Halo Wars Demo In-Depth Impressions
by Sarkis Daglian - February 4, 2009
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If the demo is any indication of what we can expect from the full game of Halo Wars, Ensemble Studios has produced the textbook on what a console RTS should look and play like. Any title that carries the banner of the Halo franchise comes under intense scrutiny from all of us for being the flagship of the Xbox 360 brand. Combine the brand name with its first branch into a genre beyond FPS and my skeptic meter on the Halo War’s quality was in major question. I am not an RTS fan as a genre and even less so on the console because I still believe quality RTS gameplay requires a keyboard and mouse. This to me is what makes my utter enjoyment of the Halo Wars demo so far out of left field. Halo Wars is simple enough for pick up and play by most anyone with accessible design choices such as fixed base building and yet hardcore RTS players should be satisfied by its depth and game speed. The demo allows you to play a tutorial, a few small morsels of the campaign, and a skirmish against the CPU.
The tutorial itself is very basic where you learn to use the commands as you guide your platoon of warthogs and soldiers through an over taken UNSC base camp in an effort to retake it from the Covenant. You will be using A to select, X to move/attack, and left bumper to select your entirely army often. You learn a few basic strategies like infantry can cross Covenant barriers and power down such small structures using their special Y attack with lobs grenades. The special attack on the warthog isn’t nearly as impressive as it’s only a ram. Once you retake the camp the demo moves on to a design decision that I think really makes Halo Wars so fun, accessible, and actually playable on the consoles.
Halo Wars bases are built on set plots and each base has a fixed number of 6 plots to build on. As UNSC, you can build supply depots (aka farms), generators which supply power to your forces, barracks, and a vehicle depot to build scorpions. This solves the big free build problem I believe many RTS and especially console RTS games face. It’s bad enough on the PC to have to choose various plots based on a given area, but on a console where the controller is inherently not as precise as a mouse and keyboard (sorry BFME II) it’s a major pain to actually build a base and get going.
The second part of the demo is the small piece of campaign you are able to play. First of all, the cinematics the game dishes out in cut scenes is movie worthy. I found myself thinking if they made a Halo movie and it looked like this, I would just watch this. The sheer scope when you are looking down onto the planet surface below, the level of detail in the CG on the UNSC marines and the elites in the cut scene as they investigate the relic is unbelievable. The story feels in line with the Halo universe and doesn’t go off into left field.
The campaign and skirmish modes make the style of play needed to be successful in Halo Wars obvious. It’s about speedy expansion and offense. Each base feels like an in between of an outpost and the traditional full out castle from other RTS games. So ramping up resources early, followed by some harassing infantry and Spartans, into expansion is a strategy I used. If you do not expand early, around mid game you will start to see your resources run out. I ran into this before I realized the Sidewinder-esque map I was on had 3 more plots on it than I originally thought it had. Once I expanded to a second base I was able to get enough resources to start pumping out scorpions and heavier troops. The end game in Halo Wars is interesting and it might be something that really upsets RTS purists who are used to destroying each building one by one. Bases can be taken down from the inside out. When you take down the main center of a base all the connected structures go down. It’s pretty near to see on screen but I can see a scenario where victories are stolen by taking down a center.
Overall Halo Wars shaped up better than I ever thought it would. It’s simplistic RTS gameplay is perfect for the Xbox 360. Ensemble who know a thing or two about the genre displayed their expertise at adapting the traditionally PC favored genre to the console. I honestly believe Halo Wars gets the console RTS done right for the first time. The combination of Halo Universe, easy game play, great visuals while actually on the field and not just the cut scenes, and story are really shaping this game up to be a generational classic.
