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Review: Halo Wars
- Title: Halo Wars
- Developer: Ensemble Studios
- Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
- System: Xbox 360
- Reviewer: Soulskill
- Score: 7/10
A solid camera system is the foundation of a good control scheme, and here Ensemble gets off to a running start. The left stick pans around the map at a variable speed determined by how far you push the stick. You can scroll slowly or quickly, and you can also change the maximum speed in the options menu. It's very responsive and easy to get from one place to another. You can hold the left trigger for even more speed, going all the way across the map in about a second. The right stick controls the zoom function, which is largely irrelevant — you'll probably want to keep it zoomed out as far as it will go most of the time — and pushing the stick to the sides rotates your view. You won't need to use this very often, but it's convenient and useful if you want to see things from a different angle.
The other way you can move around the map is with the directional pad. Hitting left will cycle through your base positions, and pressing down will cycle through your unit positions. Occasionally you'll get an alert — for example, a few of your units will be under attack somewhere on the map — and pressing right will take you immediately to the position of your latest alert. Getting around the map is definitely not a problem in this game. It's about as close as you can get to the ease of use that comes with a mouse and keyboard.
The next big hurdle was unit selection, and again, Ensemble did a fine job, giving you all the options and speed you're used to in these types of games. The A-Button selects units individually, but if you hold it down, you get a good-sized circular area which you can then sweep over multiple units to select them at the same time. This takes the place of the typical click-and-drag rectangles on the PC. It's slightly slower, but not by much, and you get the added benefit of being able to grab everyone in a circle around a unit you want to stay put. On top of that, double tapping the A-button on a unit will select all of that type of unit nearby. The right shoulder will select everything on screen, and the left shoulder will grab all units period. The only notable missing function is the inability to save certain groups and switch back to them, and even then, if your groups are spread out, it's not an issue.
If you have multiple unit types selected, the trigger buttons will cycle through the different types, making it very easy to send all your marines in one direction and all your vehicles in another. Once you've had a few missions to get used to the myriad selection options, you won't even need to actively think about what buttons to press. It's a good system because it doesn't get in the way of the actual gameplay. Finally, the means of controlling your units and buildings are simple and intuitive as well. The X-button is your standard "go here," "attack this," "grab this" button, and the Y-button activates any special attacks your selected units have. One nice feature is that you can hold down the X-button for a few seconds and a unit will finish walking to where they were already headed before they go to the new location. This lets you set up paths to take the long way around if the short way isn't safe. Buildings have a radial context menu through which you activate upgrades or pump out new units. You can queue up multiples at a time, and you can cancel an order before it finishes. Essentially, all is as it should be, and you're left to focus on what's important.
Halo Wars starts you off about 20 years before the events of the first Halo game. They send you to Harvest, the first planet to be taken by the Covenant, to establish peaceful and cooperative relations with their leaders and diplomats after five long years of combat. Just kidding — they want you to kill stuff. You get to see cinematics after every mission, which are largely responsible for driving the plot of the game. Visually, they're quite impressive, though the first few are a bit slow. As the game goes on, the cinematics become progressively cooler and more exciting. The writing and the dialogue is less than stellar, but it's serviceable, and it provides some good context to the Halo universe. There are also minor plot points shown during the mission, rendered by the game engine. Those are usually what determine your specific objectives.
There are not many missions in the campaign — just 15 — but they're very diverse. No two are alike, and Ensemble does a decent job of creating interesting objectives and differing levels of resistance. In one, you have to defend civilians as they head for their evacuation shuttles, and you need to take care of the shuttles themselves. The mission is timed, waiting on a countdown to launch. Another mission has you faced with a large energy shield that needs to be taken down. Certain positions on the map are good attack points for a type of long-range tank, so you have to take each position one at a time and hold them all long enough to knock down the barrier. Later you fight a Covenant super-weapon (a Scarab), dodging its main attack while taking out its power supply. And, of course, you get a mission to just build a massive army and annihilate everything else on the map.
