Halo Wars Preview

We catch up with the long awaited Halo Wars to see how things look before its release!

When your goal is to turn a system selling franchise that prides itself on being one of the innovators of the first person shooter into a real time strategy title that infamously has a low success rate on home consoles, you’re setting yourself one hell of a task and it is one Ensemble Studios appear to be more than equipped to handle.

After all anyone who might be cautious of such a genre transition should be aware of Ensemble Studios back catalogue. Comprised almost entirely of the entire Age of Empire series, another franchise that some would say was an innovator to the RTS genre. Still, when asked to name a few RTS games developed for the home console that wouldn’t benefit from mouse and keyboard, we struggle to rattle off a generous list. But that may change, from what we’ve played, we’re more than pleased with how Halo Wars has turned out.

The missions we played took us as far as fearlessly winning back a base and then setting up camp before departing to destroy a detonator in the hands of the covenant. The missions were broken up with substantial cut scenes that showcase a great breadth of Halo history as well as impressive visuals and voice acting to top it all off. In-game visuals share some of the cut scenes technical beauties but our time with the game didn’t showcase anything that truly stood out to us. We’re hoping we see some more impressive environments and graphics.

The presentation has kept the console user in mind, you aren’t forced into working your way through menus and squinting through sidebars to keep track on what’s going, we got the impression Halo Wars want us to focus solely on the action which at times stops Halo Wars feeling like a fully fledged RTS title and more of an action game. On more than one occasion we led ourselves into battle without any real planning or real strategy but our two missions didn’t really stretch past a few battles and setting up base. That said, the more time I spent with Halo Wars, I sensed a deeper level of detail whilst setting up base and planning my attack, if the final product excels on this then I think the gameplay will entertain both those run and gun players as well as the hardcore RTS masterminds.