The Nerd Next Door

Halo is in sort of a rocky place right now, the franchises entire hopes ride on a return to the classic style with Halo Infinite after the disaster that was Halo 5: Guardians . But Infinite won't be the first return to a classic style, as little more than a year after Halo 5 , Halo Wars 2 dropped on Xbox and PC. With a more simplified premise, a return to a classic world in the series, and a new villain, does Halo Wars 2 outshine the first one? Halo Wars 2 is set 28 years after Halo Wars and about 6 months after Halo 5:Guardians ; after being lost in space at the end of Halo Wars , Halo Wars 2 sees the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire being awoken in orbit around a restored Ark from Halo 3 . However, the crew quickly discovers a Brute dominated ex-Covenant faction called the Banished in possession of the Ark after slaughtering the scientific survey outpost and Spartan escort that previously occupied it.  The Spirit of Fire, along with a new AI named Isabel, finds itself a...

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...