They give you a good mixture of offense and defense, though in some cases the amount of resistance you're likely to encounter is unclear. Decisions made early in the game in terms of build order and unit production can effectively eliminate your chances of winning if you guess wrong. This is important because of the way Halo Wars deals with building bases. The bases themselves can only be placed in particular spots. Once a base is built, a number of empty construction bays spring up around it, and you're only allowed to build additional structures where there are construction bays. This means that you're only allowed a maximum of seven structures per base. On top of that, resources aren't something you go out and farm; you build supply pads, which slowly get deliveries from your ship in orbit. So, you're given a tough decision early on whether you want to develop your army or your economy. If you throw down five supply pads, you'll get resources like crazy, but you won't have enough space left to build all of the other things you need to win.
On the easier difficulty levels, this works out decently well; a ton of early resources means that you can pump out enough basic marines to handle most threats until you get fully established and perhaps take a second base. On the harder modes, you're attacked earlier and with stronger forces. Another decision they give you is what type of enemies you want to defend against. Several units are particularly strong against one type of enemy — infantry, vehicle, or aircraft — and not as useful against others. When in doubt, diversify, but if you're playing at an appropriate difficulty level, you can expect to fail a few because you just don't know what to prepare for. The timed missions, in particular, force you into early decisions that simply may not work. Since there's only the UNSC campaign, it's worth going through and doing the side missions, and also trying for some of the difficulty-related achievements.
The AI in Halo Wars is solid; pretty standard for this type of game. Your forces are reasonably smart about picking a target to focus, but not too smart; they won't switch off a full-health tank to drop one that's already almost dead. The pathing is pretty good; you won't have to spend much time micromanaging where you want them to go, but the option is there if you need it. One complaint is that when defending, your troops like to chase attackers too far, spreading out your forces and making it easy for a smart enemy to score some easy kills. There are four difficulty levels — easy, normal, heroic, and legendary. If you're just looking for a quick play-through of the game, go with normal. If you'd like to work for it, go with heroic. If you're pretty good at other real-time strategy games and/or enjoy being punched in the face, legendary will fit the bill.
The selection of units is interesting. You often get a leader and a group of three Spartan soldiers. In addition to being quite powerful, these units are essentially unkillable in the single-player campaign. When they take lethal damage, they drop to the ground and slowly regenerate health. Once they've healed enough, you can revive them by bringing another unit close by. It can lead to some surprising shifts in power. Most of the units are upgradeable to a high degree, becoming significantly more powerful late in the game. For example, the standard UNSC marines begin as a squad of four men with machine guns and grenades. Successive upgrades will: add one man, trade the grenades for long-range rocket launchers, add a medic that will heal the squad after a battle, and finally upgrade all of the marines to Shock Troopers. Each side even has "uber units;" Scarabs shoot giant lasers that fry UNSC forces in seconds, and Vultures are airborne behemoths that can eradicate Covenant buildings almost as quickly.
It would have been great to get a campaign of Covenant missions, but you can still use them in multiplayer. Their buildings are similar to the UNSC selection, but with minor variations. They get shield generators of questionable utility, and their infantry are the ones specialized to fight against particular units, rather than the vehicles. The two factions are similar enough that they'll be well balanced. You can play multiplayer maps against the AI or online with other humans, and you can also play cooperatively with your friends. You select the faction you want to play and then the leader you want, each of whom brings a different unit, ability, or potential upgrade to the table. You can expect to see players using strategies that work in other RTS games. Rushes work well, but they can be dealt with. Selecting your opening strategy tends to be more important than out-managing your opponent in battles. You don't have to have a ridiculous number of actions per minute to do well.
Ensemble succeeded quite well at establishing a control system that is powerful yet doesn't fight for intellectual real estate with the actual playing of the game. It's not a ground-breaking new entry into the real-time strategy genre, but, in a manner similar to the first Halo shooter, it demonstrates how well this genre can work on consoles. And it does well by the Halo franchise in the process. It's too bad Ensemble themselves got split up after completing this game — DLC involving some Covenant missions or making the Flood a third playable race would make this game even better. Fortunately, a team of Ensemble members now going by the name Robot Entertainment will be providing "support." If they're proactive about tuning and balancing the game, Halo Wars multiplayer could become quite popular indeed, in part because there isn't much competition. While it's not likely to be suitable for the hardcore, competitive RTS players, Halo Wars is definitely the fun and easy-to-operate console RTS many players have been waiting for.
...same exact formula as a million other RTS games, just branded with Halo; ergo, if you like Halo, this is probably an excellent game - otherwise it's like many others that came before it. If you've not played many RTS games, this one probably has polish, so pick it.
