Copyright © 2010 XBox 360 & PS 3 Video Game Reviews. Snowblind theme by c.bavota & Juan Gordillo. Powered by WordPress.
- Control armies in a whole new way as strategy gaming meets the epic Halo universe
- Enter Year 2531 with the crew of the Spirit of Fire and see the early stages of the war against Convent
- Fight as either UNSC or Covenant and employ everything from special Marine units and Warthogs to threatening Scarabs
- Experience smooth, intuitive controls and a friendly UI with a platform developed just for Xbox360
- Enter into skirmishes with up to six players via Xbox LIVE online support
Product Description
Get your hands dirty in the early stages of the epic battle between UNSC and Covenant. Developed by Ensemble Studios, Halo Wars for Xbox 360 brings all the drama of a real-time strategy game to the popular Halo Universe. Set in the year 2531, before the initial Halo first-person shooter game, this game lets you control the human armies of UNSC in a whole new way… More >>
12/08/2009 at 8:19 am
[...] More: Halo Wars | XBox 360 & PS 3 Video Game Reviews [...]
12/08/2009 at 10:42 am
Executive Summary:
The controlls are VERY intuitive. All of your favorite Halo chars are in this, but they don’t just make a Real Time Strategy (RTS) with Halo characters to sell the game, like the Star Wars franchise has been well known for. Quite to the contrary, this is definitely a RTS that can stand on its own merit. I would recommend to anyone that the best way to get an idea if you like the game is to download the free demo off of XBOX live. Play the “Skirmish” mode. The Demo does not have online play, but it should be very clear to you in a game or two if this is something you will like.
The one major drawback is base building. For those who enjoy creating unique bases, defenses, etc. this game will definitely not be for you as all bases are given cookie cutter slots in static pre-defined areas. That said, the game is very diverse, and there isn’t one “Whoever builds this first and mass produces them.” wins character/class. Also, each side does have “God mode” abilities. By that I mean “Super Ray Beam of death from above that are unstoppable” that can do major damage. Over all, I have a lot of fun playing, just as long as I don’t expect it to contend with a computer RTS. It is what it is, a console RTS, and if you except that before you buy it…you will like it.
Full Review:
Halo Wars has all the tell tale signs of “Lets try to sell this product based on the brand name alone, and don’t worry about the game play.” ala Starwars (with a few exceptions) for the past 15 years. I’m pleased to say that is definitely not the case here. I’m sure some Halo purists will disagree with me after purchasing the game, realizing it’s not a First Person Shooter (FPS), (EDIT 3/4/09: I see this has already happened) and giving it one star in disgust. This is a Real Time Strategy game and real time strategy games are not in the slightest bit like first person shooter games…I suggest if you don’t know what a RTS is, that you Wikipedia it. RTS games have long been my favorite, and the king of all RTS games in my opinion was Age of Empires 2 (AOE2). AOE2 is available only for the computer. I think that the best way to review Halo Wars is to go over the 7 aspects of the best RTS I have played and compare.
1) AOE2: There were no “God like” abilities. IE, the Nukes in Command and Conquer, the Plasma cannons, etc. In other words, anything that does major damage that is completely unstoppable. I feel this detracts from the strategy concept of the game, when you can just blow away an entire base without even stepping foot in it. I’m sure some people will disagree with my take on this, and that is fine.
Halo Wars: There are the “God like” abilities in this. One of them is preventable, the other is completely unpreventable and is absolutely game changing once at the highest tech tree tier. I’m sure some people love these parts of RTS’s as they are often on the box specifically stating that they exist.
2) AOE2: There was not one “Make this/Mass produce this and you win” class. Everything had balances and counter balances. If you made a lot of Char X, I will just make Char Y at half the cost, and destroy them.
Halo Wars: Is very much like this, every class has an opposite class designed to kill it. This keeps the game strategy filled, and not an arms race.
3) AOE2: Base Building was unique, fun, and 100% customizable. From building three levels of walls for the enemy to get past, to making defensive towers everywhere and anywhere you could predict an invasion. It was 100% up to you on what your base looked like.
