Release: Mar 3 2009 (US), Feb 27 2009 (UK)
Developer: Ensemble Studios
Publisher: Microsoft
Genre: Real-time strategy
Age Rating: Teen (ESRB), 16+ (PEGI)
An FPS classic goes RTS, on a console… it better be good.
Let’s be honest, the real time strategy (RTS) genre has hardly had a glorious history on consoles. As a group it would be fair to consider them as both critical and commercial failures. And so here we have Halo Wars, an RTS game based on one of the most successful console franchises of all time, developed by one of the premier creators of strategy games in Ensemble Studios (most famous for the genre defining Age of Empires series).
It seems like a match made in heaven. Combine a top gaming series with a top games developer and, in theory, you should end up with a product that’ll be the envy of the genre. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are many factors to consider when re-imagining a series and putting it into someone else’s hands, no matter how skilled those hands are. For example, how will they make sure to appeal to the Halo fan that knows nothing about RTS’? How will they appeal to the RTS fans that know nothing about Halo? How do they make the game feel like a Halo game without seeing the game at ground level with a gun stuck in front of your face? And most important of all, how the hell do they make an RTS work, and we mean REALLY work, on a console?
Thankfully, the team have done a pretty impressive job of addressing all of those questions. Any enjoyable games must have a decent control scheme. Console RTS control schemes have been the main issue surrounding their lack of quality. The problem is that the majority of consoles RTS’ have been ported from the PC development platform, and trying to transfer an input system designed around a mouse and keyboard is like trying to fit the circle block into the square hole. It ends up feeling sluggish, unwieldy and, frankly, not worth your effort.
Halo Wars’ control scheme has been built from the ground up specifically for the 360 pad. And, we’re glad to say, it works pretty darn well. It’s a simple set-up that doesn’t try to over reach itself and is all the better for it. Unit selection, a vital component of any RTS, is performed with ease in a variety of ways. At the most basic level individual units can be highlighted by hovering over them and clicking the ‘A’ button, as we’ve all seen and done before. Groups of units can be brought under your control by holding down ‘A’, bringing up a selection circle, and passing it over your desired targets – as many or is few as you want. It’s not a giant leap from the traditional selection boxes, but it’s much more intuitive and greatly speeds up the whole process.
Once you’ve selected you’re desired troops you can alter your selection to take control of individual unit types. For example, you’ve highlighted a couple of marine squads, a few warthogs and a scorpion tank but you want them to go and guard/attack different points on the map. By pushing the right trigger you can cycle through the various units and give them separate orders, while retaining the entire selection group (allowing you to still give orders to the whole army if you so wish). This doesn’t sound like all that much but it becomes a mechanic that you quickly fall in love with. Not having to constantly re-select highlight units after conveying orders is a real time saver, and allows you concentrate on the action as you can give orders to multiple groups without to search the map for them each time.
There are also a bunch of shortcuts to help you out. The right bumper selects every one of your units on the map, while the left bumper highlights only those visible to you. Pushing various directions on the D-Pad centres the camera on your base (or bases), on your army leader or on units you may have scattered across the environment. It would be a stretch to say the control system is a revolution, but it’s at least a big step in the right direction; everything is geared around reducing the time spent on the mundane tasks, allowing you to concentrate on the fun stuff.
The gameplay follows the same mantra. Compared with the majority of RTS’, Halo Wars unabashedly focused on action. You needn’t worry planning the design of your base because the building locations are already marked, all the way down to the turret locations (you still have to decide what to build of course). There’s no harvesting or resource hunting to do, just build a few supply pads and watch as the little number increases. You’re also limited to a fairly strict population size, meaning you can’t ‘turtle in’ and amass a huge army before taking on the enemy (this can be increased through certain upgrades but not to a large enough extent as to truly affect your tactics). While these might sound like negatives they actually manifest themselves as likeable elements within the overall structure of the game, giving it a high-tempo, exciting pace.
