Halo Wars, A Microsoft Game

Angel Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:12 pm

OFFICIAL GSA REVIEW OF HALO WARS
Halo Wars, A Microsoft Game Halowarslogo1

For years Halo has proudly sat upon the throne of the worlds premier arcade shooter, since the first Halo game was released in 2001 the series has gone from strength to strength and is showing no signs of dulling with age whilst continuing to attract millions of gamers all around the world.
Bungie Studios continue to make more sequels for this groundbreaking title but now a different development group,Ensemble Studios, have taken it upon themselves to experiment with the Halo world and have converted the world renowned first person shooter into a strategy game, at first glance this seems like a rather crazy idea, but how did it actually turn out?

Ensemble Studios began the long and difficult march towards their goal by refusing to use any of the usual RTS control schemes due to the fact that they can be overly technical and, for a casual player, might even seem nearly impossible. Instead of making lots of messy functions and button combos they decided to make game as simple as possible while also making it interesting and pleasing to the eye. Game controls are pretty much made of just few buttons and even first time RTS players will pick them up quite quickly.

When it comes to managing and organising your base it is as simple as possible too, you won’t be scrolling throw huge lists of options and trying to decide what you next move should be. In every mission you will get a base area and you can only build extra places in that spot, there is only six buildings to choose from so it is easy to decide what you need and what you do not. Also there are only two types of resources: energy and money, but there is no actual resource gathering, you just get a building and the cash starts flowing in. However it is harder when it comes to playing as the covenant as they have more advanced technologies and the first time you play as the covenant, you will find yourself completely clueless as there is no tutorial for that race and its hard to decipher which buildings are which because of this. Amassing armies is as easy as building a base and experienced gamers will be able to get all units from original halo and maybe a couple of prototype units as well.

The premise of this Halo title is the same as in all halos, namely destroy the covenant and save humanity. The covenant are looking for ancestrial battle ships which had been presumed lost so that they can use them to crush earth defence forces like a bug and your mission is to prevent that from happening. You will be playing as Sergeant John Forge assisted by cute scientist girl Ellen and of course the one and only A.I –Serina. The main story is interspersed by good looking and pretty cool cut scenes, which are triggered before each mission to explain your motives for killing these poor purple guys. Campaign mode can be played in single player or co-op. I must admit that at first co-op looked like a silly idea for me as such a thing has never been present in any RTS's that I have played before, but somehow Ensemble Studios have managed to pull it off and I really enjoyed rushing to the battlefield with my brothers in arms. Even though in co-op your team does not get double amount of resourses or units, it is really useful to have your partner build an army or a base while you are busy trying to kill some alien scum. Also it requires both participants to use mikes and coordinate actions with each other, so that you can successfully flank enemies or attack two bases at once whilst using one team as a distraction and so on, the possibilities in playing an RTS with a partner are really vast and Ensemble should be praised for adding this to the genre.

Sadly there is no covenant campaign and you can only play as them online or in single player old fashioned skirmish games. This is really disappointing considering the fact that covenant / human troops are well balanced and most of us would enjoy rolling around with wraiths, banshees and ghosts. The flood is present in the game too and can summon some fierce monsters, abilities and even have their own buildings, but despite all that, you are not allowed to play as the flood in any game mode.

Halo Wars is pretty straight forward and simple: level starts, you get your objective, you complete said objective, the level ends. Of course there are secondary objectives which grant you additional troops or resources and make your life a lot easier, and to tell you the truth some secondary objectives will award you with nice little achievements. Also there are some unique missions like eliminating the flood from the hull of your ship or getting a bomb past covenant bases and so on. The Chief we all know and love so much is, unfortunately, not present in the game, but there are other Spartans. These Spartans are incredibly strong, have some amazing weapons, and of course they can hijack almost any enemy vehicle, so despite the absence of the Master Chief you shouldn't be overly disappointed as these Spartans are the next best thing. You will also encounter grizzly tanks, banshees, warthogs, big, scary scarabs (trust me; you do not want to get in their way) and other familiar units from the halo series. Every unit can be upgraded twice: to inflict more damage, move faster, withstand more damage and so on. Some of you might imagine that victory can be easily attained simply by outnumbering your enemies but you would be completely wrong. For example non upgraded warthogs are driver only vehicles without the usual rear gunner which weakens this vehicle quite considerably, stock scorpion tanks are pretty weak too, but if you buy their special ability you will find life in multiplayer matches that much easier.

Speaking of multiplayer Ensemble have taken the option to make the online play as accessible as possible, with the objective rarely varying from finding your opponent and making dust out of his army and bases. Every destroyed unit or building gives you some experience and the more experience you get the faster you level up. Even though you don’t get any special units or items for levelling it is still enjoyable and you will play multiplayer just for fun whilst picking up a couple of achievements on the way.

In summary I should say that this game can be played by anybody and everybody, if you are not familiar with real time strategies, this is a perfect game to start from. Even if it is your first time playing an RTS, it is more than likely that you will quickly adapt to things due to the user friendly nature of the game and within time you will be having an experience as intense as anything previously encountered in a Halo title. Above all else Halo Wars is a beautifully rendered RTS game in a world upon which we have all become so familiar and will hopefully be the forerunner for more titles of this ilk in the near future.

Score: 9.0/10

Huge thanks goes to Simon for his help regarding the article and Kent for his support.

Guest Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:03 pm

Well done Angel, great effort mate.

**KENT HAMMER** Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:44 pm

Well done Angel, quality review for a quality game! Very Happy

Shammy Sun Oct 25, 2009 7:20 pm

Nice review ...great game .

Wild Osprey Fri Nov 13, 2009 9:40 pm

Hey Angel, great review, covered all the bits I'd. Good one Very Happy

Angel Sat Nov 14, 2009 5:18 am

well i wrote this a month after actualy playing the game so im surprised that i remembered everything so well.. i guess that game realy left an impresion Smile

oh and thanks guys Embarassed

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