After the Prelude to War, you are presented with choosing which of the 3 nations you will be fighting for and then which battalion you will command. Each battalion has its own strengths and weaknesses and you should choose based on how you play strategy games. After choosing you’ll head back to the global map and choose which scenario to fight in. You don’t get to choose exactly where your going to fight, the game usually gives you three or more scenarios to choose from. Some are defending, some are attacking but with each round you can only choose one scenario to fight in.  I found this to be a bit of a weakness with the game as you can only choose one scenario and are leaving the other ones open to a random win or loose. Starting a scenario you can choose which troops to start off with and then enter the scenario. Their are three types of scenarios, eliminate all hostiles, capture half or more of the uplink nodes, or destroy more than half of the enemies structures.

After winning or loosing the scenario, your taken back to the global map where the “weeks” wins or loses are updated on the map. From here you can enter the barracks to upgrade your troops with new offense, defense, mobility and abilities. Each scenario, depending on how you do you earn credits which can be spent on the upgrades. These upgrades are important as your enemy will also be upgrading as well. After upgrading, you head back to the global map and choose your next scenario. Keep repeating this process until you conquer the world.

Jon’s Final Assessment: Ubisoft has lived up to their reputation of creating good games. It was definitely worth purchasing at full initial retail price. I found the strategy and the RPG elements of the game highly enjoyable. After a while it does get a bit repetitive especially if you keep fighting over the same territory which means you keep fighting on the same map. A nice change is that your reinforcements might start in the north one time and the next time you fight in the same territory you might start in the south. Overall I’ll give this game a B+ and recommend it to anybody who enjoys military strategy.

Jon’s Rating: B+

Strengths:
Upgradeable Units
Fun Strategy
World War III

Weakness:
Repetitive
Only Choose One Scenario

If I Developed the Game: Please Note that this section is about some changes I would have made to the game should I had been on the development team. This does not mean that the development team did not do a good job however I would have brought up some changes. It also does not mean I am making the best choice and the development team could easily convince me that my change would not be wise. This section also might contain some spoilers that people may not want to read, proceed at your own warning.

• I have not completed the game yet but I did defeat the Russians and after I defeated them it was a bit of a disappointment that no cut scene played claiming my victory over the Russian Army. I would have like to have seen some kind of congratulations or something where it didn’t seem like just another day.
• After gaining certain unit abilities, I would have like to have seen those units fire those special weapons when I did not have them selected. Sometimes I was concentrating on a battle across the map and my tanks were shooting at a building full of riflemen. If they had fired their special weapon it would have been easier taking them out. Instead I would have to jump across the map, select the weapon and then the target and then jump back to what I was doing.
• When highlighting multiple units, I would have liked to be able to use their special abilities but you would have to select the unit with the ability you wanted to use and then fire it and then re-select the multiple units you just had.

Information Below Provided By EBGames.com

Publisher: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PC
Category: Strategy:
Rating: Teen; Alcohol Reference, Blood, Language, Suggestive Themes, Tobacco Reference, Violence

The Story: The world enjoys an unprecedented era of peace as enhanced defense technology eliminates the threat of nuclear war. But can it last? 2020. Constant depletion of resources has international tensions at a breaking point. One spark will ignite what no one thought could happen….a third and final world war.

Points of Interest:

• Strategy for the next generation Led by creative director Michael de Plater (Rome Total War), EndWar will redefine strategy gaming. Designed exclusively for next-gen consoles EndWar will create a theatre of war, immersing you in the drama of World War III in a way you never thought possible.
• Fight For Your Nation Pick a side US, Europe, Russia – the fate of the world is in your hands. If you don’t step in to save your homeland, who will?
• Command Your Army Grow your army into the most powerful force on the planet. Your army is completely customizable, and experience breeds strength – your units grow more powerful with every campaign you fight.
• Light Up The City of Lights Tom Clancy’s World War III won’t be won by capturing remote deserts or grasslands but by striking countries in the heart. Paris, Moscow, Washington D.C. will all erupt in flames as you battle your way through the fully destructive playground.
• A Whole New Kind of Massive EndWar will be an online multiplayer experience unlike anything you’ve ever encountered. 16 player matchups? Try hundreds. 30 minute battles? Try persistent matchups lasting for months at a time. This isn’t a skirmish, it’s World War III.
• Talk Your Way to Victory Put the controller aside and start shouting commands. EndWar can be played almost entirely via voice command.

