command points. There. I just taught you the entire economy of EndWar. That's all there is to it. There are no economic decisions to be made except for how you want to spend your command points. This is a game with an economy even a three-year-old could understand!

(Okay, I lied just a little bit to make my point. You also earn command points when you capture an uplink. And the strategic powers cost command points. Those things might confuse the average three-year-old. But the point stands: EndWar has the simplest economy this side of Multiwinia, another game no one is playing.)