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Halo everybody!
I'd have to lose 30 IQ points before I'd try an RTS on a console. The only people I know who think HALO is a good game are the ones that have never played Half-Life. Do yourself a favor; buy a PC, and try a real RTS.
So they've switched to a keyboard/mouse?
Traded it in a couple of days after release... It's just cheap-ass Halo branding on everything. It's got the typical Microsoft hype machine running it, and little else...
This game takes a new, totally novel, 'Humans', 'aliens with advanced tech' and 'aliens with organic tech' approach to sides that I totally have never seen before in any space-based rts. It's good to see microsoft finally coming out with concepts that aren't direct copies of anything else.
oh wait
Warkhawk for Sony Playstation 3 is a better game than Halo.
Redalert 3 was not a very enjoyable experience. And why should this one be any different?
I'll just wait for SC2.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I still take great pride in the fact that I've never played any member of the Halo series.
You can't take the sky from me.
Bungie's trilogy of first-person shooters established a standard...
Yes, they defined for us the exact bottom of the barrel.
It starts out with: "Bungie's trilogy of first-person shooters established a standard against which most similar games have been judged for the past eight years."
Uhm, no. Halo is a console game which was based on the rich and varied offerings from the PC world. To say that Halo is a standard really shows how little the reviewer knows about first pergames.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I got this game a few days after it came out and while the game mechanics are pleasing and the controls easy enough to learn for an RTS using a gamepad, I must say one thing has me very disappointed. The soundtrack.
Where the hell is my kickass soundtrack going on in the background? The game is visually pleasing, I especially like watching the warthogs drive around. I feel like the music was ignored, but this is just my opinion. That was one of the draws for playing Halo for me, the music that would swell up and seemed to tie in with the situations very well. I just don't have that in Halo Wars. Maybe I am knit-picking. Did anyone else feel let down by the musical score or lack there of?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
OK review... Could have used more multi-player details.
but it remains a console RTS. Yawn.
I want my RTS to be complex, and far more open with more micro-management, I havn't seen an RTS I've liked since Empire Earth 2, since then, everything has been dumbed down again and again.
I've got, played, and liked Halo Wars. I like the Halo franchise, it's got a good storyline, and the games have been well made. This, true to form, is not a bad game. It's just not revolutionary.
That said, I am tired of people slagging off Halo continuously. Sure, I prefer the Half-Life PC games to Halo, but the Halo games remain excellent - and the game type and map customisation have yet to be beaten for a simplicity vs power balence.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
It is clear Microsoft is not aiming for the regular, competitive RTS demographic. No Serious RTS fan is going to pick this up for the reviewers praise of the low APM(Actions Per Minute). I'll stick with C&C3 and Starcraft for now, until Starcraft II is released. :)
I tried the demo on Xbox 360 when it came out. I realize that not all demos are indicative of the quality of the overall game. I have not played the full version.
From my experience, the game is like playing Starcraft, while drunk, with your toes, after a frontal lobotomy. The controls are dumbed down, as is the general gameplay overall. The "pretty graphics and sound" didn't really add that much compelling to the gameplay. Any Command and Conquer game, Warcraft 1-3 or Starcraft had much deeper gameplay. For the $60 you could spend on this game, you could probably find ALL of these other games in bargain bins, or on eBay.
I fail to see why in the world consoles have the inability to use keyboard and mouse at least as an option. The 360 has USB ports, the PS3 has Bluetooth and USB. Why can't I just take my keyboard and mouse combo and use it for these systems as an option?
Some people have given me the excuse that MSFT/Sony/Nintendo want 'consistent gameplay' with the controllers that people will already have. If that's the case though, why do we have things like weird huge joysticks for mech games (360), Rockband kits, the Wii-Fit board, or the Duck Hunt stype zapper for the Wii??? These aren't your standard controllers, but are more than fine. I'm guessing that 'most' households with a game system have a USB keyboard and mouse laying around somewhere.
For me, this would make the consoles perfectly equal gaming systems for me that I'd be totally happy with for RTS and FPS genres.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Microsoft brand: check
Console game *: check
DRM: check
Halo: check
Positive review that is not 100% undisputable**: check
Game is not perfect**: check
Yup, this is a perfect storm.
