Overall I give this game a solid 4 stars its no First person Shooter but to be able to play as the Covenant more than makes up for that. Its Not a pc RTS but on a console you don’t need all those bells and whistles to worry about. This game is very addictive with its in depth game features and prequel storyline that fills you in on a ton of halo history. Ensemble studios did a great job of building a RTS for a console. You have pre determined base locations and base slots that can be upgraded to allow for more building basically a cookie cutter base but on a console you don’t have the buttons to micro manage a huge base so this works out very well. The controls are a blast to work with simply press the Left trigger and you select All of your units you have. The right trigger will select only the units on your screen in front of you. Tap A for a single unit or hold for a paint brush effect to get as many men as you need. Or double tap A and select all units of that type. I loved that they included Skulls to find (each mission has a Skull hidden in it) along with Black boxes that unlock more story timeline segments and the Xbox Achievements means you will play this game again and again one achievement is to have played Halo wars for 24hrs with breaks of course (No need to burn the system up) so go out there at win one for the UNSC or Take over everything with the Covenant just watch out for the Flood.Read full review
This in my opinion was not the greatest game ever, but it is one of my favorite. Why is it my favorite you ask? Well, the controls are great, the simplicity of the gameplay is extremely entertaining and the online multiplayer is highly addiciting (although not as addiciting as COD of Halo 3). It is not the perfect game considering that there are some graphical issues, the covenant seem a wee bit overpowered and that the single player campaign could've been longer. SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN You are... not the master chief. You a multitude of characters. a gruff sergeant, a sassy scientist, the ol veteran and A HELL LOAD OF OTHER UNITS. The game takes place before the first halo where you are at the planet Harvest. It takes you 5 years to retake it (as said in the narrative). Yup! So you go to fight the covenant, flood and sentinals in an all out war between good against evil. Dont mind my description because I don't want to spoil anything. Short but Sweet is the proper term to call this campaign. The CGI cutscenes vividly show the events that happen between the missions. Now although you only get 15 missions with about 5-8 hours of playtime alltogether, there is a lot of variety between the missions. Plus, ONLINE AND SYSTEM LINK COOP. High replay value for the campaign. MULTIPLAYER Fret no more! Help is on the way! That's the thought that will be racing through your headset as your fight your 3v3 matches. The multiplayer is highly addictive and one of the strong points of the game. Lots of maps to choose from each being not entirely the same. Field environments change the course of the gameplay and chatting with your friends about strategy over xbox live gets you in the hype! Pooling resources and sending support units really get you into the game. AWESOME MULTIPLAYER!!! SOUND Great! DUH. This game's music is probably one of the best in the game biz. It really recapture the HALO feel.AWESOME. GRAPHICS A few graphical issues there and there. The units don't have much detail to them and they just look pretty plain. The CGI cutscenes on the other hand are amazing! Why don't they just make a CGI Halo movie? Graphics are still pretty damn good. STATEMENT Awesome game all and all. Not perfect, but its just right. Halo game within the rts or rts within the halo universe. My opinion is that its a Halo game within the rts because the controls and gameplay is simple just like the first halo and the feel is more HALOY. Definatly aimed toward a new audience for rts and halo fans. If your a hardcore rts fan, it might be too easy for you. but still give it a go. Youll probably like it! score-8.5 graphics-8.0 sound-9.3 controls/gameplay-9.3 multiplayer-9.8 chicken?-1000000000000000Read full review
I bought this game on ebay for one great deal, I do not play games all the time, so a gaming chance is rare for me. When I did have time I would play Halo Wars to the best of my ability, and let me tell you it is one great game. I would rather play Command and conquer because halo wars does limit your building space, so it gets frustrating, but not only will it limit your building space, it will limit your enemies space as well. I would claim it to be a fair game, but other wise the campaign will not get you much fun, it was easy to beat, and easy to beat on the hardest difficulty. I would say it is easy on the xbox 360 to control, not as difficult as I though if it were to be compared to PC, so I would recommend this to someone who is wanting some action!
