Halo Wars Review

Halo Wars has a brilliant interface. Future console games will reap the benefits of its control scheme. But as a real-time strategy (RTS) game, it's merely adequate. The game has been so streamlined and simplified that it's entertaining enough to play for the short-term, but just doesn't have the longevity that other RTS games achieve through their very complexity. Halo Wars was fun while it lasted, but isn't a game RTS fans will be putting back into the Xbox 360 every week to explore alternate strategies and see how other players' plans have evolved.

The simplicity of Halo Wars is both its glory and its curse. It's easy to learn, easy to play, easy to master, and ultimately, easy to put down. Spending a couple of minutes to work through the two ultra-brief tutorials in Halo Wars won't teach you every nuance of the game and its elegant radial menus, but it's actually enough to give even the most newbilicious RTS virgin a fighting chance in a multiplayer match. There simply isn't a critically acclaimed RTS for which that holds true. That's because the RTS games that have stood the test of time are complex enough that they require patience, practice, and expertise to master.



As a genre, RTS games are good at alienating new players. Trying to jump into a StarCraft game as a novice is about as much fun as jumping into a Halo 3 match using only your tongue to operate the controller. It's humiliating. But anyone can hop into a game of Halo Wars. It's accessible.  It's really easy to play—with a press of the left bumper, you can select your entire army and hurl it at the enemy. Want to build a base? Select the pre-determined base location and start a base. That part's wonderful. But after only a few missions, the limitations of Halo Wars become apparent. A few missions after that those limitations feel like painful restraints.

It may be easy to build a massive army and fling it at the enemy, but it's very difficult to play a strong, tactical game. The inability to create army groups makes it difficult to mount even a two-pronged assault on an enemy position. Using the D-pad, the game will move to a base or even try to select coherent groups of troops, but the inability to create army groups means that no plan, let alone any unit selection, can survive contact with the enemy. With another control scheme or more complexity, a good strategist might send two carefully designed forces to attack an enemy base from different positions while a few lone units strike out to collect resource crates or man defensive towers. In Halo Wars, most players usually end up sending everything in a swarm to batter my enemy.

It's a blessing that Halo Wars simplifies unit abilities. Every (normal) unit has, at most, a regular attack and a special attack. For example, the Spartan (like Master Chief) can shoot at things, or hijack Covenant vehicles. The curse is that in the heat of combat, it's very difficult to select a single unit, select a target and activate a special ability. It's simple to order every unit to unleash its special attack on a Covenant “Wraith” tank. It's often more trouble than it's worth to order only a single group of marines to throw grenades at that tank. Again, the game is straightforward enough to pick up and play, but lacks the complexity that makes for really interesting tactics.



Aside from being a straightforward entrant in the RTS genre for a console, Halo Wars has all the charm and cache of the Halo universe. Taking place just after initial contact with the Covenant, but well before the “Halo Event” that defined the original game, the short single-player campaign has players guiding the UNSC (humanity's military) against the Covenant (the theocratic alliance of fanatical aliens at war with humanity). The game gets a lot of mileage out of the Halo name. Who doesn't love the fact that the tanks are “Scorpions” and the armored cars are “Warthogs?”

The differences between the UNSC and the Covenant (aside from the Covenant being bright pink) are more apparent in the bases and leaders than in the buildings. Both sides have a selection of vehicles, infantry, and air units with a rock-paper-scissors dynamic so transparent it sometimes feels like playing… well… rock-paper-scissors. The Covenant get massive shields for the bases, while the UNSC bases are stronger but feel more vulnerable. There are three leaders of each faction, each with its own special powers and special units. The UNSC commanders rely on the orbiting ship Spirit of Fire, while the Covenant leaders (the Arbiter, the Brute Chieftan and the Prophet of Regret) have their own powers drawn from the lore of the other Halo games. As much as the two sides have very different looking units, the infantry, vehicles, and air units play similarly, with only the super units like the Covenant's walking battle tank (the “Scarab”) seeming particularly different.

The single-player campaign is disappointingly short, and while it will probably take most people between five and six hours to complete, it's really only an extended tutorial for the multiplayer. The campaign relies heavily on giving players a set number of units to maneuver around before building a base and whomping the AI.  It only has replayability if you want to challenge the often-predictable AI on the hardest difficulty level (a battle against the controls rather than the strength of the AI) or search each of the levels for the collectibles that offer slight tweaks to the play (like Halo 3's skulls).



Because of the short and simple nature of the single-player game, Halo Wars relies on the multiplayer to give it longevity. Unfortunately, the very simplicity of the game undermines that. The simple selection of units, straightforward upgrades, and tightly constrained maps makes it easy to develop a preferred build order in multiplayer. It only takes a few matches to feel like you are your own AI, rather than someone dynamically responding to a battle. Simply follow that plan as quickly as humanly possible and very early either you'll win or lose in the first clash or so, making the rest of a multiplayer match a matter of politely playing those first moves to their logical conclusion.

The ability to play through the campaign cooperatively helps a lot, making it possible to approach missions with two forces (each person can manage their own army), and the multiplayer can handle matches with up to six people (although there are only ever two sides, making the big games three vs. three). But when you play the multiplayer (where you can finally rule as the Covenant), the Covenant is overwhelmingly overrepresented, and the prevalence of rushing tactics means the game is typically over almost immediately, even if it takes a few minutes to play out. That said, it's easy to see why so many people play the Covenant. That side's shields are reassuring, and they get suicide grunts who charge into combat, chattering, with giant methane tanks on their backs.

Halo Wars is clean, easy to learn, and very playable in both single- and multiplayer games. The streamlined and simplified game makes it accessible, the same way that lack of complexity denies the game longevity. Really, what the game desperately needs is a different, third playable side, like the Flood, along with a little more tactical flexibility.



Don't buy Halo Wars just because of the Halo name, and if you're a PC gamer longing to try a little couch-based RTS, give this one a miss. But if you're a die-hard console fan who longs to learn just what makes these RTS games interesting, Halo Wars is a great, completely painless way to get introduced to the genre while ripping apart Jackals and Hunters with the help of a few Spartans.

Fun Factor: Starts on a high that tapers off into a mild hangover.

Game Length: A weekend's worth of play, including the multiplayer.

Difficulty: Moderate (RTS newbs have to learn the genre, RTS fans will be stymied by the lack of control.)

On the Negative Side: Halo Wars' simplicity is its strength and greatest weakness

Bang for Your Buck: $60 feels pricey.