Leading the troops
Shawn Hughes
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Entertainment
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Real time strategies have largely been reserved to computer games, such as Starcraft and Age of Empires, and to board games such as Risk and Axis and Allies, but with Halo Wars, Microsoft aims to break into the real time strategy fan base.
The game has good in-game graphics with variations among levels instead of making it seem like identical maps. The cut scene graphics are some of the best with good detail in the characters and surrounding back grounds.
The game play is simple and easy to control for the most part. Occasionally, the camera will move to a bad angle when trying to observe your troops movement or in a battle but since it is a real time strategy the camera can be freely moved to obtain a better view. The troop limitations are strict, allowing you to build 40 troops when the upgrades have been activated mostly and making new bases does not alter that, but troops such as marines and flamethrowers have multiple troops in their group. Larger vehicles such as Scorpions and Vultures take up more than one troop slot, for example a scorpion counts as three marines. Each base building has upgrades that can improve resources, weapon power and efficiency, and troop numbers.
The free match lets you play others online or the computer and you can play as the Covenant or humans. This has similar troop restrictions however you can increase the number of allies and enemies to make it more challenging in numbers. The Covenant has more troop spaces but most of the troops are weaker than the human counter parts.
The game is a good ice breaker for Xbox real time strategy games, but needs improvement for future success. Players of Age of Empires and especially Starcraft will find the game far to streamlined due to small maps and limited troop numbers, it ends in one major battle each time instead of letting the player have multiple strong armies to stage multiple fronts. Players end up with one big army and to make it more challenging, limit the type of troops they use or work on flanking and trap maneuvers. The limitations in army size also lead to building virtually identical armies every level just because having very few troops mean that players need to make sure and have powerful ones instead of varying up the types of troops. The story was interesting and entertaining as a prequel to the Halo series and with the well drawn cut scenes following the story is enjoyable. It has some good replay for trying new strategies, but will need to make possible sequels have more troop numbers, larger maps, more upgrades, and all around length improvement if they want one to continue to succeed, but it is unknown if there will be a sequel.
For casual real time strategy game players or players new to the genre it is a good game to get an idea of the type of game and how it works with an enjoyable story, but overtime for newer players and rather quickly for veterans of the real time game style the limitations will grow tiresome. The streamline style that it forces you to play allows for the player to have some options for changing up strategies and trying to win matches either faster or in more complex and dominating fashions, but eventually you are forced to fall into a style you have run before already.
Due to good graphics, great cut scenes, very good story, decent replay ability and fun game play, the game gets a 7.5 out of 10.
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