Halo Wars Demo – Different Halo, Same Fun

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Leave Your RTS Baggage At The Door

Real Time Strategy games have had quite the difficult time attempting to come over to consoles. I’m not sure if it’s the constant moving around the battlefield that is the difficult thing to compensate for due to the limiting controller on consoles or whether there are too many commands and too little button real estate. From what I’ve seen of Halo Wars it seems to be a solid attempt by Ensemble Studios (unfortunately closed prior to releasing the game) to focus the overall feel of an RTS into a tighter package that may outrage the hardcore but in a lot of ways is a more streamlined experience because of the changes.

One of the major places Halo Wars moves away from its RTS brethren is restricting the player in where they can build bases. Yes this can be limiting in some ways but at the same time it is good to know that whenever I need to I can quickly get to my base and start cranking out units at will rather than searching around to see exactly where I placed my barracks. I think the fact that you’re also limited on how many buildings you can make around your home base only adds another layer of strategy to the game.

Halo Wars Bloodgulch

The control scheme can get some getting used to but draws a lot of parralells to the Command and Conquer 3 and the Battle for Middle Earth II games that came out for Xbox 360 awhile back. Halo Wars is simplified enough that it allows you to bypass the minutia that was originally associated with using controllers with RTS games and allows you to enjoy the pure dumb fun of sending your troops to attack the enemy. The one major problem I noticed is the fact you couldn’t group certain squads together to better attack situations from multiple sides. I’m not sure if this will become a greater problem when faced with the full game but as of right now in the demo it seems to be a deficiency that can be a headache at first be serviceable.

I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the Halo Wars demo. My feelings of the game went from a title that I was slightly interested in because it was based on the Halo universe to one that I’m really looking forward to getting a copy into my hands. Halo Wars doesn’t seem to reinvent the RTS wheel with it’s mechanics but it does provides you with an experience specifically geared towards consoles and should be judged solely on that fact rather than how “dumbed down” it is compared to PC RTS games.