GamerNode: Reviews - Halo Wars

Halo Wars

• Halo Wars
• Xbox 360
• Ensemble Studios
• Microsoft Game Studios
• TBA

The main reason everyone panics when they hear the phrase "console-based RTS" is simply because they can't fathom playing a title of that genre and not using a keyboard and mouse. Strategy titles require precision, speed, and if you play at an extremely high level in Korea, around a hundred memorized custom key-bindings.

Halo Wars is purely controller-based, and the game handles it better than you'd ever have thought possible. My first console RTS experience was Command and Conquer on the Playstation, and it was a complete mess, with the developer trying to get the controller to function in the same way as a keyboard and mouse. Frustration actually led to a Playstation mouse being released in the end, but by then it was cheaper simply to buy the PC incarnation.

The control system for Halo Wars is slick, responsive, and unbelievably intuitive, with the ability to select a custom amount of units, all units of that variety on screen, all units on the map, or all units in your current field of vision. This is all done with one button push for each function. But before you begin to wonder how this would work, using a controller that only has five usable face buttons, a D-Pad and two sets of shoulder buttons, Ensemble Studios have managed to fit all the other commands on there.

I need not simplify the system, as it is already as simple as possible; you'll be using the X button for the majority of play when it comes to ordering troops around and to attack. The interesting variant on this is most units, whether initially or through upgrades, have a special attack. For the marines it's a grenade, for the Warthogs, a ramming charge into infantry. This is all accessed simply by pressing Y over an enemy instead of X. In addition to this, the D-Pad will call up everything from orbital strikes to Pelican transports, and it shows clearly that Ensemble have tried to fit as many functions into the mix as possible.

The only real criticism I can offer for the title is there's no longer any way to have the game remember a certain group of units. In StarCraft, I would set up four or five "teams" of units, with support and offense units mixed into the same selection, and I could recall them simply by pressing 1 through 9 on my keyboard. In Halo Wars, manual selection is all that's offered to you, and while this can prove frustrating in the heat of battle, it doesn't detract from how brilliant the rest of the game really is.

This is a fantastic looking title. I've seen a wealth of RTS titles in my lifetime, and not once have I been this excited to see a unit from the other Halo titles simply to see how wonderfully rendered it has become in Halo Wars. The units are detailed enough not to look clunky and lazily rendered when you zoom in, and they have a variety of contextual animations, from Scarabs stalking over the flaming wreckage of a tank, to Elites ducking and weaving to avoid incoming fire.