E3 Disclaimer: Kombo’s E3 previews are designed to inform you of what each game at E3 plays like, and what we think of what’s shown. These previews are not reviews, and we reserve final judgment of each game until it is finished and released. These previews offer an honest opinion of what a publisher chose to demo at E3. So, without further ado, read on.
What’s the Game About
Halo Wars is an RTS rooted in Bungie’s insanely popular Halo mythology and developed by Ensemble Studios, the talent behind the legendary Age of Empires franchise. Built from the ground up for the Xbox 360, the game features an intuitive control scheme and a strong focus on large-scale battles. Of course, there’s plenty of Halo fan service too, from references to events and entities only diehard fans (we’re talking people who bought the novels) would recognize, to the animations and abilities of the individual units. E3 2008 marks the first time the game has ever been playable.
What’s Hot
Neither Sean O’neill or I were particularly excited to play Halo Wars. We’re both moderate Halo fans, me more so than him, but everything we had seen of Halo Wars pointed towards it being a generic RTS experience covered in a coat of Halo fan service. What a difference several months and some actual hands-on time with a game will make on your impression. Both of us came out of our Microsoft appointment surprised by how much fun we had teaming up to take on a team of AI-controlled Covenant armies. The action came fast and loud, with Warthogs, Scorpions, squads of ODSTs and Spartans lighting it up with Ghosts, Banshees, Elites, and grunts.
After playing Tom Clancy’s EndWar, it’s hard to get excited about controller-based RTS controls, but to Ensemble’s credit, they’ve crafted a scheme that is clearly superior to the various clunky solutions currently available from EA and others. Heavy use of context-sensitivity ensures that a large number of scenarios can be accounted for with very few buttons. X and A handle most of the action, while the bumpers, triggers, and d-pad will help more advanced players bounce around the map. There are a number of ways to select as many or as few units as necessary, and target as many or as few enemies as you want. Mobilizing and positioning large forces is quick and easy. Its not quite as cinematic or immersive as EndWar’s voice commands, but the control scheme is definitely well done.
The game is generally well designed and balanced. Bases are compact and multi-purpose, with a central building and a finite number of surrounding ‘pods’ that can be used to build barracks, vehicle docks, resource miners, and energy cores. If you find yourself needing more pods, and you will, you have venture forth and fight for any of the many open bases on the maps. Its a cute system that keeps traditional resources in play, forces players to actually engage enemies, and makes bases – even multiple bases – easy to navigate. In battle, all of the units have different strengths and weaknesses, bolstered by specific abilities that players must manually engage at the appropriate time. If your infantry is ambushed by a Wraith and some ghosts, use the Spartan’s vehicle jack ability to even the odds. That little touch of micromanagement ensures that players are always actively engaged in every skirmish, not simply waiting for the computer to decide who brought the right guns to the fight.
What’s Not
The game almost feels too simple, too streamlined. The RTS genre is characterized by and beloved for the frenzied multi-tasking, the layers of micromanagement, and those make-or-break decisions that mean the difference between victory and defeat. The hardest of the hardcore RTS fans, the kind that love games like Company of Heroes and are looking forward to Starcraft II, might not get enough out of Halo Wars. Its kind of weak that only two, TWO, races have been announced thus far (The Flood have basically been confirmed, but not officially), the lowest number since Warcraft II well over a decade ago. The two races, unit-wise, were also pretty similar to each other, and Starcraft proved long ago that the best battles come from races that are equal but very different. If the Covenant are simply the UNSC with a different skin, Elite for Spartan, Scorpion for Wraith, Warthog for Banshee, then that will hurt the game’s long-term appeal. Halo fans, console-exclusive gamers and relative newcomers to the genre on the other hand, will probably appreciate the game’s straight-forward nature.
Outlook
Halo Wars surprised the hell out of us. A title we weren’t expecting much from, the sad little RTS banking on the Halo brand to sell, is now back square in the middle of our radar.
