Game Review: Halo Wars

Back in 2007, Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution proved to the world that there was still a place on consoles for strategy games. Now it's time for Ensemble, the brains behind the hugely successful Age of Empires series, to flex their development muscle. The result of their efforts is Halo Wars which, while many will cynically dismiss as a lacklustre attempt to flog the Halo cash piñata, they've actually made work remarkably well.

With the limitations of the 360 controller, Ensemble needed to come up with a control scheme that was not only simple, but versatile, and they've done just that. Basic commands - such as unit selection and movement - can be executed quickly with the A or X buttons, with other buttons being used for quick navigation of the map, squad selection or to access each unit's unique abilities. Researching new technologies or training squads is equally smooth, thanks to the intuitive wheel menus. It may not be as quick as a keyboard and mouse but this genuinely is the next best thing, and developers are going to struggle to come up with a system that works better than this.

Although, while Halo Wars leaps cleanly over the first hurdle, it begins to struggle a little when it comes to actual gameplay for one simple reason; they've forgotten to include any strategy beyond building a ton of units and setting them loose on an enemy base. Besides deciding which units to train and upgrade - a decision that will always revolve around "what is the biggest thing I can afford" - there isn't any thinking involved. The absolute lack of decent strategy means that the difficulty curve bounces around like a hyperactive Grunt on a jackhammer, with easier levels - where everything can be researched, trained or built very quickly - being insultingly easy while slightly harder - and therefore slower building - levels mercilessly kick your ass around the map before you can utter a single defeatist "Wort".

Halo Wars takes a stumble again with it's different factions, or in this case it's lack of. While each of the two factions (the UNSC and the Covenant, if you hadn't already guessed) have three different leaders, there aren't enough significant differences between these leader's unique units or abilities to give the gameplay any real variation. There's room for at least two other factions - the Flood and Sentinels - without even stretching the Halo mythology, and with both making appearances in the campaign it's hard to figure out why Ensemble chose to limit the playable factions when it's clearly something that could have been expanded.

The leaders themselves - the Covenant ones, to be precise - also present balance issue. Unlike their UNSC counterparts, Covenant leaders have a powerful physical presence on the battlefield as soon as the game begins and are easily able to single handedly defeat any quickly-assembled army you can muster. On top of that, there is no limit to have often they can use their special ability; while most units or leaders have to wait for their special abilities to recharge, Covenant leaders can use theirs so long as resources are high enough. Considering there are buildings that constantly replenish resources, these incredibly powerful abilities can be used indefinitely, which doesn't so much tilt the balance as completely flip it on it's head.

While there is little else wrong with the Skirmish mode, Halo War's Campaign decides to bring along a couple of extra problems. The obvious one is the lack of Covenant; despite there being more than enough opportunities to weave a few Covenant missions into the story (à la Halo 2) they're never playable during the solo campaign, before being pushed to the side at the end to make way for the Flood. It's difficult to see why they've been left out because while including the Covenant wouldn't have done much to vary the core "build as many big things as you can" gameplay, it could have given an otherwise insubstantial campaign some much needed extra length.

Perhaps the Covenant's absence from the Campaign wouldn't have been so noticeable if the UNSC weren't restricted so often. Unlike Skirmish, which allows you to freely build however many big things you can afford, Campaign randomly chops and changes what it will allow you to train. One of the best features about classics real-time strategy campaigns - including Age of Empires - was having you effort and time rewarded by unlocking new units and technologies as you advanced, but Halo War's habit of giving and taking with each new mission is as irritating as it is pointless.

It's easy to see where Ensemble went wrong with Halo Wars; in trying to achieve something new on the console, they've gone and forgotten what actually makes a strategy game fun. Variety, balance, and even actual strategy has been pushed to the side of the drawing board to make room for accessibility, leaving a game that, while simple to grasp, is otherwise shallow and basic. Still, purely by creating controls that work, Ensemble have proven that there is very much a future for the genre on the console. Let's just hope whoever decides to bring the next strategy game to the console puts a little more thought into the gameplay.

Summary: A promising step forward for the genre on consoles, Halo Wars handles well, although this doesn't do much to disguise what is ultimately a shallow, repetitive and unsatisfactory experience.