Lead to Halo on PC: Halo Wars Review

With the Halo Trilogy concluded, developer Bungie prepared their next steps, but Halo owner Microsoft decided to farm out the Halo franchise to another developer. Insert Ensemble Studios, the team behind the Age of Empires RTS series. The mission? Make a Halo based RTS that played smoothly on the Xbox 360, a realm few RTS' dared to move. Did they succeed? Or was Halo Wars the last game Ensemble made for a reason?


Halo Wars is set in 2531, 21 years before Halo 1 and six years after the UNSC's war with the Covenant began. The game follows the starship Spirit of Fire, an ex-colony ship converted into a factory ship/carrier stationed on the colony of Harvest to battle the Covenant over some Forerunner artifacts in the planet's north pole. The main focus of the Spirit of Fire's crew follows what I consider the most mediocre cast in the Halo franchise. Sergeant John Forge, commander of ground forces on the Spirit of Fire and a cocky firebrand with a heart of gold; Captain James Cutter, an old man with impeccable wisdom but who's clearly tiring out; and Professor Ellen Anders, an expert on Forerunner technology with a spunky attitude who takes crap from no one.

Now these characters aren't bad if they were the supporting cast of someone like the Master Chief or even balanced out by more wacky characters. Sadly these are our protagonists and boy do they not hold up at all. Their dialogue is crap and mostly boils down to exposition and one-liners with no real wit behind them. Unlike the Halo trilogy which had a more colorful cast with characters like Cortana and Sergeant Johnson who actually had well written one liners or were over the top enough to stand out. Even the Master Chief with his stoicism contrasted with the occasional wit stood out among the cast. Sure, the Halo trilogy was never fantastic in writing, but there was a heart and effort in the OG trilogy that feels lacking here.

In fact this entire story is basic sci-fi writing 101, and that extends to the main villain, an Arbiter who, unlike most Elites, is just a big dumb brute. There isn't even a Covenant campaign unlike Halo 2 (despite being able to play as the Covenant in multiplayer), so we don't get to see what things look like from their side, they're just mustache twirling villains here which is somehow worse than Halo 1 having no central villain. The entire story is just paint by numbers doing the bare minimum of what is expected of a story. Not even when the Spartans of the game show up do things get better as they have few lines that are not memorable and only have one, admitting good, action scene. The only relief is the Spirit's AI, Serina, but only because she's a more dry version of Cortana. Though, the game does have a fairly somber ending to it's credit, and one that clears up the plot holes introduced in this game.

Which I guess leads us to the actual game cut-scenes, which are actually very pretty and well done for 2009, shame they're basically wasted on a sub-par story even though there is one really good action scene at the end, but it feels more like junk food than anything. The game itself however is actually very good looking, the in-game stuff is fairly vibrant and the artstyle used works with the more high up perspective you have. Halo Wars' artstyle has aged fairly well over 10 years later, it should be commended for that. However the score is fairly mediocre though, mostly forgettable orchestral pieces trying to emulate O'Donnell's work on the main games.

As for the actual gameplay, the system is much different from most RTS'. Instead of being able to build where the land allows you're restricted to a set plot to build central sturcture with a number of lot's to build supply pads, infantry centers, vehicle centers, aerial centers, and a research center. Instead of having to  gather resources you have to use supply pads and make sure you have enough of them to supply your army. The difference is that resources are slow as molasses to acquire so you need a lot of supply pads. You also can only gain more advanced units and unit upgrades with a reactor and you need two in total and a lot of supplies so it does add a different dimension of strategy to consider. And the base lots do add a bit of Arena attitude of Halo Wars, with most games being a mad rush to gain bases which sparks conflicts which can end a game in 10 minutes if one side plays it wrong.

The other major factor is leaders, taking inspiration from Warcraft III but in a different way you have a series of leaders to choose before the game starts, Forge, Cutter, and Anders for the UNSC. While the Arbiter, Prophet of Regret, and some random Brute they found on the side of the road represent the Covenant.  Each leader plays differently, while the Covenant focus on fielding heroes and the ultimate production goal being one single scarab; the UNSC use's specialized units per leader and are more numerous than the Covenant and can call in various powers per leader ranging from cryo bombs to super tanks. It actually does make each match different as you have to adjust strategies based on who is using what leader/faction.

Control is also different as you have a radial when selecting what to build and selecting a group of units is simply done by holding the select button and letting a circle form and select the units. Double clicking a type of group will select all in that kind too, which is great when ramming warthogs down the enemy's throat until they vomit motor oil. You can also select units on the screen and all units in your army with a simple press of the button. It is fairly intuitive for a console RTS and once you get used to it can be as smooth as butter, I'd argue it beats games like Command and Conquer 3 and Starcraft 64 to be the best RTS on a console, though I'd still prefer a Mouse and Keyboard which is in the definitive edition released on PC.

Halo Wars succeeds as an RTS, the control is intuitive, the multiplayer is varied and, while the going can be sorta slow, it manages to replicate the arena based game play of the Halo trilogy on a bigger scale. However Halo Wars fails as a Halo campaign, the sense of wonder and dread that exploring new alien worlds brings along with it's more eccentric and memorable cast has been stripped away. In it's place are a bunch of bland characters doing very paint by numbers things. It's probably the first game where the multiplayer outshines the campaign in every way. The whole thing is basically what happens when you give side characters their own story, but without any chemistry to back it up, which is a stark contrast to the next game I'll be looking at.

(PS:I actually really like the Marine designs here.)