Halo Wars Review–Marching On To Surprisingly Fun Battle
I may have found something really interesting this time around–a Halo game that isn’t just more motion sickness-inducing run-and-gun action. Brand new out of the pack is the Xbox 360’s newest colossal cash grab, Halo Wars.
On the off chance that you’ve been in a coma for the last ten years and need a quick crash course, here’s the skinny. There was this MONSTER franchise that came out of Microsoft. It was like their Doom. Or maybe their Final Fantasy, if Final Fantasy were a first person shooter. It was called Halo, and there were three of them, all with that same first person shooter engine. Now, apparently, Microsoft is beginning to take its cues from Ben Franklin, convinced that shooter games are like fish AND houseguests–after three installments, they start to stink. Thus, they had to go in a different direction, and they looked to the real-time strategy game for their inspiration.
Thus was Halo Wars born. And the result was actually better than much of its predecessors, even though I’m probably just a bit biased against first person shooters.
Basically, playing in story mode, you’ll be sent along with a contingent of UNSC troops on board the UNSC Spirit of Fire, to investigate Covenant activity on planet Harvest. This is all, parenthetically, set about twenty years before Halo. Anyway, after the UNSC, as led by Sergeant Forge, hits dirtside on Harvest, they find the Covenant is actively engaged in excavating a “holy relic” which is actually a Forerunner facility that’s really a map to another star system. The star system the Forerunners were trying to point out is Arcadia, home to a small human colony. The Spirit of Fire immediately heads for Arcadia, only to find the Covenant is ahead of them and ravaging the planet, which is itself the key to the single most destructive force unearthed in the galaxy. I won’t spoiler on just what it is because it is actually pretty mindblowing.
Indeed, Halo Wars is mindblowing on a whole lot of levels. Graphically it’s an absolute triumph–this thing looks so sharp and clear that calling it “realistic” is almost an insult. The musical score, meanwhile, sounds as symphonic as it ever did. And normally about this point I’d start complaining about the gameplay, or how I had to sit through a raftload of cut scenes before I even got to the game–well no sir, not this time. This time I got action within a few minutes and I got it pretty well at that. Even the tutorial wasn’t tough to sit through, and that’s something of an achievement in and of itself. I can’t even complain about the gameplay, because there was just something so invigorating about having a quarter-dozen Warthogs and a collection of various Marine troops under your command to just send in a thoroughly crushing fashion onto any Covenant position you can find.
It’s fun to keep an eye on your resources, and engineer fresh bases as you need them, complete with automated turret defenses. Every step feels like a victory in a game like this, as you go marching into battle in Covenant-occupied territory, both taking and holding territory. It’s only your wits that keep you alive in a game like this, not your trigger finger, and that’s an interesting departure from the ordinary, one that I’m all too happy to embrace.
Halo Wars should prove to be plenty of fun for anyone else who takes a run at it.
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