Halo Wars Demo: First Impressions
The sound of nervous fans echoed the internet when Age of Empires veterans Ensemble Studios was announced to be making the next Halo game instead of Bungie, who’d worked on the series. Even more fear arose when Halo Wars was announced – a console-only real-time strategy game.
Real-time strategy games have often failed on consoles while their PC brethren have excelled. Some notable RTS games include the Command & Conquer series, the Warcraft series, Starcraft, Age of Empires and more. What happens when you plug the Halo universe into an RTS? Nothing bad, believe it or not. The recently released demo of the XBOX 360-exclusive Halo Wars builds upon the original Halo story and gameplay to a satisfying extent.
From the opening menus, which look remarkably similar to Bungie’s Halo 3, to the intricate armor of the CGI arbiter during cut-scenes, you begin to fall comfortably back into what you know as Halo. The levels maintain the color scheme and environments from the original games – concrete, plant-life, and bright purple, blue and green explosions. The Halo world is continued even through the game’s sound, which keeps the elites’ voices on par with the series as well as the grunts’ screams. Everything just sounds right, minus the opening chants fans have grown accustom to from the other games.
The story takes place before the original series, roughly 20 years prior, and leads up to the events of the first game. The player is put in control a few years after the attack on Harvest (which is referenced in the main series and explored in the books). You begin with only a Warthog and are ordered to find four units of Marines who are caught in heavy fire. This begins the first of two missions available with the demo. The second mission has you destroy a Covenant base. Also available is one Skirmish map for play against an AI enemy.
The controls are simple and logical for a console, though the scrolling felt a bit off at first (this can be changed to your liking). After playing through the tutorial, the controls came as second nature: highlighting units with A, attacking an enemy or choosing a destination for the unites with X, and using special attacks with Y (soldiers throw grenades, warthogs run over foot soldiers or ram vehicles/structures). RB selects local units while LB selects all of your units on the map. The D-Pad is used to jump between groups of units and your base. Up on the D-Pad opens a menu with an area of effect healing special (reminiscent of Halo 3’s), though it cost a decent amount of money to use.
Building a base is simplified, as well. By selecting a structure with A, a circle pops up to cover most of the screen. Upgrades or units can be built or trained by selecting within the circle.
Splattering grunts, blowing up elites and destroying ghosts remains fun in Halo Wars, though the small physical scale of the men, Covenant and vehicles can become frustrating. Part of the fun of the Halo series was being able to see things up close and get a sense of emotion from both the human soldiers and the Covenant. It’s harder to see that outside of the cinematic.
Otherwise, the demo plays pretty well, and I found myself completely involved in the gameplay, though much of that was because of the Halo universe. The control scheme itself is nothing special, but the fact that the controls do not take away from the gameplay on a console is a plus in itself. Halo Wars has promise, and hopefully it will have a long campaign with great multiplayer play.
4 Notes/ Hide
- theminibossdiaries posted this