by: Noah Hess

March 23, 2009

Halo Wars is a game that you are going to have to get if you are a fan of the Halo universe and series. It is not something that every FPS fan will enjoy, but something that adds to the Halo storyline and adds a great game to the series.

The game is an RTS (Real Time Strategy) and not a FPS the Halo fans are so used to. An RTS is a game in where you have a top down view of the map and manage a civilization or team. This includes upgrading their stats and technologies as you gain more resources. While doing this you also need to build up a good sizable army to take down your enemies. I was a big fan of the Age of Empires series and the first is the one that introduced me to RTS games. Being based in the Halo universe and exclusively for Xbox 360, I had my doubts as to how great the game could actually be. The game is disappointing at one level due to the streamlined gameplay and limitations of an Xbox 360 controller, on the other hand the end result is surprisingly well made.


The games story is something that Halo fans should enjoy. Even though the story is fairly light, it takes place before the first Halo game and after the book Halo: The Fall of Reach. The story follows Sergeant Forge (who you will have at your disposal for most of the game) and the Spirit of Fire's battles against the Covenant after finding an artifact on the planet Harvest. You have to stop the covenant from recovering it and destroying the human race. If you have read the books you may also recognize some of the Spartans that you see throughout the campaign. The game even has a time line of events that feature things from the books and games together.

The gameplay relies on speed a great deal. The first thing you will notice when playing is that there are no gatherer units to get resources and no need to build houses to increase your population limit. What you start off with instead is just a simple base with three spaces on it for buildings. The buildings you have to create to get resources are supply bases; without these you have no resources coming in. Then on top of those you have to also build reactors or temples (depending on the side you choose to play) in order to upgrade your units or army. While this takes away the hassle of farming or mining a resource, it also takes spaces away from your other buildings, such as a barracks or vehicle depot. To add to that you cannot just build a base or command center anywhere, you have to build it upon pre-designated areas of the map. This really limits your options in a sense and also means the enemy knows every spot that you could have a base at.

The controls in this game are really easy to get a feel for, yet even when you know them well they are still not as good as a keyboard and mouse combination. The two bumpers will be the buttons you use the most to select your units. The RB selects all of the units on screen, while the LB selects all of the units that are on the map. Then simply pressing the X button moves them to a specified position or can be used to tell them to attack a specified enemy/base. The A button is used for single unit selection or selection of a base and used to select upgrades or leader powers after pressing the Y button. Left analog stick moves your cursor around the map and the right stick is used to zoom in/out. Pretty simple stuff huh? Then if you want to go even further into selecting say all units of a certain type you can either double click them with A or after selecting all or local units using the RT to navigate to a specific unit. They are simple enough to get the hang of after completing the tutorial and playing for about 30 minutes.