Game review: Halo Wars 

Source: Gamefreaks

Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Humanity is battling for its very survival. A once blooming space empire is being taken apart piece by piece by the Covenant Zealots and Master Chief is nowhere to be seen - who will save the day?

Halo Wars is a very different approach to the once first person shooter exclusive Halo series, playing out the battles into a traditional real time strategy game.

Set 20 years before the events played out in Halo: Combat Evolved, it involves the desperate humans fighting on a once bountiful farming planet called Harvest. The mystery ups a notch when instead of glassing the planet as usual, the Covenant begin to excavate a huge forerunner structure. Intrigued, Captain Cutter and Professor Anderson send the hard-arsed Sergeant Forge in to investigate and trigger a series of events which could doom Earth (or not, as we already know).

This makes up the bulk of the single player game which works its way along in a typical RTS way. Initial missions will ease the player in with simple scenarios with limited numbers of units to control, gradually building up the available troops and numbers of enemies to do away with.

In fact, it plays out remarkably like a typical Ensemble Studios game (Age of Empires series); building a base, pumping out units and upgrading said units with new techs.

The main factor to take into consideration with the game being on a console are simplified controls (and they work very well, but don't match up to a mouse setup) and issueless resource gathering - yay, no having to worry about peasants gathering wood...

The story is certainly interesting and gives Halo fans some wonderful background to their beloved franchise and the cut-scenes are absolutely gorgeous.

It is all over very quickly though - eight hours approximately; and something of a heresy in itself is the complete lack of a Covenant campaign... we're sensing DLC in the future. The Flood also plays a role in the game albeit in a non playable way.

Perhaps one of the coolest aspects, however, is the ability to play through the game with a friend in co-op mode, something which is becoming increasingly welcome in RTS circles.

In addition to this, there are skirmishes just like in any other RTS which thankfully DO let you play as the Covenant.

There's also special "powers" such as unleashing an orbiting ships Ion Cannons. And of course there's Spartans. No not Master Chief Spartans, consider them earlier models, however they still kick butt in a major way and can even leap onto and take control of enemy vessels just like you do in the shooter. In fact the developers have done a great job of replicating the movements from Halo, from the way the Brutes leaps aside from an oncoming enemy to the bouncy jumps of a speeding Warthog. It certainly "looks" like a Halo game.

Most of the extended life in Halo Wars will play out in the multiplayer arena and the game does its job aptly with two well balanced factions to play with. Game modes are very limited and again with Robot Entertainment promising more content, we're certain this will be expanded on in months to come.

Summary
From the look of the battles to collecting skulls on the map, Halo Wars does a good job fitting into the Halo universe. As RTS games go, it's a solid performer, great for a console iteration, although experienced PC gamers will find things a tad lacking overall.

This review bought to you by Gamefreaks.