Writing Throwback: Halo Wars Preview

I was going through some old documents, and I came across my first written text about video games. It is a preview of Halo Wars on the Xbox 360 which I played at an event being held by Xbox Australia at their Sydney office.

I had the opportunity to play Halo Wars for three hours, and was asked for feedback that Xbox Australia recorded with intentions of using it for promotional material. I have never seen that footage used anywhere, so maybe that "feedback" was intended to be "who has the best soundbite?" Seems no-one did. On to the preview.

Halo Wars Preview

Thursday, February 12 2009

As a console gamer, I never had a chance to play the Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre before and was a bit apprehensive on how Halo Wars would work on a console. This style of gameplay is traditionally only on the PC, so how would it work? Well, very well.

Traditional PC gamers will have to play it for themselves, with most probably not liking this chopped down version of that type of gameplay. For console gamers, this would be an opportunity to dip your toe into the style of gameplay we never really get to sample. Or get done well.

As for the game itself Ensemble Studios have done a great job with the character actions and personalities. They have made it tremendously easy to play on a controller, the thing I was most dreading, and made it with surprisingly engaging gameplay.

The controls are primarily the A and X buttons with each character set possessing a secondary ability activated with the Y button. The campaign features fifteen levels, which I got to play from one to four on heroic difficulty. The first three levels I found were quite easy to complete, but hit a major hurdle on mission four. After only having a short time to sample Halo Wars, it felt like the Artifical Intelligence was actively learning my play style, of which there is none, and was countering it. I acknowledge that this is most likely not the case, but to still get that feeling requires the game to have had a lot of polish.

A few disappointments to note were the fact that the Spartans were not controllable by mission four, but they are playable in later levels. Also, the Achievement Points seemed to be regularly awarded for completing objectives meaning those who play for achievements can unlock a lot quickly, but overall they don't seem to extend the campaigns longevity. That could lead to players playing the single player campaign once and never touching it again, which I feel will be the case.

The group played a few quick multiplayer matches in the 1v1 and 3v3 game modes, with a 2v2 mode being available as well. There are a lot of playable characters for both the UNSC and Covenant, with hints of the Flood making an appearance in the campaign but no confirmation for multiplayer. The maps looked small, but it never felt constricted when playing. A neat gameplay element for multiplayer is the ability to pool resources amongst teammates, which can help players spawned near the enemy which tends to lead to long drawn out skirmishes that limit resource gathering.

Ensemble Studios have created a very slick game designed from the ground up only for the Xbox 360. With my genre of choice primarily being First Person Shooters on both PC and console, I was moved out of my comfort zone. But they did it; they made my transition extremely easy and from what I played made it worthwhile. When I asked if Microsoft was aiming to switch PC players with Halo Wars, I was given a firm "No."

"We are showing players like you what we can create and what a console can do, and to build a variation on the Halo franchise."

The Limited Collectors Edition of Halo Wars will launch with the Mythic Map Pack, but there is no release date for this Downloadable Content for everyone else. When questioned about future DLC packs and the longevity of the game I was told "more DLC will be available soon and expect Halo Wars to be around for years."