Halo Wars is a
Halo game, but it's not. You're not
Master Chief and it's not a first
person shooter. Instead, Halo Wars
is a real-time strategy game that
puts you in control of a whole human
army. You're an overseer, not an
enforcer. And while it's not as good
as a Halo 4 would be or a Halo set
in a different time would be, it's
good and there are lots of reasons
why it's good.
RTS games tend to
be a lot of work. There's a ton to
control, a ton to do, and sometimes
what can seem like an impossible
amount of things to manage. Not Halo
Wars. It's been stripped down to
make it easier for new RTS players.
You don't have to tell your soldiers
to get water, you don't have to tell
the base to stock toilet paper. You
decide what gets built at the base,
you train your army using your
supplies and you tell the vehicles
and infantry who to attack. It's
really that easy. The best thing
about Halo Wars is the ease of play.
The first thing
you're going to do when you start
your game is you're going to build
your base. You decide where to put
the barracks for your soldiers and
how they get trained there. You
decide where to put the garage for
the vehicles and what gets built in
the garage and you also decide where
to build the loading docks for
supplies and where to build the
power generators for your energy.
You have an initial amount of
supplies and energy to spend
building the core parts of your base
and then from there it's a managing
system with supplies and energy to
how quick you can spit out infantry
and vehicles. It's a very basic
strategy system with three or four
upgrades to each category but the
simplicity is what makes this an
enduring game.
As for the battle
system in the game. You can control
a number of vehicles and infantry
groups at once or you can control
them individually. You tell them
where to go, where to defend, and
you tell them where to attack. Very
basic battle system; but again-
that's not a bad thing. It keeps the
action moving at the steady pace
that everybody loves about the Halo
games and because it's a console
strategy game it makes sense- there
aren't as many buttons on a
controller as there is on a
keyboard. Why complicate things?
The online play
of Halo Wars makes this game's
lifespan longer for average and
advanced players. It's always fun to
go head to head against someone in
Skirmish play or to jump into a
full-blown battle. And the campaign
mode of the game gets you hooked up
with a cool new main character-
Sergeant John Forge. The dude is a
badass.
Halo
Wars isn't going to score major
points for fans of the actual game
because it's not the actual game.
But it's an interesting development
that's going to lead to several
other out of genre Halo games in the
future. Overall it's a game that's
fun and a game that works.
|