Editorial: Halo Wars Online

When up and running, the bases work as entirely self-contained collection and production facilities. There's no need to worry about harvester units, no concerns about maintaining supply lines, and few decisions to make when considering how to lay out the base. It's all standardized like it just rolled off an assembly line, and because of that, it frees you up to focus on the field of battle and your military's assault tactics. It's also great because of the proximity of your structures to your main base. Quickly cycling your view through your bases, accomplished with the D-pad, allows you easy access to the production facilities and research centers because they're directly next to it, minimizing time wasted by scrolling your cursor. Some games, like the console versions of Supreme Commander and Red Alert 3, offer an all-purpose radial menu for handling just about everything in-game, yet they still require players to consider placement positions while setting down buildings, which eats time. By standardizing the layout of everything in a base and facilitating resource gathering, Ensemble retained the feel of a traditional RTS while molding it into something distinctly console-centric.

The real key to what makes it work for me is how so many systems are simplified and automated. Halo Wars only has one type of resource, and it fuels everything from the construction of new buildings and units to the use of special powers.

The game also handles unit selection well. It offers options to highlight all or only local units with the bumpers, along with a C&C-style area select circle that can be swept over units onscreen. Cycling through armies of mixed unit types is done with the pull of a trigger, and setting off their special powers is accomplished simply by hitting the Y button, which conveniently can be used to imitate the special attacks of every unit in a mixed group. Considering a large percentage of special attacks are offensively orientated, you're not really forced as much to micromanage which unit is using which superpower in the same way as in Red Alert 3, where the unit powers have a far wider range of uses. Recharge timers are also visible onscreen so there's never a question of when the ability might be available again, meaning there's no need to waste time scouring the screen or a menu system for cooldown data. All the powers unique to leaders and special units, such as the UNSC's cryo bomb or ODST orbital drop power are easily accessed and initiated, and their effects are always across large areas instead of precise strikes, meaning they're more fire-and-forget and can be aimed and activated with minimal frustration.

Yet despite the number of selection options, from my time online I've found only the select all and select local units commands to really be useful. Most of the tactics in battle have more to do with what types of units you bring in than what you do with them, aside from hitting the Y button for a special attack. But that's just fine, for now, for this traditional style of game. If I wanted an experience that requires frantic micromanagement to master, I'd power up my PC. Or, perhaps, wait for another developer to try out a different model of real-time strategy, one more akin to something focused more on strategic powers than unit tactics such as Massive Entertainment's World in Conflict.

Even with all the positives, there are still issues with the game. Unit pathfinding, particularly with something like an army of Grizzlies, isn't so great. If you're trying to move through tight quarters this can get annoying as units get confused and bunch up, making them even more vulnerable to area of effect special attacks. Using a thumbstick to drag your cursor across the screen, even with an option for acceleration and ways to instantly snap to locations, can still be somewhat unwieldy at times. There's got to be a way to move away from using thumbsticks to mimic the precision of mouse and keyboard camera controls, but that's for somebody much smarter than me to figure out. Some of the research options are also strangely compartmentalized within each structure, an issue which works itself out once you learn the UNSC and Covenant layouts but can be bothersome when trying to settle in. At least the radial menus for building and researching are broken into small chunks, making for easier and more precise selection compared with larger selection wheels in other games. And though the majority of this article is about the online play, I should mention from what I've played of the single player I can't say I'm all that thrilled with it, though those cinematics sure are pretty.

Fixes are on the way, despite Ensemble's dissolution. In case you missed the story, late last year it was announced the venerable developer was to be scuttled following the release of Halo Wars. Despite the unfortunate news, the game was still finished, and thereafter the remaining team members moved on to other places around the industry as well as the newly formed Bonfire Studios and Robot Entertainment. The latter has been contracted to continue support on the game in the form of gameplay patches and additional downloadable content. This means anyone who was rightly worried about post-launch support for Halo Wars shouldn't be overly concerned, at least for the near future.

If you're one of those gamers either nervous about dipping into the RTS pool or wary of this kind of genre on consoles, don't be afraid of Halo Wars. Even over a month after from launch it's still got loads of players online so there's always someone to play, even if it takes a while to get a game going. Those that are playing seem to range from experts to beginners, so within the community right now there's room to fit in and polish your skills. It's a game deeply rooted in the traditional style of RTS and one that doesn't take many chances, but what's here is another solid step in the right direction for the future of this genre on consoles. It's experienced a lot of popularity at stores so far, and from my time online, it deserves it, and makes me hopeful about the future of the genre on this platform.

So what do you think about Halo Wars at this point? Let us know in the comments below.

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