Halo Wars is a great game, and a fantastic addition to the Halo
Universe, but if you do not have Xbox Live, its appeal is limited.
The campaign is very good. It provides a variety of missions, and a
very good storyline supported by great cutscenes. It does not do a
great job of sucking you into the story, but for an RTS game, it is
better than adequate. The campaign is short, but it is supported by the
addition of skulls to find and very difficult upper difficulties.
For single-player only players, there is also quite a robust skirmish
mode, from 1v1 to 3v3 against anywhere from the ridiculously easy, Easy
level, to the ridiculous Legendary difficulty, plus skulls to change
things up, it is very good. However, because this is an RTS, there is
no split-screen.
This means that if you want multiplayer, you're going to need Xbox
Live. This is where the true meat of the game is. The entire campaign
is playable in co-op on Live, but it is not the greatest way of doing
it. All funds are shared but troops aren't, which means that while
communication is important, it can get frustrating if you're waiting
for an upgrade and you're friend builds 5 warthogs.
There are also competitive modes, deathmatch and skirmish. Deathmatch
gives you full techs and tons of resources and is a fight to the death.
Skirmish gives you few resources and no techs, and you'll have to build
your way up. The leader that you pick and your choice of units and
tactics are essential in skirmish. And playing 2v2 and 3v3 really
requires communication and tactics. This is where the true meat of the
game is, and if you have XBL, its absolutely fantastic.
The control scheme works quite well, as long as you don't micromanage.
It is incredibly difficult to use the special attack (which most units
have and is quite cool) of several of the same units on different enemy
units. It is very easy to select large groups of units, and the
individual unit types out of that, but anything beyond that is
difficult.
Overall, Halo Wars is fantastic, if you take it for what it is, a
console RTS. The campaign is quite good, with good variety of missions
but it's quite short. The skirmish and online are where the real meat
of the game is, and it's fantastic with buddies or even alone.
Note: This review is on multiple sites, all my own personal usernames.
