When Halo: Combat Evolved was in development it was originally a real-time strategy game for the Mac before Microsoft acquired Bungie Studios. The game (and eventually the series) became a first-person shooter but the original idea had remained dormant, until now. A more than competent developer has taken the Halo reigns into new territory, and a more than competent addition to the Halo series has emerged.
The Halo Wars story follows Captain Cutter as he navigates his ship; the Spirit Of Fire and his crew to stop The Covenant in their tracks. Progress on the whole is going well until a then unknown alien life form (which in Halo: Combat Evolved is named as the Flood) is discovered on a planet and complicates matters. It takes a few missions for the story to gain any substance but it's still entertaining to watch all the way through with the use of high quality computer-generated cut scenes which can be paused and skipped at any time. Introductory videos to every mission cover for loading screens during the campaign for a fluent transition from cut scene to game play. Missions become very intense as the game progresses and is fun to play. The game offers incentive to replay missions with collectable skulls, black boxes and by playing on harder difficulties, but even so the campaign ends much too soon.
The game's font and graphical style in menus are quite similar to Halo 3 in particular. You will hear familiar sound effects from guns, vehicles, enemies, and even the Spartan's shield as it recovers. Orchestral music is familiar, but new. Music ramps up and concludes appropriately during battles with excellent effect, even in multiplayer. Playing as The Covenant in online and Skirmish modes changes the scenery a little after being limited to the UNSC throughout the campaign. Visually everything has an original design, including your units, buildings and even the radial menus.
Controls for this game will most likely be completely new to players. The face buttons control unit selection and commands, and the left control stick and A to navigate easy to use radial menus for building, upgrading as well as training more units. Triggers and bumpers offer more specific controls for selecting units, but at times you won't have enough precise control when dealing with groups in multiple areas. Controls take a little while to get fluent with, but an introduction by the way of two tutorials and the first few levels which are essentially easy squash battles help the player settle in. You could say it's in fact hard to learn, and easy to master.
The amount of units you may have is always limited a certain amount (usually 30), with cap raising offered as you gain more resources and raise your technology level. This may be to cover for the limits of the console and controller but in turn provides a more focused type of game play. You can't just build anything anywhere; bases must be built on predetermined locations, with your other structures surrounding it. You have to return to your base every time you want build units, and while there are shortcuts to jump to vital areas of the map including your bases, this still wastes time when you have other things to manage.
Just about every piece of information during game play is given to you verbally. Among this, "All Units" is spoken to you every time you select your entire force, and it becomes most annoying when you're constantly re-selecting all of your units to go to a location. You can't have every unit permanently selected as well because new units that were created since your last selection aren't included, and unfortunately there's no option to remove these audio notes or change messages to text.
Halo Wars features online campaign co-op, as well as ranked and player matches for up to 6 players for 3v3 action. The game also offer's matchmaking exclusively for parties, so that clans won't be mixed with random players. Just like Halo 3, matchmaking is efficient, and you will generally wait no longer than 20 seconds before finding another player in a 1v1 battle, and a little longer for a 3v3 battle. If your opponent leaves your game you will rightfully get the win, and experience is still gained for losing a match without leaving so either way your time is not wasted.
Limited build options may be underwhelming for some, but this is currently the best way to do an RTS on a console, and for those new to the genre it's easy to jump in to. If you're fresh off the PC real-time strategy boat your mileage may vary. Otherwise, this is a big step for real time strategy games on consoles as well as the Halo franchise.