Halo Wars Has Arrived!!!
So it has finally come, Halo Wars has landed in my console and its time to share my thoughts about the game.
The first thing I thought when I saw this game was “UMMM, it’s an RTS on a console? That’s gonna suck!” And I felt that way for a long time, that is until I played the demo and was hooked. I immediately went out and did the preorder and began the long wait until release day. I’ve had a few days to play the game and get into the meat of it, so lets take this one step at a time.
First off the graphics. Nothing too crazy here, but I have to say the details that are put in each unit are pretty nice. You can see small nuances in the armor that the marines wear, the treads on the tanks, and the cockpits on the warthogs. And the levels are pretty nice also. Though what can you really do to make the scenery all that amazing on an RTS? It’s detailed but nothing amazing. What really shines though are the cut scenes. WOWZA! Full painstakingly detailed CGI animation. If you let yourself go, you almost forget they aren’t real. The facial features, emotions, and backgrounds are just sick. If they were ever to do a Halo movie, this is the way they have to go to make it viable.
Lets go with what everyone wants to hear about, the controls. Ok this was the main thing I thought I would have problems with. With an RTS, you always needed a mouse and keyboard so you could micro manage your troops and jump around the board quickly. And with every RTS that ever ended up on a console…. well they sucked, plain and simple. So I was afraid that the same fate would happen with this game, but I was wrong. The controls, after getting used to them, aren’t to bad. Right bumper selects local units on screen, left selects all units, and when you select a group of units you can use the right trigger to cycle through the selected units to start the micro managing. You can also hold down A to open up a circle that will select all units it touches.
It seems like a lot to have to deal with in the heat of battle, but it’s really not that bad once you get used to the whole thing. And to make things simpler, they have put a unit cap of 40 points. That way you aren’t trying to control an army of a 100 units. Each unit uses a certain amount of points. For example the basic marine takes 1 point, the warthog takes 1, and a scorpion tank takes 3. This makes it so you must pick and choose your unit types to gain maximum effectiveness.
Base building. The bases you build have 3 stages. The first has 3 spots to build from, the second has 5, and the third has 7. You must build reactors to raise your tech level to unlock other buildings and upgrades for your units. The supply depots are needed to keep bringing in more supplies to build units and buildings. The barracks make marines and their upgrades, the vehicle depot makes the tanks and heavy tread vehicles, the air pad makes your aircraft, and the field armory makes your tech upgrades like better mac cannon shots or being able to drop ODST’s. Now the thing that really helps out in the beginning is the fact that you start off with the ability to make warthogs from your main base. But BEWARE, they do not have gunners. You need to research those asap to give them a fighting chance.
Game modes. There are two core game modes, Story and skirmish. In story mode you go through the story of the reclaiming of the planet harvest which is where first contact with the covenant happened. The missions range from basic search and destroy, to trying to rescue units in certain amounts of time, to just surviving until help can arrive. And yes you do fight the flood. And yes they can reanimate your dead marines. To me the meat of the game is the skirmish mode. You can do 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 in either deathmatch (everyone for themselves) or teams. And in this mode you can pick your commander which each of them have different powers to help you out. For example Forge has the ability to have his supply depots start out upgraded and has a bombing run option, and Captain Cutter has the Mac cannon and the ODST drop ability. If you play any type of mode, I urge you to play skirmish online. Its insanely sick and hard as hell, but my god when you win, you feel friggin good!
All in all the game is very solid and it surprised me in many ways. The controls are solid, the cut scenes are top notch, and the skirmish mode is awesome. My only let down was that the missions felt either way to simple or insanely hard. They was really no middle ground to them. Does this take away from the experience as a whole? Naa not too much. Overall I would have to rate this an 8/10. If anyone wants to battle it out on xbox live, my handle is TenderRoast1.
GAME ON!