Minimum Requirements:

DirectX :		9.0c
Hard Drive Space :		10 GB Free
Operating System :		Windows XP/Vista
Processor :		Intel Core 2 DUO E4400 @ 2 GHz/AMD Equivalent
RAM :		1 GB/2 GB Windows Vista
Video Card :		256 MB (nVidia GeForce 7800 GT/ATI Radeon X1800XT)

History: I absolutely hate being woken up in the morning especially by a loud beeping noise telling me its time to get up and go work. It finally go to a point where I really hated my current alarm clock and began thinking its time to get a new one. Perhaps one that played music or had a couple varieties of beeping noises.

I’ve only been thinking about it when I got an e-mail from Hammacher Schlemmer and the first product they were promoting was the Moshi Alarm Clock. Since I was interested in a new alarm clock I clicked on the link and read about. It was voice activated which the Trekkie in me was very interested in.  So I went ahead and purchased it. It was bit pricey but I couldn’t help myself.

First Impressions: When the shipment arrived, I was pretty excited as I do not get new gadgets often. The one thing I really liked about it was the fact that there isn’t always a light on so at night, I do not have another light shining in my face. Setting it up was real easy, all I had to do was plug it in. Then say “Hello Moshi”, wait for a response and then say “Set Time”. Moshi will respond with the correct format to say the time in and then all I had to say was 6:30 pm. The simplicity of it impressed me and at first the voice recognition software didn’t seem to have any problems.

In case your wondering the different features Moshi has are;

1. Time – Moshi responds with current time.
2. Set Time – user tells Moshi the current time.
3. Alarm – Moshi response with current alarm time, on/off, and the alarm sound.
4. Set Alarm – user tells Moshi the alarm time.
5. Alarm Sound – Moshi will play three sounds and user has to choose which one
6. Turn off the alarm – user tells Moshi to turn off the alarm.
7. Sleep Sound – Moshi will play 3 sleep sounds (water, birds or waterfall) and user chooses one.
8. Play Sleep Sound – Moshi will current sleep sound.
9. Today’s Date – Moshi will respond with today’s date.
10. Temperature – Moshi will respond with the current temperature.
11. Night Light – Moshi alternates colors.
12. Help – Moshi responds with list of commands.

Lasting Impressions: Now that I have had it for a while, I’ve noticed some flaws in it that have made me regret purchasing it. Actually what I should say is made me regret for purchasing it for the price I did. Had it been about half what I paid then I wouldn’t quite have regretted my purchase. The only real flaw would have to be the voice recognition software has trouble with the word eight. On week days I wake up at 8:10am and when I try to set the alarm it keeps setting it to 3:10am. It takes 8-10 tries for me to set the alarm to 8:10am. On some mornings I like to reset the alarm  to 8:30 but when I tried it kept setting it to 3:30am and I would get frustrated which is something I particularly do not want first thing in the morning. With this flaw I pretty much dislike to try and change the alarm so I leave it set to 8:10am and if I want to reset it then I use my alarm clock on my cell phone.

Modifications: If I had been on the design team for this a couple things I would have change are;

1. Temperature – I would have added some kind of remote sensor so that the user could put it outside and when the alarm goes off they get the temperature outside and not the one inside.
2. Voice Recognition Interface – Currently to get the time, its a four step process. 1) user says “hello moshi” 2) Moshi responds with “Command Please” 3) User says “time” 4) Moshi responds with current time. I think this could have been dropped down to a two step process. 1) User says “Hello Moshi, time” 2) Moshi would then respond with the time.
3. Add USB or SD Card Slot – I would have liked to see a USB or SD card slot to play MP3s either as the alarm sound or the sound sleep. I’m not exactly sure how it would work with the voice recognition. It would have to be something like file 1, file 2, file 3, etc. This is kind of going above and beyond for an alarm clock but would be a cool feature.

Overall: As I mentioned earlier I regret paying the price that I did for it. Something like half the would have been suffice. Overall I would have to give it a 6 out of 10. Maybe in a couple of years when voice recognition gets a little bit better that something like this would be more useful.