E3 2008: Halo Wars Preview

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E3 2008: Halo Wars Preview

Post by trog @ 07:05am 23/07/08 | 5 Comments

Halo Wars is the big new entry from Ensemble Studios, famed developers of various games in the Age of *.* series (including Age of Empires 3 and Age of Mythology). Halo Wars is a little different, in that it's an Xbox 360 game that doesn't have the word "Age" in title, but it is still shaping up to look like a pretty solid entrant in the realm of real-time strategy on consoles. We got some hands-on time with the game in Microsoft's secret booth at the show; check out our E3 preview for a closer look.

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Dan
Posted 08:17am 23/7/08

Out of all the upcoming RTS' I reckon this one looks the like the best so far. I'm sure StarCraft 2 will blow all out of the water in terms of balance, but that kinda stuff is only really important for the hardcore gamer, which in the RTS genre, I'm definitely not.

Red Alert 3, End War, Stormrise, Dawn of War 2, Empire: Total War - from the screenshots and trailers, Halo Wars has all of them beat in the art direction department imo.

That said, I'm still yet to play an RTS on console that didn't just make me wish I was playing it on PC instead.

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trog
Posted 04:57pm 23/7/08

Yeh, at first I was all like "where are my freakin' shortcut keys', but once I got a handle on the interface and some of the shortcuts on the controller I was surprised about how playable it was. It's basically just a new playing style and the game is designed around it so it's pretty doable.

I think it'll certainly have more fans in the less hardcore RTS groups, but as far as it goes on a console it's looking pretty cool. 2v2 against the computer (which is like my staple RTS standard) was neato, although I suspect the AI was on super-noob skill level as they didn't put up much of an opposition.

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