Halo Wars, Ensembles final project. Is it as good as it's been hyped up to be?

User Rating: 7 | Halo Wars X360
By StaticPenguin | Review Date:
Halo Wars lets you control all your favorite units from the Halo series from Spartans to Scarabs, along with some newer faces like the Cyclops and Locusts. You'll get to choose from 6 leaders, 3 human and 3 covenant, and each has a special ability like using the MAC cannon, or the arbiters rage to slaughter your enemy. Human leaders come with a special type of unit like ODST's or HAWX, whereas the covenant leaders are on the frontlines and use your resources for their special abilities. There's a large variety of units to choose but, you'll need to harvest enough resources before you can create a large force, and get the necessary upgrades though. There's a very small unit count, and not enough ways to select multiple units easily. You can select all units at once, all units of a certain type, all the units on the screen or all the units within a small radius. This can be somewhat of a hassle when you want to mix certain units together. There's no Covenant campaign and you can only play them in Skirmish mode. The Flood is unplayable even though you encounter them in the campaign. Halo Wars is the perfect Console RTS, but it's not for the hardcore RTS fans who grew up with games like Starcraft.
Don't let the amazing CG cut scenes fool you, one thing that you're probably going to notice about Halo Wars, it's ugly. The infantry units look like lumps of clay and the textures in the environments look rough. Vehicles and buildings are nicely detailed, but it doesn't make up for the explosions that look like an orgy of mega bloks. From afar, everything looks a lot better but you can only zoom out so far… However, the animations are top notch. Hunter's will jump around to avoid fire, Spartans will engage in hand to hand combat with Elites, air units will spread out and fly in formation and as a units takes damage, you'll see each individual person in that unit, fall.
If you can get past the rushes, Halo Wars' multiplayer may hold your attention for a long time. It supports up to 6 players via Live or System link. There's plenty of maps to choose from but, some maps only support a certain number of players. The max number of teams is two and is severely lacking of options to choose from. You can play a regular game, or you can play Deathmatch which speeds up the process of a normal game, that's all.
The Halo franchise is known for it's epic soundtracks and Halo Wars makes no exceptions. The music kicks up during large-scale battles, and the recognizable sound effects for the weapons, and units add to the action. Everything from orchestral soundtrack to the talkative marines screams "Halo" and the game fits perfectly into the Halo universe. Some of the syncing is off when you get video updates during campaign battles but, it's not enough to take away from the experience.
Halo Wars is the perfect starter RTS. If you want to get into them, play Halo Wars. It's a great way to get used to the RTS mechanics. Ensemble did an excellent job, yet, the game will more than likely appeal to the Halo fan base instead of the RTS fans. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game but, let's face the facts here, it's only as good as it lasts and probably won't last too long.

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