World War III would be pretty awful. Many people would die. More robots would get more guns. The price of things such as Slurpees and shoes would sky-rocket.

But World War III in a video game... well that is a different matter altogether. That'd be a blast, and Slurpees and shoes would still be relatively inexpensive when it was released.

Tom Clancy's EndWar game is coming out sometime in 2008, and it'll bring all the excitement and fun of World War III right to the platform of your choosing, be it an Xbox 360, PS3, PC, PSP, or Nintendo DS. It's going to be a big scale RTS game, with three factions: the Russians, the Europeans, and the Americans (guess the Chinese just decided to gear up for WW IV.)  The game takes place in the near-term future, so expect weapons such as orbital laser platforms, and  tactical nukes. The plot appears to be tied in with other games in the Tom Clancy universe, such as Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six. Intrestingly enough, there is actually a EndWar novel which has been based on the game out in stores now (apparently), although the game has yet to be released.

One interesting thing about this game is the level of customization allowed of your troops. It seems that each faction will have somewhere around 150 different possible upgrades to get, and units will be able to go through 6 levels of experience.

The game looks pretty good; unfortunately, this trailer is a bit of tease though: doesn't really show much that hasn't been seen already.

(Due to video player troubles, today's trailer has been replaced by this YouTube version - sorry about that.)

Here is an earlier trailer which I think is a little bit more interesting: