Buy Halo Wars. Srsly you guys.
The demo for Halo Wars released at midnight tonight, and you need to download it. “But Justin,” you say. “You’ve told me to hate Halo, and I’ve slavishly obeyed you as I always do.” Well, first of all, I never said to hate it. They do a decent job with the games, they just aren’t exceptional for any reason. Also, the fanbase is divided about 50/50 between frat boy douches and 9-year-old kids. Thankfully, no one seems to have gotten the memo about that, so the series continues to not be targeted at its fanbase, which is a good thing, unlike so many games before it (have you looked at the tracklist for a DDR game recently? Fall Out Boy? Kelly Clarkson? Someone at Konami must be trying to impress a girl).
So, Halo Wars. This is the first game in the series to not be produced by Bungie, instead being ably handled by the great Ensemble Studios. This actually will be Ensemble’s last game, and apparently, they’ve decided to go out with a fucking bang. I had assumed this game would just be an RTS set in the Halo universe, and honestly, I was pretty excited about that, if only because the Halo universe, plain as it is, really does create a good atmosphere for an RTS (better than it does for an FPS). But holy shit, this game really goes above and beyond its genre to create a genuinely transcendant blend of RTS control and strategy, and FPS action and excitement. There is a weight to every battle that actually makes it feel like you’re playing Halo from a top-down view, and are controlling a group of people rather than just 1. The first mission was incredibly fun, focusing on bringing a small group of units through a weaving battlefield, expanding as you find more units and band together. As exciting as the first mission in the demo was, I kind of dreaded the second, because it focused more on base-building, and while I enjoy that in most RTSs, I was afraid it wouldn’t be as fun as the first mission and would, therefore, cause a meteoric fall from my huge high the first mission resulted in. Thank god that wasn’t the case, because I was out of Zoloft. The base building proved to actually be just as fun and exciting as the combat. This mission also had the first enemy base I encountered, which means I got to be in their base, killin’ all their dudes. This proved incredibly fun, as the developers found a way to actually get me to use the secondary attacks available to me. In most RTSs, I don’t ever feel the need to click a bunch of individual units and scroll through a bunch of menus to use some shitty special ability that winds up not being worth the time I spent trying to figure it out. In Halo Wars, you just have to press the Y button. The best part is, the special abilities for every unit in the demo are unlimited and useful, but not game-breaking. For example, the marines have grenades, which are useful against squads of enemies and especially against buildings, while the Warthogs have a ramming ability that wrecks individual infantry units’ shit up. This adds an entirely new strategic point to consider, and, as such, makes the game far more varied and fun.
The overall control scheme of the game is great, too. I could list the entire control scheme in this one paragraph, but I won’t because I’m lazy, and because you should be able to figure it out pretty quickly once you start the demo that’d you’d better be downloading. Primarily based around 4 buttons, it manages to avoid the problem that all other console-based RTSs have had: namely, that they are impossible to control without a degree in RTS Engineering. There’s only one school in the world that gives a course in that. It’s run out of my house, and even I admit it’s a scam.
It’s a demo, so I really don’t have a whole lot left to say about it. Just go download the damn thing. Believe me, it’s worth your time. It’s going to be fucking amazing.
