Game Reviews
Review: Halo Wars
By Sean Booker March 18, 2009 - 17:40
Studios: Ensemble Studios
Publisher(s): Microsoft Game Studios
Rating: T
Genre: Real Time Strategy
Platform: Xbox 360
Players: 1 or 2 to 3 Person Online Co-op
Halo
Wars is the latest game in the Halo franchise, and the first to stray from the usual first-person shooter genre. It takes place in an early period in the
Halo universe,
many years before the events of the original trilogy. You will
control your army through 15 levels as you encounter new foes and fascinating new locations. It does a great job of making you feel like you are
the most powerful military force alive, but sets itself back by
really showing how much of a basic game it is.
You
command Sergeant Forge of the Spirit of Fire warship, as you build armies
and take on the invading enemy. The game begins with you simply
battling against the incoming Covenant, but quickly switches to a race
to save one of your own. This brings you to new worlds where you will
encounter the Flood species as they try and remove you from their
home planet.
Instead
of the standard game play we have come to expect from the original
Halo trilogy,
Halo Wars is a game in the Real Time
Strategy, or RTS, genre. An RTS game requires several sorts of
management type aspects in order to proceed through. This can mean
that you will have to set units to fight, while commanding units to
search for resources or supplies. What causes an RTS to become so
engaging is the constant and quick multitasking you will have to
perform in order to complete your mission. This aspect creates a
world where you truly feel like you are the master of everything.
Halo
Wars does a great job of introducing
new gamers to the genre, who may not have much experience with RTS games.
The tutorial is set up in a way that allows you to learn the most basic
forms of gameplay. This will include lessons on commanding units,
building objects and even how to move the camera appropriately. The
inclusion of such a basic tutorial was a great idea, especially considering this
is the first time the Halo franchise has ventured to this genre, and the fact that it is a big name release
on a non-RTS heavy platform. Most people picking up this game because they enjoyed the past Halo
games will be able to find their way around quite easily, whether
they’ve touched an RTS or not.
This
main concept of an RTS is where
Halo Wars has its biggest
drawback. Since most RTS’s are designed for a PC, there are a lot
more commands you can input using the keyboard. Having the game made
for the Xbox 360 causes it to feel like all these commands had to be
either removed or condensed so they would accommodate the new
controller.
The
biggest example of this is the way the game lets you move your units
around. Normally you would want to be able to break up your army so
that you can perform several actions at once. You can do this in
Halo
Wars, but it becomes incredibly tedious and time consuming. In
order to move your units you must hit the LB button so it selects
every one of them. You can change this up by hitting the RB button or
the A button. The A button allows you to select one specific unit at
a time while the RB lets you select only units you can see on screen.
So, in order to separate your group into smaller groups, you will have
to grab every unit individually and move them far enough away from
each other in order to use your local units command (RB button).
For
the majority of the game, you won’t feel the need to ever break
your units up for two reasons. The first is that it is quite an
annoying process to have to go through and the second is that you
never really need to. The game is a bit shallow in how it has been
set up. Since you will be commanding one giant group, it’s easy
enough to just move them from one area to the next, killing
everything they come across. This causes the game to become quite
easy in some respects, since you can kill pretty much anything and
survive indefinitely, as long as you can keep building new units
faster than your opponent. All in all, you may find it annoying, since
you don’t have many management options for navigating
your team, but at the same time, you never really need them.
Apart
from controlling your units, the majority of each mission will be
about constructing a base. You can find base areas around the map, or
you will start off with one. From there, the main part of the game
comes in. You need to build different buildings in order to create
the army that you will later use. Some buildings will be for creating
resources or supplying energy (used to build more things) while others can
give you new weapons, ships or just upgrade past expansions.
This is where some of the pacing issues in
Halo Wars become apparent. From the
beginning of the mission, your task will be clearly stated for you.
