Say the word 'Halo' and most gamers think about fast-paced shoot-outs with aliens and a green-suited guy named Master Chief. Then, Halo Wars comes along, a real-time strategy game from Age of Empires developer Ensemble Studios that doesn't star Master Chief (Halo Wars is a prequel to the original adventure), and challenges players to kill thousands of Covenant soldiers using military-style planning instead of itchy trigger fingers. It's a radical departure from the Halo we know and love, but we decided to stay optimistic anyway.
Spore Screenshots
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 1 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 2 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 3 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 4 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 5 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 6 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 7 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 8 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 9 of 112)
Spore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers. (Screenshot 10 of 112)
Turns out, Halo Wars is one of the Xbox 360's most addictive games and a welcome addition to Bungie's franchise. Instead of running through sci-fi environments in first person, you play as an unseen commander charged with wiping the Covenant off the planet Harvest. To do this, you'll construct UNSC (United Nations Space Command) bases and create units familiar to any Halo fan. Before long, you'll amass an army of marines, ODST commandos and Spartans that can hoof it across the battlefield or hop into vehicles like the Warthog, Scorpion Tank, Elephant and Vulture. As the battles get harder, you can upgrade these units to pack a bigger punch; add a marine with a grenade launcher to the warthog or transform the Scorpion into the Grizzly super tank. You can even strengthen a base's defense by adding/upgrading turrets to repel invaders. From there, you'll send squads (perhaps the entire army) on missions to slaughter Covenant forces, a mix of alien races that include Grunts, Arbiters and the powerful Hunters, among others. Although you can instruct your troops to attack specific targets, units are smart enough to engage enemies automatically within their vicinity.
Streamlined controls make Halo Wars a joy to play. To select a unit, simply place the onscreen cursor over it, press A, use the left analog stick to guide that cursor to a destination and tap X to give the order; you can select all units with the Left Bumper. Base construction is equally user-friendly, thanks to a helpful overlay that makes choosing buildings and upgrades a snap. Controls become a bit more complex as you progress through the game, but you'll never feel overwhelmed.
Like most real-time strategy games, however, you'll need to micromanage units and resources at your base to make sure you can build the necessary amount of troops and vehicles. Having more Supply Pads, for example, speeds up resource gathering (you cannot do anything without resources), while the Field Armory grants access to powerful upgrades. Vehicle Depots pump out Scorpions and Warthogs to help in adding heavy artillery and transport to your strategy mix. With all the action in the game, you can also set each unit to create more than one vehicle or soldier at a time, removing the part of the tedium of maintaining units for a better focus on warfare.
Battles are fierce and intense. Ensemble Studios does an excellent job crowding the screen with units, and the varied environments (in one mission, you fight in a city while protecting civilians running for escape ships) keeps the game fresh and interesting. Its creators deserve lots of praise, though, for the phenomenal presentation. Halo Wars' gorgeous cut scenes trump everything we've seen in other Halo video games and its characters (Sergeant Forge, Professor Anders, the artificial intelligence Serina) are extremely likeable. They also pop up during play, providing status updates and helpful nuggets of information. Combine that with lots of explosions and little touches (we love watching a Spartan punch a hole through a Wraith and commandeering it) that draw you into the action and expand the Halo lexicon in a new way.
As you complete missions, you unlock the ability to replay them alongside a friend via Xbox Live. If co-op's not your thing, Skirmish mode lets up to six players pit their armies against each other in a battle for interstellar supremacy. This also gives you the opportunity to play as the Covenant and experiment with their unique sets of units, vehicles and bases.
Although the final game feels polished and entertaining, Halo Wars suffers from a couple annoying issues, the first being the lack of a quick save. Spending upwards of 40 minutes on a mission, only to fail in the final seconds and restart from the beginning is a huge let down, while at times excessive micromanagement had us screaming; an irritating mission with tanks comes to mind. We also had trouble locating units in one of the early levels, no thanks to a series of overpasses that obscured our soldiers.
These problems aside, Halo Wars is a blast to play. Its easy-to-learn controls, entertaining story and addictive combat had us squashing Covenant well past bedtime, and we applaud Microsoft for taking this series in such a bold new direction.
Reader Comments (1)
This might have been the only Halo title I enjoyed, but it didn't come out for the computer so I guess I'll never know... Oh well, Halo is over rated anyways.