Look, I'll be honest and say that I've never been much of a Real-time Strategy fan. Sure I played them in my years as a PC-gamer, but I was never fanatical about them and can't remember ever finishing any of them.
So you would think I'm the world kind of person to write a review about a RTS title then, and that's where you would be wrong. You see the problem in the past is that RTS titles were the holy grail of PC gaming, since everyone has always falsely believed that they simply can't work on console, or at least can't work properly. In the past year I've made the mistake of buying numerous RTS titles for my Xbox360, each time telling myself that this will be the one to turn things around, only to teach some point where I would admit "this is simply another PC port". As much as you try to convince yourself that it works, you eventually hit a brick wall with "I was built on a PC, for a PC, and never meant to be played with your silly console controller".
At least that was the case before Halo Wars arrived.
I almost gave this game a skip, purely because I thought buying a 5th console RTS would simply lead to another dissapointment. I already own Battle for Middle Earth II which was terrible and laggy, Command and Conquer 3 and Kane's Wrath which although not a bad try still suffers from the "I am a PC game" problem. Tom Clancy's End War is a fantastic game, but doesn't quite fit in with the rest of these so we'll just ignore that one.
Fortunately Kalahari.net were kind enough to start their Deal of the Day promotions, and thus I picked up the Collector's Edition for dirt cheap, just so it can look nice next to my Halo3 CE...yes I'm that vain. What a great package! Plastic slip case which for once is closed at one end, with a metal game cover much like the Bioshock collector's version inside, and then a separate with a Halo patch, graphic novel and some other goodies.
Halo Wars was never meant to be played on a PC, thus it was never designed to be played on a PC, and thus it works fantastically well on a console, because that's where it was born from. Sure your die hard PC gamers will say it's toned down, and this and that is better on PC, but if that were the case it would have never worked properly, and we would have found ourselves at the same old crossroads. Throughout the entire game, and yes I actually finished this one, which says a hell of a lot, you never have that niggling sense at the back of your head that you should have been sitting upright at a desk with a mouse in your hand...not even once.
Controls are simple, yet effective. A-button selects singular units, B-button releases, X-button is move or attack and Y-button is for using the special ability of each unit. Analog sticks are used to control the camera as is the norm, with the D-pad assigned to various shortcuts that allow for jumping around the map to points of interest, as well as accessing special abilities. Left trigger accelerates camera movement for fast navigation, Left bumper selects all units while Right bumper select only the local units on screen, and then Right trigger changes selection between unit types. Ultimately you don't feel any lack of control, but unit selection is a wee bit of a Chaos theory system and will probably be one of the things PC-gamers get up in arms over. Basically the tactic is select all units, and then sub-select the specific unit types you want to move out by pulling Right trigger repeatedly. There is no option to manually select a specific set of units, unless you only want to select a single unit. Initially coming from a normal RTS background it seems a bit strange, but you soon settle into it and then it works really well, and makes for quick response times. New players to the genre will be the most pleased with the system, and ultimately that's the market Ensemble is aiming for.
Resources aren't mined or harvested. Instead you simply build a supply platform at your base, and the resources are delivered in a timely fashion, which is pretty much exactly how it would work in the FPS Halo games. Base construction is straight forward, with base "plates" preset on the map which you simply select and convert. Part of what makes this work so well for console is that you simply select a slot in the base plate, and choose the type of building. No need to position or rotate buildings, one of things that irritated me no end in the past with Xbox360 controller. Also you don't have individual waypoints for each type of building, instead there's a global base waypoint where units pop out, and although you can change this I never bothered.
Being the Halo universe anyone who has played any of the other games should have a fair idea what to expect in the pictorial department. Everything is typical Humans vs Aliens science fiction, in glorious multitudes of colour. Sometimes a little bit too much colour if you ask me, as the somewhat realistic visuals can appear very cartoonlike due to the extravagant use of bright unrealistic colours. The game runs at a consistent pace, and the only lag I ever experienced was in multiplayer over Xbox Live which might have been a connection issue, or the increased number of units over the normal campaign mode.
Speaking of the campaign mode, it's only 15 levels, but this is a good thing. Normally I get quite fed up with RTS games long before I'm even close to the ending, because the norml is to play the same bloody missions three or four times over with different factions, to complete an already thin story. In this case however you only play with the Humans, at least in the campaign anyway, which is a refreshing change. Halo Wars ties in with the main Halo story 20 years before the other games, but the great thing is that you are constantly reminded of the story as there is a cinematic before and after each and every level, pushing you to go on and play the next one. Average time to complete each level is about 30min, which amounts to about 8 hours of total game time, which doesn't sound like a lot except for the fact that this game screams "play me again, play me again". Each mission has a par time, and is scored accordingly combined with multipliers for combat damage and other attributes. The four difficulties namely Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary will have you coming back to replay missions over and over to score gold medals, and in the process earn achievements. Having only 15 levels encourages replay value in my opinion, as the end is always near, pushing you to move forward.
The Soundtrack has always made the Halo games for me, and this one is no different. Many of the musical pieces will sound quite familiar as I think most of it has been remixed from the previous games. I'm not sure about this, but I think the game also uses some dynamic sound system which adds music as the scene intensifies. Nothing gets you as pumped up to kick Covenant ass as this soundtrack does. Sound effects are the usual Halo affair of gunfire and lasers, nothing bad, nothing amazing.
Cinematics are top quality in texture, but sometimes lack a little in the animation department. This also carries over to the in game avatar of talking commanders, which is often so oddly lip-synced that it seems like a foreign movie with subtitles, not a deal breaker but it does lack some polish.
Being Halo, you can't not have Co-Op. Now I figured the campaign would just be slightly modified to allow each of the two players to have their own base and carry on as per usual, but instead this is a genuine co-op experience. Resources, bases and everything else is shared between the two players, thus you need to plan together on use of facilities and who is going to do what and so on. At any time you can hand over control of a unit to your partner via a D-pad menu, and anyone can build or change buildings on a base. Nothing "belongs" to any of the two players, and thus it is quite a refreshing change which some players will love and others will hate.
I haven't done much with the multiplayer mode, but I tried a few Skirmish missions offline. You can either have the usual versus mode where both players start with nothing and work their way up, or try the Deathmatch where you start with everything fully upgraded and a bucket full of resources, making the game more about strategy and quick action than who manages resources the best. Great fun to be had, and the game supports 3vs3 multiplayer mayhem.
Halo Wars saw me playing through the entire campaign in a single week, which I can tell you doesn't happen very often with any game. If you are a die hard PC strategy fan you might not like this one. If you are however a Halo fan, you will absolutely love it, RTS fan or not. It ties in so well with the Halo universe, and it's awesome to see little details carried over that makes this seem so instantly familiar.
I think this is a game every Xbox360 owner simply must have!
Graphics : 8/10
Sound : 9/10
Controls : 9/10
Story : 8/10
Overall : 8.5/10
Xbox360Gamer - Halo Wars Review