The biggest disappointment about this game is its length. 15 years ago Blizzard came up with Warcraft. There were 2 campaigns - Humans and Orcs. 10 years ago - Starcraft, 3 campaigns. 5 years ago - Warcraft 3 with 4 campaigns. This year 2009 Microsoft released Halo Wars with whooping 1 (one) campaign of about a dozen missions! What's up with that?! You create unfinished, unpolished, tiny game, throw it at the wall and expect people to shell out $60 for it because it is related to legendary franchise?! I paid $25 at a company store, and still feel like I overpaid. Now to gory details Pros: + Awesome cinematics. + Great graphics. But come on, it is 2009, you expect great graphics of an RTS. + Good controls. Work pretty well for a console. I was kinda missing ability to select all units of a given type, but it's OK. + You don't need to hunt for resources that quickly deplete. (do you see anything above that says $60?) Cons: - Lack of thought-through design you see in Blizzard games. Forget the BS about paper, rock, scissors, most of the units there remain unused. You only build a couple of most efficient unit types unless you want to drag the game forever. - You are only able to build structures in the waffle, provided by the base. Seems like implementation-driven design, MS found it easier to do so. Forget about surrounding your base with custom ring of fortifications. - There is no dynamics of the unit types you can build. You can build them all from early levels up, but, I reiterate, you simply don't care. - super-short. Half length of the shortest RTS I've ever played.Read full review
Let me begin by saying that Halo Wars is an excellent game. It appeals to many gamers for three reasons: it's an RTS, has controls that will work on the 360, and the Halo characters and universe. Another plus is the developer. Ensemble Studios, who developed excellent games such as Age of Empires/Mythology and other excellent RTS games know what they are doing with a game like this. While it is isn't perfect, its innovation and depth of gameplay forces me to give this a 5/5! So let's dive into the review! Story While Master Chief doesn't appear this time around, you needn't worry, the story is still deep without him. The story is set 20 years before the first Halo, as most of you already know, and follows the exploits of a ship called the Spirit of Fire. They discover that the Covenant have discovered a super device (which I can't name, i hate spoilers!) which could destroy all humankind. So as good old marines do they lock and load! While it is quite a good story line, some of the characters get annoying. The women analyst of the Covenant seems a little too persuasive and unbelievable, but other than that you got a rock-solid story here. Gameplay As far as gameplay goes, Bungie and Ensemble went to the basics of core gameplay design. Their is only one supply collection resource you must manage, reactors that allows you to upgrade buildings, and a counter allowing only a certain number of units on the battlefield. It does seem simplistic, but Bungie adds an interesting twist. You can't build a building anywhere like other RTS games, you must build your barracks, supply gathering buildings, research, etc. as a part of your main base. Its an interesting twist which forces a player to choose wisely to make certain buildings. While you can have more than one base, this management system is an excellent twist and adds a lot of depth to the gameplay. I do have a couple of minor gripes. The camera zoom is broken. I found the max zoom out was still not enough, and it made unit management difficult. Thankfully, the controls pull that out of the water, as I can auto-select all units with the press of a button. Another gripe is the difficulty. THIS GAME IS HARD! Period. It will take careful planning and resource management if you want to be successful in Skirmish or Online. Campaign is different: it doesn't focus as much on base building but more on objectives, but time limits and overwhelming forces will still provide plenty of challenge in the campaign. Online While I haven't played too much of Halo Wars online due to my limited schedule, it works quite well. The online co-op feature in the campaign is a definite plus, and it makes objectives a bit easier. A tip of advice: start on Easy or Normal if you're daring. Without a friend, heroic and Legendary are IMPOSSIBLE! And the online modes and party system is easy to use, but they are a bit time consuming. While Halo Wars isn't perfect, the innovation it bring to the console is a great thing to see! Starcraft for 360 FTW! 5/5Read full review
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