*Why is that an issue? Because of the control scheme. PC gamers just want their console-playing peers to see the light and understand that if you're not using a mouse and keyboard, you're basically torturing yourself, and you make Baby Jesus cry. It has nothing to do with paranoia about their gaming medium being endangered, or silly elitism.
**some say that's impossible, I say we have higher standards here
I fail to see why in the world consoles have the inability to use keyboard and mouse at least as an option. The 360 has USB ports, the PS3 has Bluetooth and USB. Why can't I just take my keyboard and mouse combo and use it for these systems as an option?
Some people have given me the excuse that MSFT/Sony/Nintendo want 'consistent gameplay' with the controllers that people will already have. If that's the case though, why do we have things like weird huge joysticks for mech games (360), Rockband kits, the Wii-Fit board, or the Duck Hunt stype zapper for the Wii??? These aren't your standard controllers, but are more than fine. I'm guessing that 'most' households with a game system have a USB keyboard and mouse laying around somewhere.
It has nothing to do with limiting the number of controllers people have. I bet it's actually that most people don't want to have to play against people with an advantage over them. No one reasonable, generally including even die-hard console fans, disputes that the mouse and keyboard is more precise. A lot of people do dispute, however, whether it's more fun to have a mouse and keyboard on your couch in the living room.
I know that as a console game player, I just wouldn't play any game online where a sizable percentage of the population is using a mouse and keyboard. They have an advantage over me, as surely as baseball players that use steroids have advantages over their clean brethren, and I don't want to adopt their tactics simply to remain competitive. I just wouldn't play, and the number of players like me is a lot larger than the number of players who want to use the mouse and keyboard, so it doesn't make sense to include the option.
Furthermore, and I'm not sure how widely held this view is, but at least for FPS, I actually prefer the lower accuracy of the game controller. The mouse makes it too easy to be unrealistically good, bunny jumping down the hallway while sniping people in the head with a high calibre rifle in mid jump. The fact that it's harder to do that on a console is a good thing to me. There's a reason we don't train our soldiers to jump all around while trying to snipe in real life.
Halo/Halo 2 had some of the DUMBEST, most boring, and most repetitive cutscenes in any game I've ever played. I can't even begin to describe how simplistic and boring the story in these games was. Actually, I never really figured out too much of what was going on aside from various retarded looking aliens hissing at each other and posturing to show off how tough they are.
Halo/Halo 2 are some of the most overrated games ever in my opinion. They have fun moments but are so ridiculously repetitive. In each game you go through the same exact levels multiple times, just in different directions each time (and sometimes not even that, sometimes it's just 'do the exact same thing you did an hour ago over again'). That's how they filled out the content of those pieces of crap. My friend and I never actually finished Halo 2 because we got so bored playing it.
Throwing a guy off of a balcony with the gravity gun is more fun than the entirety of single player HALO 1-3.
The only draw for HALO is the multiplayer with friends in the same room and that it's an FPS that sort of works for a console. CS and TF2 are and always will be infinitely greater multiplayer FPS games than any flavor of HALO.
Being able to shoot people accurately and not feeling like I'm playing the game while stuck in a pool of mud makes the HL series infinitely better than HALO.
I didn't state "IMHO" or "IMO" to counter your statement of opinion as fact because well... you stated your opinion as fact.
to any BSD project, the point more daablers. In truth, the official GAY
Its to control the market. They control what controllers the system can use, and because of that they control who makes the controllers. Once you start allowing mouse and keyboards, your opening the door to more third parties making things for your console which means lower profits. Since they can only use the one (or very few) the makers and thus flow of money can be controlled.
I fail to see why in the world consoles have the inability to use keyboard and mouse at least as an option. The 360 has USB ports, the PS3 has Bluetooth and USB. Why can't I just take my keyboard and mouse combo and use it for these systems as an option?
The PS3 has keyboard and mouse support out of the box. However, in order to use it in games the games have to be written to use them. A few games do this already - notably you can get Unreal Tournament 3 for the PS3 with out of the box mouse and keyboard support.
The 360 should follow this fine example. They could crush the gaming market if they did this and found a way to make it so you could use the keyboard and mouse for any game regardless of it's implementation. There is a lot of speculation as to why they have not done it. Most people say that the xbox team does not want to hurt microsoft games lab's PC division. Others would say that it has to do with the fact that it would create a gameplay rift - since a keyboard and mouse for many genres is far superior to a gamepad. More still would say that it breaks "ease of play" and "comfort" since having a mouse on a couch is generally not ideal.
