Halo Wars Preview

Halo Wars - Strategy Done Right on a Console

Preview written by Zikron on 2/12/09
Last edited on 2/12/09

Halo Wars is the Halo franchise's first endeavorer into the strategy realm… well first endeavorer that was released to the public… as Halo was originally designed to be a strategy game on the PC before it made the jump to FPS and on the Xbox. Halo Wars takes place 20 years before the events of the original Halo took place, although it looks like not much has changed in that time.

I'm going to get straight to it, the biggest problem strategy games face with consoles is the control scheme. There is no handy keyboard and mouse for consoles. Well you can plug them in but they conveniently don't work for the fucking games! Halo Wars does a great job of maximizing the limited buttons the Xbox 360 has to offer. There are a few problems though more related the gameplay mechanics than the controls. For example, most units have a special ability by pressing the 'Y' button: the warthog runs over people, infantry throw grenades and shoot RPGs etc. Well if you select a group of units like you will be doing a lot in Halo Wars and tell them all to use their special ability on a building your warthogs are going to ram said building until it is leveled or your warthog explodes.

A feature that I found especially useful was using the d-pad to scroll through groups of units. Halo Wars remembers what units you selected in a group. Then if you select another group of units you can press the d-pag to change between them. This is like hot keying a group on the PC usually CTRL+1-9.

The left bumper and right bumper select all units and all units on screen respectively. The all units button works well in this case because there are no harvester type units so you don't have to fear telling them to go attach the enemy base, die and be left with no moneys.

Yes, there is a learning curve that you need to adjust to but hey, the controls have been crap for every other strategy game to hit a console. Hopefully this formula sticks and we see a lot more strategy games coming to the consoles.

The gameplay is a mix of two classic strategy games: Star Craft and Rise of Nations. That is some damn good company to be a part of. The main difference Halo Wars has from them is that the resource gathering is extremely dumbed down. You simply build supply depots and you earn your resources through drop ships. The drop ships carrying the resources can not be destroyed so this area of strategy games has been simplified for consoles. Normally dumbing games down for consoles irritates me but in this case it works well. I'm sure there will be others that disagree but I think this was a great decision since micro-managing is extremely hard to do with a dual analog controller.

The presentation of the game reminds me of Star Craft in a lot of ways. This could be because it has a sci-fi theme putting humans against aliens but the two way radios, the information coming in from HQ all takes me back to the days of Star Craft. The gameplay itself reminds me a lot of Rise of Nations. The units are built in groups of 3 or 4 for infantry and certain races have to advance their 'age' to gain access to better units.

The main gripe I have with the game is it presents very little challenge. Even on the hardest difficulty the computer never puts of much of a fight. Their attacks aren't well planned or effective, once an attack is fended off the computer leaves their base completely unprotected for you to stroll in and go for the kill.

I think this game is going to be a must own for Halo fans and strategy fans alike. It is not perfect but it is the best strategy game I have ever played on a console. Since it is likely not going to be released on the PC this is as good as it is going to get.

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