Halo Wars: The Battle of Console RTS

RATING: 7 / 10
PLATFORM: Xbox360
GENRE: RTS
PURCHASE RECOMMENDATION: Rent

So lets face reality here this game was really an experiment to see if a RTS game would be successful on the console. I have to tip my hat to Ensemble cause they did really almost all they could in designing a control scheme that would work. The game plays well and you can somewhat easily control your units on the map. You can basically select units in three ways, select all units, select all units on the screen (local units), and select highlighted units. The highlighted units is really the only inventive selecting as it decently recreates the drag and select of a mouse. Unfortunately there is no efficient way to select a unit by type which can be very frustrating. Not being able to select a unit by type units greatly hinders special abilities. It is obvious that abilities like grenades, ram and hijack not working well together. The biggest issue I has with the game was the ability to not queue units when I had no cash. If I want to build ten tanks I could not just queue ten tanks and as the money come in they would be built. Instead I would often have to bounce back and fourth between my troops and bases every time I got just a little extra cash so that I could constantly be producing more units. RTS games are about be efficient in your strategy and this mechanic breaks that.

I had hope that Halo Wars would save itself by having a really strong story tide in to the missions. The story is good but not great in Halo Wars, it is epic but yet confusing in all the wrong ways. I expected a lot more coolness from the story I mean after all this is the time when Spartans were abundant and kicking.....well you get the idea. All together the units didn't have that coolness factor and the level were mostly quickly go save these people with a time limit before you all die. Oh well it was a good shot and because of that I recommend people at least rent this game to give it a go.