The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears are just among some of the best sellers written by Tom Clancy.

While not every single Tom Clancy book has been made into a movie, all the above titles have been. Lately, Tom Clancy has abandoned turning his writing into films; now he prefers incorporating his ideas into best-selling video games.

Rainbow Six has been Tom Clancy's debut in the video game world (if I'm not mistaken), and its been a sweet ride ever since. The Rainbow Six series has been one of the most successful shooter series developed by Ubisoft, with Rainbow Six - Vegas redefining shooter strategy with their innovative taking-cover system.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series has been another very successful shooter/stealth game, but while the idea was his, the actual books were not written by him. David Michaels was responsible for writing them. This is the same for the latest release by Tom Clancy, Tom Clancy's End War. Several months ago I stumbled across the book and without reading the fine print I did not realize that End War was written by David Michaels. Even more, at the time I was unaware that it was going to be another video game based on a book. Being on vacation and bored I decided to read it anyway, and I finished it in less then two days; the action was superb.

I have been looking forward to Tom Clancy's End War being released as a video game ever since I finished reading the book for several reasons. One of the reasons is the fact that Tom Clancy has abandoned the shooter genre for the RTS genre (real-time-strategy). Another reason that captivated my attention was the very much advertised speech system. Supposedly just about the entire game can be played controller-free. Apparently the voice recognition engine is done so well that all you have to do is shout order around and your troops react to your orders. While the game itself does not come with a microphone, most Xbox360 consoles do (I think the Xbox360 arcade is the only one that does not include a microphone in the bundle). Finally, I've always been a huge fan of the Total War series, and the guy responsible for Rome - Total War was heavily involved in this game's design. That lets me to believe that the game will be balanced and that it will offer a wide variety of troops to chose from. Now, it is time to adventure into WWIII.