Mike Bantick
Monday, 02 March 2009 15:01
Entertainment
Page 2 of 3
As previously mentioned, the cut-scenes look exquisite, without the cheese levels of Command & Conquer style FMV. Tthey tell an early Halo tale around the crew members of ‘The Spirit of Fire’, and their encounter with the Covenant at the world of Harvest and beyond.
The single player campaign takes things easy on the game-pad holding player, there are several options for selecting troops, with the most common being the bumper buttons selecting local forces (those visible on screen) and all forces. One thing that does get in the way, is the friendly directional arrow which appears to guide you to the next objective. This is a nice feature, but all too often, given it is the same colour as the selection crosshairs, I was trying to use the arrow to select troops. Doh!
The campaign scenarios prod the player for the most part down corridors of action. This makes the game more of an adventure style than a strategic command of sweeping forces, perfect for a console based game where quickly clicking on the mini-map to navigate the battlefield is impossible.
Base building borrows a lot from games such as Battle For Middle Earth – which also appeared in console format – in that only specific map locations can house a base, and then each base is built on a template design. Within the template players are free to choose buildings such as barracks, power reactors, vehicle depots and so on.
Selecting building options is done with a button push followed by a second button on a wheeled selection screen. Building units or selecting upgrades can be queued, the system is quick and easy to use, quite simply it works well with a game pad.
Coordinating attacks does not work so well, many of the units in the game have a secondary special ability or attack; this is initiated with a punch of the ‘Y’ button rather than the ubiquitous ‘X’.
Because more often than not, you will have a selection of mixed troops, infantry, various vehicles, flyers and so forth, getting a particular special function to work can be hit and miss.
For example, sometimes you simply want to use the Scorpion tanks devastating blast against an enemy building, and press ‘Y’ accordingly, but in the process all of your selected Warthogs go barrelling in using their ram attack, an attack that works well against enemy infantry, not so against a structure.
Still learning to prepare an attack, coordinate using the shortcut D-pad commands, or softening up the enemy with commander powers is part of the strategy in playing the game – it’s just a different approach to normal PC based strategy games.
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