I can't say for sure why they didn't do it. What I can say for sure is it does make certain genres of games less fun and more tedious.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Looks exactly like Starcraft 2. I'm not supprised if it's the same engine that Microsoft somehow got their hands on.
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
I really want to like RTS games, but was ruined by playing Myth II. Managing resources always feels like doing chores rather than engaging game play - the tactics side.
Now, if someone would come out with a Myth II mod for Halo, that would be perfect.
I agree that it would be nice for Microsoft to release one but...
http://www.consoleshop.com/product.php?productid=20688
http://www.ddrgame.com/xbox-360-accessory-keyboard-mouse-adapter.html
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/xcm-brings-pcstyle-gaming-to-your-360-217332.php
From the article: ..."It's about as close as you can get to the ease of use that comes with a mouse and keyboard."
So why not just use a mouse and keyboard? I notice that this game is for the XBox. Why not make a PC version? Doesn't Microsoft have some stake in PCs as well as XBoxes?
You are welcome on my lawn.
why do we have things like weird huge joysticks for mech games (360), Rockband kits, the Wii-Fit board, or the Duck Hunt stype zapper for the Wii??? These aren't your standard controllers
Even as a Wii fanboy I must admit that the "zapper" and other gun devices for the Wii are not controllers except by a dishonest stretch of the imagination. These plastic pieces of junk hold the controllers in uncomfortable positions and do nothing else.
I was looking forward to playing Halo Wars, especially since I started playing Red Alert 3 at Xmas. The game is fun to play and the control scheme in some ways is better than RA3 but in others its worse. The best part about RA3 is that you have access to everything from anywhere on the map. With HW you have to go back to your base, which is easy to do with the dial pad but then you lose your place.
I'm sure there are little tricks that could make the game move faster but thats just my personal experience.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
manekineko2 was right. But also why MS,Sony don't want to put keyb/mouse support for RTS games or any other games is that when the general pop gets to try keyb/mouse control, they become used to/familiar with it.
When people are used to the keyb/mouse config, then they won't be discouraged when an exciting new game comes out for PC. This means potential future loss for console makers.
Put simply, if gamers in general, including new gamers, have experienced playing with PC games such as HL/CS, AOE/Warcraft/Starcraft, Halo wouldn't be as successful as it is today. Halo stole the new generation gamers, MS just can't afford to let them go just by providing keyb/mouse support. It's a huge risk.
huh Pikmin?
I'm guessing that 'most' households with a game system have a USB keyboard and mouse laying around somewhere.
But most don't have a table around that they can put those on to play comfortably. There is also the issue that implementing a mouse/keyboard interface costs time and money, since now you have two interfaces to worry about. In the end its however simply the issue of "because Microsoft said so", thats what you get with a closed game platform, what you gain in standardization and ease of use, you lose in flexibility. Sony on the PS3 allows keyboard and mouse, but still, very few games make use of it (Unreal3 is the only one I can think of).
The real problem however starts long before keyboard and mouse. Why do an RTS game in the first place? Why clone something that was developed for different hardware and different input devices and that hasn't changed in 15 years, why not do something original instead that fits the hardware you have at hand. Full Spectrum Warrior for example was a great real-time tactics game that played great with a controller, merge that with some of the depths of XCom:UFO, throw in a bunch of new ideas and you could have a kick ass game that would be quite different from almost anything out there today.
Game developers have sadly started to think way to much in genres, instead of thinking about what would be the best gameplay to fit the story and settings, they take a predefined and done to death genre and paint it with a new theme.
Halo 1 = a year of straight enjoyment. Halo 2 = a few months of good straight enjoyment. Halo 3 = played for maybe a month then started anticipation for Gears of War 2. I like the franchise but I find the game that started shooters fresh really hasn't changed much of their formula. I understand why they don't but I wish they did. AND SO Halo Wars has come out. Overall a fun RTS but like others on this thread have pointed out, its tame. They really haven't tried anything new. It is almost an overlay of they tons of other RTS games I've already played...but in the Halo world. I bought it, I've played it and had fun with it. But like the rest of my continuing relationship with the franchise I've stopped playing it after a few weeks.