However, you can’t just rush another base from the get go, hoping to
finish this objective quickly. This is because you will only be
geared with around one unit and enough resources to start a base and
get a couple structures built. So, instead of heading straight into
battle, you need to start building an army. Getting from the
beginning of the level to the top grade units can take around twenty
minutes at most. This may not sound like such a long time, but for
these twenty minutes you will only be sitting there watching the game
create more ships for you. This can be extremely boring. You can,
however, try and move ahead in the mission before getting a full army,
and it may work a few times, but when it comes time to playing online or tackle
harder levels, you will be better off stocking up before even
thinking of moving. What this does is almost force you to have to
wait and sit around while your station finishes upgrading everything
completely. Afterwards, when your units are finally ready, you can rush into
battle. From here, everything becomes fast-paced and will only take
a few minutes to wrap up. Each mission will go from about a fifteen
minute wait, to a five to ten minute battle scene. In the end, you
are looking at a long waiting period to a brief, fast-paced action
phase.
When
you do get your units rolling and everything has been upgraded, the
game starts getting really fun. Controlling an enormous army and just
obliterating the enemy is one of the best parts of the game. It is
short however, but it’s great while it goes on. When in combat, you
get to use either a standard attack or a special ability. Special
abilities can range from an RPG gun to bigger lasers or even specific
melee attacks. For example, Spartans can jump on an enemy ship and
take control of it. Watching these fights are quite fun, and it
shows off how wonderful the game looks. The multitasking also comes
into play a bit more than the rest of the game as you need to watch
for your units to recharge their specials or create new ones all
together. Destroying another base means you can now take it over and
command two stations. This will help with the wait times as you can
now upgrade things faster and get more units to command.
The
campaign isn’t too much of a highlight to this game, but the
multiplayer is. Since the majority of the single player mode will
have you slowly moving a huge group of units from one area to
another, it can sometimes seem too easy or just boring. When playing
against a human though, you will find some great uses for such huge
armies. Since you both know that bigger means better, you will get
great battles pitting huge infantry squads against the one another. You can
also play co-op head-to-head and have two buddies team up with you.
This really shows the power of the system as 100+ units run
simultaneously at another team until only one is left standing.
To
showcase all this off,
Halo Wars has some of the best graphics
I have seen on the console. One might say
Halo Wars would even rival some of
the RTS games available for PC, at least as far as graphics goes. Everything looks great
as it plays out during the missions. Units will all be diverse and
unique while they show the damage taken from combat. The smoke
and fire look great when added to damaged structures. Some of the
best looking graphics are shown when a huge structure explodes, or during
the cutscenes. The explosions are simply stunning when blowing up
something huge and the fire that spurts out is awesome. It really makes
you feel like you demolished something very significant. The cutscenes are quite brilliant themselves, making everything looks very
lifelike.
Halo Wars definitely has some of the best graphics
on the Xbox 360 to date.
The
sound in
Halo Wars isn’t anything special. Since most of the
time you will need to be listening to how your base is running, the
background music isn’t a big feature. The game does a good job of
updating you on how your team and structures are holding up. You will
be reminded every few seconds of the status of the enemy or your own
team. One of the weirdest features in
Halo Wars though is the
LB button. As stated, this causes you to select every unit you have
in order to move them as one. Each time you hit this button, you will
be notified with a voice stating “All Units.” What makes this so
weird is that this never changes whether you are humans or playing as
the Covenant. To add to that, there is no variety in the way this is
stated. Since you will need to use this command every few minutes,
you will be hearing the same phrase uttered more times than one would
like.
Halo
Wars is a fun and easily accessible
real-time strategy game for new or veteran fans. It does a good job
of bringing you into the universe and have you feeling as powerful as
you would playing any other Halo
or RTS game, but sets itself back with some obvious and annoying flaws.
The game doesn't require much thinking in terms of strategy, which makes
it become a bit easy and sometimes boring. It even drags the
multi-management aspect that RTS’s are known for away and
simplifies it too much. With that said though, it doesn’t take away
from the fun. Playing online with or against friends
is some of the best time you can have playing the game, and commanding massive armies
while creating numerous and important structures is great. If you can
get past the ease of play along with some very awkward pacing issues,
you will find Halo Wars
a great addition to the long running franchise.