There’s no doubt that the team have had to compromise on many traditional RTS elements in order to attract the Halo fan. For one, the fact that you don’t have to manually collect resources is a design choice obviously geared towards the RTS rookie who probably doesn’t want to partake in such ‘house work’. You still need to think about how best to spend your resources however, so the traditional resource-harvesting mechanic has, in essence, not been entirely removed.
As a result of these compromises, the RTS veteran will probably lose interest in the single player game fairly quickly, as – on normal difficulty – it’s fairly easy compared to genre rivals. During missions in which you have a base at your disposals, it’s usually possible to just sit back until you have the resources to train four or five of your most powerful units and simply take the enemy out in one fell swoop. The challenge is significantly greater on the advanced difficulty settings, with equally advanced tactics needed to progress, yet the simplicity of the game design still stops it short of being as involving as some may like. On the other side of the coin, for the rookie, it’s a perfect entry point to strategy games as a whole.
The fifteen level campaign sees you take command of the UNSC forces in a war against the Covenant, which takes place twenty years prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. We don’t want to ruin the story (knowing what Halo fans are like) so that blatantly obvious piece of information is all you’re getting. The missions are fairly diverse both in their objectives and environments, with some particularly enjoyable standouts. One level tasks you with taking out an immobile Covenant Scarab (those giant spidery, ‘machiney’ things). The twist is that it can still fire its vehicle-shredding laser. Again, we don’t want to spoil anything, but you need to make full use of the environment – in a way never really exploited in other RTS titles – in order to get close enough to take it out. The mission offers a good amount of choice in how you can go about it, resulting in a degree of replay value in starting over and experimenting with new tactics.
Accompanying you on your journey is a diverse bunch of units, including tanks, aerial vehicles, infantry etc. Most interesting are the Spartan units who, not yet reduced to lone survivor status, are devastatingly effective in battle. On foot units don’t stand a chance, anything in the air should see the danger from a distance and not even bother, and ground vehicles are liable to get ‘jacked’. Yes, the Spartans can commandeer enemy vehicles and use them for their own means. It more of a fun features than a tactical one, but it’s worth it just for the animations.
Visually Halo Wars is good but certainly not great. The graphics from the default viewpoint are of a high enough quality, but bring the camera in to get a good look at your troops and you notice there’s isn’t too much detail to the world or its inhabitants. It’s not a huge problem, as you’re normally looking at the world form forty feet up, but it would be nice to have had a real treat while watching battles up close.
Skulls, as in the traditional Halo titles, crop up on each level. Acquiring them requires you find the ‘black box’ hiding on the map as well as completing various side tasks; ranging from killing a set number of enemy troops to rescuing stranded allies. As in previous Halo titles, some of the skulls can turn what was a fairly simple mission into a causal gamer’s nightmare, of extreme difficulty and minimal health. Skulls can be used in all of the game’s modes, both on- and offline, and alter the experience to the extent where it really is worth testing them out.
Halo wouldn’t be Halo without decent multiplayer support, and Halo Wars has its fair share. The entire campaign can be played in two-player co-op, cut scenes and all. It’s a process that works well and, in some cases, the levels seem to have been designed with co-op in mind, especially those with multiple base locations and a number of wide spread locations to monitor, attack and defend. Your success will depend on how well you can communicate as a team, as going it alone (depending on the difficulty) is often suicide due to the fact that you control a smaller force than you would if playing by ones self. You’ve also got your standard skirmish matches (up to 3v3) – in which you have the option of commanding the Covenant forces – to keep you satisfied in the months following the completion of the story.
Halo Wars is primarily a strategy game for the Halo fan; it has a pick-up-and-play quality that you rarely see from the genre. The control system is best of any console RTS title, and credit is due to the developers for altering what needed to be altered without completely spitting in the face of the traditional set-ups. The hardened RTS fan may not get the same longevity from it as some other titles, but it’s certainly a fun ride while it lasts. Halo Wars is a great entry point for RTS virgins, and proof that strategy games can work on a console.
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