Disappointing strategy game, one of the simplest games I've ever played, very little strategy involved.
The first major issue I have with Halo Wars is it's overly simplistic construction of bases. In games such as Command and Conquer or almost any other strategy game that's any good, base building at first is faced paced, expansive, and strategic. You find yourself asking; where should I concentrate my defenses, if I build defenses now I may not have enough power to support this structure, should I build a second base near the area where the resources are etc. In Halo Wars, you are only allows to build one structure at a time and you have a limit to how many structures you can have. Simply Boring. You can make the argument that "This allows you to focus on the fighting" but the fighting is boring and simplistic too. Dawn of War 2 was a good example of not focusing on base building, but they made the fighting much more complicated and interested.
I'm getting bored writing this review, the game is boring, the graphics arn't too great, the jazz music in the background sounds ridiculous, there's only 3 factions (most RTS games out now a day have 3-4 factions) the flood seem an easy answer to this but the lack of having the flood just shows how there was a lack of effort going into this game. There's no strategy beyond amassing large armies and flinging them at someone else's base, base building is boring and simplistic, multiplayer is a zerg fest, Co-Op campaign is done very poorly compared to other strategy games that have co-op campaigns; i.e. Dawn of War 2 and Red Alert 3. AI is boring to play against. The maps look very simple and don't have many interesting features. You can pretty much compare any aspect of this game to any other good strategy game (Command and Conquer, Red Alert, Dawn of War) and it will fall short in every aspect except for the cinematics.
If this game had not carried the Halo title it would have been blasted by reviews and forgotten 2 days after it came out.