Halo Wars: A new direction?

After the release of Halo 3 Bungie had already set their sights on releasing a lot of downloadable content for the games. Map packs such as the Heroic and Legendary Map pack were being released giving players new features in forge mode and new maps to mess around on and a teaser trailer for a new expansion, entitled Recon, was on it's way. But before recon there came Halo wars.

The game took the Halo franchise in a new direction. Instead of being the first person shooter that Halo was, it turned it into an RTS ( Real Time Strategy ). The game itself was not a bad game and for a genre which Halo probably wouldn't have been thought of as, it did a good job in creating a game which was accessible and also fun at the same time.

The game used the classic top down view of many RTS games and featured a variety of units, vehicles and aircraft which could be created and upgraded by both The Covenant and Human players. The player usually selects a "leader" to play as from either the Covenant or Human forces. This leader is able to call in unique powers or units for themselves. The only difference being that Human Leaders remain off the battlefield and rely on their unique units and powers to assist them in battle, such as ODST soldiers and Carpet Bombs. Covenant leaders are deployed onto the battlefield and use powers such as Cleansing beam, a giant space laser, to clear the way for their forces. Covenant leaders are also able to be directly controlled by players.

Bases for resource gathering, power supply, unit production and research

are built on set places on maps in both story and skirmish (multiplayer) mode. This limits the amount of bases which one player can hold at a time while also providing fair competition for their opponent, although usually one base is more than enough to win a game on anything up to Heroic difficulty.

The game used a basic control system which many hard core RTS fans of games like Starcraft 2 and Command & Conquer would call stupid and pointless but it got the job done. The developers, Ensemble Studios, knew that most Halo Fans would probably have not ventured out of the FPS genre much. Creating a control scheme which was simple and functional for a simple game was the logical choice, and it worked too. After selecting units its just a case of pressing the X button on where you want them to go or what you want them to attack, with the Y button being used for a special attack such as grenades or missile barrages.

The story of the game was quite exceptional. Set twenty years before the first Halo, just after the first contact with the Covenant. It follows the UNSC ship "Spirit of Fire" with Sergeant John Forge, Professor Ellen Anders, and Captain James Cutter as they follow the Covenant to an ancient forerunner world which could hold a tipping point in the war, tipping the scales hugely in the covenants favour. Story mode plays like a series of skirmish games with objectives only slightly differing from "take out this base in x.xx amount of time". While this sounds a little tedious it is very fun once the game starts giving you the big guns like Grizzly tanks or Vulture Gunships. The game features beautifully rendered cut-scenes too, ones which I would say are the most beautiful in all the Halo games, with great action and choreography they really bring to life action outside the game play, but its hard for me to describe, i'll just show you.

Halo wars was a beautiful game and probably number two on my favourite games from the series. Its just a shame that Ensemble studios were forced to go bankrupt after bad decisions during production as it cost more to produce the game than they were making from sales. While Halo Wars was the only game in the series which didn't adhere to FPS house style it showed people that Halo need not be confined to a first person perspective and provide great detail on the lore of the Halo universe.