Halo Wars: The bases are cookie cutter and completely uncustomizable. They are also in predefined locations. You are given 4 slots for defensive turrets and 8 slots to put your bases buildings on, all huddled together. This is far and away the weak part of the game and the reason I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars. That said, on a console, it does seem to fit and make the game much more manageable, however the inability to really create your own base and the bases being in static, not dynamic, locations will turn a lot of the RTS purists off (As if an RTS purist would even consider an RTS on a console in the first place, so this might be a moot point).
(EDIT 3/7/09) Let me say you can choose what you want in those 8 slots (IE, something that makes resources, something that makes troops, something that makes aircraft’s, etc). There is no limit or minimum requirement to what you have to have on a base. This is the only, very limited, form of customization in your bases.
4) AOE2: Very easy to setup/find online play with seemingly unlimited opponents.
Halo Wars: Absolutely it does, and the never ending stream of people on Xbox live make this a spectacular online experience. Of course you’ll run into the people that quit just as you get the upper hand, but once some leagues start getting set up, expect this to change.
5) AOE2 had a type of gameplay called Regicide, IE, whoever kills the other team’s king first wins.
Halo Wars: One side does have a “Leader” that is exceptionally powerful, and can be individually upgraded and you can only have one of these. However, after it is killed, you can replace it nearly instantly for almost no resources, thus taking the “Protect the leader” element away.
6) AOE2: Resources could be controlled and fought over, however, just because someone was able to get more of resource X, doesn’t mean that you couldn’t compensate by getting more of resource Y.
Halo Wars: All resource gathering is done by creating buildings in your cookie cutter base that creates them. There are also some seemingly out of place small amounts of “in the wild” resources (There is only one type of resource in Halo called…”Resources”, not 2-4 like most RTS’s IE: Gold/Stone/Food/Wood, etc.). However, it is such a small amount, that other than the first 5 minutes of the game they are useless, and during the first 5 minutes they are almost usless and glaringly out of place in this games dynamics. Perhaps at some point in the game’s development they had a use, but in the final version you are left to wonder why it was included.
7) AOE2: Teching up was fun and it was a constant important decision of making troops vs. upgrading troops’ abilities.
Halo Wars: While each tech tree is much smaller than AOE2, the same principles of army vs. tech is there. The upgrades are unit specific, and there is no general “upgrade” that makes all units better. This makes it also important to tech and build as efficiently as possible.
From what little I have played of the non-skirmish mode/IE story mode, it was boring, unimaginative, and clearly the gameplay was an afterthought and a bridge inbetween the cut scenes. People who want to follow the Halo story line might like it (might), but people who want to just have fun will find it slow paced and boring. It does have good cut scenes, so if you are the kind of person who enjoys being tortured for 30 minutes to see a 2-3 minute cut-scene that tells you more about the story line, then you may like it…other than the story line element, I would expect most people to be extremely disappointed in it.
Bottom Line:
If an RTS HAS to have a good/unique base building structure for you to like it, this game will 100% disappoint you and stay away from it. If you are expecting Halo Wars to be anything like Halo 1, 2, or 3, stay FAR away from it as the only similarities are the characters, and not the game play. However, if you want a nice “Pick up and play” RTS that will have tons of online competetion and great game play (for a console) then you’ll definitely enjoy this game.
If you have any other questions about this game before purchase, please leave a comment and I’ll answer to the best of my abilities. (And yes, I know AOE2 and Halo Wars were made by the same (now defunct) game studio.)
Rating: 4 / 5
12/08/2009 at 12:00 pm
I had completely given up on console RTS games for many years when a friend got me to check this game out. I was not disappointed. The controls feel natural, units can be quickly organized and the game is pretty well balanced. The DLC for the title leaves a lot to be desired, and getting all the achievements takes a VERY long time, but overall, this is a solid title for anyone looking for a good strategy game on Xbox 360.
