Halo Wars is as much about managing limited resources as it is about blowing stuff up. Although your base site is fixed, that doesn't take the strategy out of the process. While some may find this restrictive, I found it to be refreshing approach that significantly streamlined the base-building process, which can be cumbersome to manage in other console RTSs. In some campaign levels, and in most multiplayer maps, you'll have the opportunity to operate additional bases, but you can only build in designated areas. These Firebases come with three building sites and can be upgraded to support up to four additional sites. All of Halo Wars' campaign missions are played from the United Nations Space Command perspective (sorry, no Covenant campaign), and most start you out with a single base of operations, or at least a spot to build one. Marines and their vehicles don't train and build themselves, so you'll need to handle that on your own. Once you use a special attack, it will need to recharge, so use them wisely. Warthogs, for example, can plow over enemy ground forces, which comes in handy as a last resort. Most units also have a special attack, which you can execute at the touch of the Y button. If the location is empty, your unit will move there, and if it's occupied by an enemy, he'll attack like the well-trained Marine he is. On the battlefield, just tap the A button on a unit to select, say, a Spartan super-soldier move your cursor to a location via the left analog stick and tap the X button to send him there. Almost every action in Halo Wars can be accomplished with two button presses, and production choices are made from a Mass Effect-like radial menu that never has more than eight options. This game was built from the ground-up for the Xbox 360, and the control system shows it. The Ensemble developers seem to have had just that experience, because they took a totally different approach with Halo Wars. As a result, many of these ports simply don't work as advertised, and gamers end up shaking their fists at an angry and vindictive God. Actions that were designed to be managed with the precision controls of a keyboard and mouse are shoehorned onto a controller with a limited number of buttons and a slower system of on-screen navigation. Many console strategy games are ports of their PC counterparts, which causes design problems from the outset. In stripping the RTS experience down to its core function of creating an army to defeating an enemy, Halo Wars brings something fresh and lively to the console RTS landscape. Because of this, Halo Wars serves almost as a "my-first-RTS" rather than as a Halo-ization of more traditional strategy offerings like AoE, Starcraft and Command & Conquer.Ĭompared to those games, Halo Wars offers you less control over where you set up your base of operations, how you build your armies and the manner in which you achieve your objectives. Missions are tightly designed, the action moves constantly forward, and momentum isn't bogged down with complex technology trees, multiple buildings and resource gathering operations. Rather than strike out on its own with an approach more akin to its wide-open Age of Empires series of real-time strategy games, Ensemble has stuck to the Bungie formula in Halo Wars. Halo has always been about intense bursts of run-and-gun gameplay with pretty graphics and a robust and addictive multiplayer component, all wrapped up in a compelling story. And although Spartan warrior John-117 doesn't appear in the game, developer Ensemble Studios has otherwise closely followed Bungie's formula for success. For the first time, a non-Bungie development studio has tried its hand at expanding the series in the form of Halo Wars, a real-time strategy game set in the universe popularized by the enigmatic Master Chief.
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