Review: Halo Wars - or should that be Halo Bores?

Mike Bantick
Monday, 02 March 2009 14:01

Entertainment

I mentioned the commander powers, and these are more important in the multiplayer portion of the game, but for the record, these are your super weapons, such as aerial bombardments or healing powers that each commander has at his or her or its finger tips.

Many players will jump straight into the multiplayer Xbox LIVE offerings in Halo Wars, eschewing the single player campaign as nothing more than a little practice for the real event on line.  Perhaps they will only opt for a couple of skirmish practices, before getting online in matches of 1,2 or 3 on 3 games.   Halo 3 style ranking and 14 different maps are all part of the online experience.

Selecting either the Covenant or human UNSC commander (unfortunately the grotesque Flood are not a choice) players will jump into the action online in traditional multiplayer action, or a friend can help out another in a co-op romp through the campaign.

And the campaign is generally fun, albeit it a bit short.  The tasks are varied and the game never gets bogged down in protracted battles, the pacing is pretty much spot on.  There are always secondary objectives, and when achieved players can scout the maps for hidden Skulls and Black Box collectibles to unlock wacky events in future scenarios.

If anything the normal difficulty is a little easy, but then there is always Heroic and Legendary to conquer before you can rack your cue.

Halo Wars has been well thought out, and even though it has been hinted at, with the close of Ensemble Studios it doesn’t look like any downloadable content will be available to the game.  It will be a shame if this game does not get any further support, it is worthy and proves that there is a place for RTS on the console.

8 Spartans out of 10