Rating: 4 / 5
12/08/2009 at 1:42 pm
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Halo series, beat all the FPS game and read all of the books. When I came to this game, I was expecting the same quality game that I had come to expect from Bungie (I know Bungie didn’t make it, but still they must have had people there to oversee it). But I guess my primary issue is that I was expecting a game that was touted to “Reinvent the genre”, to actually make good on those words.
I love strategy games. I’ve played them on the PC for a long time, which is the first issue with Halo Wars. A strategy game just cannot work on a console as well as it can on a PC. They tried that with Starcraft and a number of other strategy games, none ported well. Just as with FPS, the mouse and keyboard win.
Additionally, Halo Wars did try to reinvent the genre, but by reinventing the wheel. Tried and true methods of strategy games where left out; such as control groups, unit/faction balancing, and a general sense of strategy.
Control groups are instrumental for doing any kind of tactical assaults or at the very least making it worth while to build more than one unit. More often than not if I had a group of mixed units, some for AA and some for AG, I would find that there was no reasonable way to have them target their respective targets. I would have the human AA tank end up firing at the squad of grunts that the marines were engaging because who ever designed the game didn’t think to have the units prioritize targets, needless to say I got stomped by a horde of banshees.
This leads me to balancing, it is horrible. My first time online a horde of ODST (Super marines) bested not only my fleet of tanks but also my similarly sized horde of flamethrowers (Anti-infantry). To make things worse, when I engaged the Covenant the first time, the Arbiter was able to single handed demolish my entire army that I spent the better part of the game making. The clincher is the other player knew that the arbiter was all he needed and was the only unit he had while he fast teched to who-knows-what. The humans have a special item that disables hostile heroes abilities, but when he moved out of the range of the power and waited for it to expire, he assaulted again because the humans only bring one to battle and require new ones to be shipped in from Earth. Overall where other games have made advances and evolved beyond the unstoppable-steamrolling-horde approach to gameplay Halo Wars was more than happy to revert to C&C Red Alert 1.
There is no strategy in this game. I say this begrudged and probably exaggerating, but there really isn’t. The balancing of units is horrible, there are no “Rocks-Paper-Scissors” that modern warfare has devolved into. Other than AA, which actually kicks the crap out of flying units. There are great graphics and what not, but that aspect means nothing when your game is fundamentally flawed.
I am very disappointed in this game, I rented it to find out if the other reviews held any weight, and found that there was no way I would ever rent it again or even consider buying it. I decided to go back to playing Halo 3, because that is fun and I like playing games to have fun not have to practice to figure out how to have fun.
Rating: 3 / 5
12/08/2009 at 3:22 pm
Good game, not all it was hyped up to be. Great graphics, good story but extremely short and multiplayer doesn’t make up for it. I expected a Covenent side of the story but there’s only the 15 missions of human story.
Rating: 3 / 5
12/08/2009 at 5:14 pm
At my age (32) there is a certain level of difficulty I want to experience; and it’s pretty darn low. Let the young struggle in glorious battle. No thanks. I want moderate challenge with a pretty high guarantee of victory. …and thanks to the savvy makers of Halo Wars, that’s exactly what I have! Whoo hoo.
Without reading a thing about it (‘also lazy apparently) I popp’d the game in and started a skirmish on “Normal.”… With some limited experience in RTS games (Age of Empires, Starcraft, etc.) I had the general principles down before I played. And by god, the controls are so intuitive that I didn’t need to read a thing! Well, for basic gameplay mastery anyway. In minutes I was gathering supplies, building up the base, creating troops, etc. All with this fantastic design style that flows perfectly with the Halo universe I know and love.
To date I’ve played maybe 30 skirmishes, and run the entire campaign on Normal. Yes I’m the only person on Earth who is not online with his Xbox. All in all, even with having to read up on a few details and nuance questions, the game is fantastic. Smooth gameplay, awesome graphics, terrific sound (ok the music is the only downside, it’s more moody / somber than it should be) and simple controls. For a gamer like me? it’s very near ideal. bring on Halo Wars 2!
Rating: 5 / 5