Every Xbox user has either heard of or has played the first person shooter version of Halo. This time the Halo series takes a jump from FPS to RTS. Can Halo’s RTS spin off live up to the hype?
At first look you can’t even tell that the game wasn’t even made by Bungie. From the start of the game the menu screen drags you right into the world that is Halo. If you thought Halo 3 kept track of all of your stats wait till you see what Halo Wars does, it tracks everything short of how many times you go to the bathroom.
Halo Wars takes place 20 Years pre Halo one. You play as Sergeant John Forge and take command of armies from the UNSC Warship “Spirit of Fire”. Throughout your battle across the universe you will be able to control some familiar and never before seen UNSC units. Halo Wars unfolds over 15 missions.
Halo Wars also has a Skirmish mode where you can take command of either the UNSC or the Covenant. There are three characters to choose from for both sides, each character has their own Leader Power, Unique Unit, Economy Bonus and Super Upgrade. Skirmish can be played with up to 6 players over Xbox live. If Skirmish mode isn’t enough the whole game can be played in Co-Op mode either over Xbox Live or through System link.
Now on to part of the review that most people want to know about… the gameplay! The best way to explain Halo Wars is to think of playing Halo 3 as an RTS, all the things you can do in Halo 3 you can pretty much do in Halo Wars, even Spartans can Jack enemy units in the game. The units in the game handle just like they would in Halo 3.
If playing through the story somehow gets boring for you. There are black boxes located on each map which will fill in updates to the Halo Timeline that can be accessed from the main menu. If you are done finding the black boxes you can always move on to completing the optional objectives for each mission to unlock the location of the hidden Skulls on the map.
Just about everything in Halo Wars can be upgraded, from the size of your base to individual units and overall unit count.
When Halo Wars was first mentioned the major fear that people had with the game was “how will Ensemble handle the controls?” Gamers can breathe a sigh of relief. The controls in Halo Wars are exactly what you would expect for an RTS game, they have a very small learning curve to get the hang of, The control scheme for Halo Wars should be the new control scheme for all future 360 RTS’s.
My only issue I have with the game is that sometimes your units can get stuck on one another. For example if you have a group of Scorpions and a warthog all right next to each other and you go to call the warthog to a different location the other units will not move out of the way so the warthog can get through, your unit instead will just not move. It only tends to happen if you have large groups of units in one place and you go and move only one or two of them at a time.
Halo Wars has some of the best graphics for an RTS. The cut scenes in the game are the best I have seen in the Halo series. The sound effects and music capture the Halo experience.
9.0
If you have any questions about the game that were not answered in this review please leave a comment and i will do my best to answer it for you.
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