The monumental success of Microsoft's "Halo" franchise is arguably the single reason why the Xbox survived its first incarnation during the last-generation of console wars and the primary reason why Microsoft was able firmly entrench itself with the Xbox 360.
Simply, "Halo" is a system seller.
But re-treading old ground with first-person shooters based in the "Halo" universe will wear down the franchise's appeal over time. Despite the fun of playing Master Chief over and over again, without some new spin it's just the same old thing. Ensemble Studios, creators of the blockbuster "Age of Empires" franchise treads new ground by taking the "Halo" franchise away from the first-person perspective and gives players a bird's eye view of the action through a real-time strategy game.
Set years before the events which starred Master Chief, "Halo Wars" chronicles the early skirmishes between the Covenant of alien races and their attempted extermination of the heretic humans. Players will command UNSC forces which include standard marines, Warthog ATVs, Scorpion tanks, Pelican airships, and of course- Spartan super-soliders (but no 'Chief, sorry to say). In the process of building armies and managing troops, players will be charged with defending civilians from Covenant forces, infiltrating Covenant bases to recover artifacts, and generally laying waste to anything in purple or electric blue Covenant colors.
As with all real-time strategy games, adapting them for the confines of a console controller is the first obstacle. This genre of gameplay was birthed on the PC where the minutia of squad management could be mapped to the keyboard and the quick response of mouse-movement made navigation of a large map and multiple skirmishes natural. Condensing all of that down to only a few buttons is where many have tried and few have succeeded. "Halo Wars" was built specifically for the Xbox 360, and so the confines of the controller were the starting point. Given this, troop management is very simplistic, almost to a fault: left and right bumpers select either all units created or all units on-screen, and holding down a button will either select an individual unit or a series of troops in the radius of that unit. But the controls don't allow for custom squads of varying unit-types which make for a "mini-army" that could really allow the player to manage battalions in different battles. As it stands, most scenarios that I encountered ended in the tried-and-true strategy of "make a boat-load of troops of different strengths and begin the stampede over everything that gets in my way." Fun, but not satisfying.
I do wish that Ensemble let players get closer to the action than the camera allows. For a game who's franchise began in first-person perspective, being given the option to be at ground-level where the action is should have been guaranteed. It's obvious that Ensemble spent a lot of time getting the look and feel of the "Halo" universe with accurate character and vehicle modeling, so its a shame to not be able to get closer to the action.
As stated though, "Halo Wars" does honor the franchise with the right "Halo" atmosphere- all the recognizable sounds from the "Halo" shooters are there. The menu screens, difficulty settings, and multiplayer options are exactly what fans would expect from a game that bears the "Halo" name. Ensemble, too, did a phenomenal job with the in-game cinematics- there's an incentive to play the game just to see the next cut-scene that look much better than anything in the previous shooters.
Basically, if you are a fan of the genre, "Halo Wars" is a satisfying enough game for a console version of this genre. It never does anything revolutionary, but it also doesn't screw up anything. If you are a fan of "Halo" this is a new twist on a franchise you have come to love over time, and the real-time strategy elements may expose you to a new type of gameplay that you otherwise wouldn't have checked out.
If you are a fan of both... well, you've already purchased this game and don't need this review, now do you?
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