The game that surprised me the most at CES had to be Halo Wars for the Xbox 360, without a doubt. Actually, scratch that, surprised is too simplistic a word to describe just how blown away I was by this game. An RTS, made specifically for a console (the 360 no less), hooked me, a die hard PC RTS gamer…honestly, it must be the first sign of the coming Apocalypse.
Check out my impressions of Halo Wars’ control scheme, graphics, cut-scenes and more after the jump!
I always intended on getting an Xbox 360 for myself, but news that Halo Wars was going to attempt to truly throw open the doors for RTS gaming on the 360 made getting an Xbox 360 this past Christmas a must. I was a little nervous, seeing as how I had yet to see any real evidence that the game was going to be any good. Luckily, Halo Wars really does appear to be an RTS that is not only incredibly fun to play, but also right at home on the 360 despite the lack of keyboard and mouse control so many RTS gamers are accustomed too.
It’s safe to say that the main point of contention, literally the sink or swim facet of any RTS game on a console, is the controls. I paid very close attention as I played through both tutorials, and the first two single player campaign missions, to any control problems or annoyances. You know what? I did not notice even one major issue. Sure it took some time to get used to, more so since I kept blindly reaching for a keyboard that was not there, but once I gave myself over to the 360 controller it was smooth sailing.
In Halo Wars, you zoom and rotate the camera with the right stick, and move the action cursor with the left stick. The back button brings up the objectives, while the X button executes move and attack commands. The A button selects a unit (or held down to paint-select any unit you move the cursor over), the LB button selects all units, while the RB button selects all units currently on the screen. The right trigger selects all units of the same type while the left trigger increases scroll speed. Cycle through units by pressing down on the D-pad and move to your base quickly by pressing left on the D-pad. Oh and the Y button, the “pièce de résistance,” activates the special attack of all currently selected units.
I found the learning curve to be about 20 minutes, if that. The setup felt intuitive and easy to use, especially with Halo Wars’ version of “aim-assist” which meant that you did not need to be super precise when selecting individual units, the cursor would automatically gravitate towards the most likely unit. This allowed me to switch between units and issue orders much faster than I had anticipated. The one negative, a small one I think, is the lack of unit grouping, but since the game is centered around a small amount of units, I did not miss that feature terribly. Halo Wars is an RTS, on a console, where a bit of real micromanagement (to a point) is actually a possibility, I kid you not.
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