So... after playing the halo wars demo... (for those of you that did)

[Jonny The Kay]

Here's a thing I found funny:
I personally didn't like Halo 2 and 3. I didn't like them because of a lack of "Epic" fights. But when I saw the first game play screen, the first thought that crossed my mind was: "Dude I want to play this as a first person shooter "... anyway I didn't like the demo that much.

 

[Tattaglia]

Aw, shit. I was hoping it'd be a flop. Now I'll have to eat my own feet, thanks to an interesting bet with an interesting friend.

Pass the hacksaw, please. And the mustard.

You really thought that the swan song of Ensemble would be a flop? You lost before you even began, sir.

Too true.
But even then, we also thought Ensemble Studios wouldn't close down for a long time. I guess we were wrong.

 

[Eipok Kruden]

It was fun. It had some bad points though:

I found the game overly simplistic, and mainly the amount of units was something which bothered me. Not only that, but there were so many good ideas which they could've included, just by looking at the books and the series. I would've loved to see ODST's drop into the heat of battle and stuff like that, or perhaps some units with spartan lasers.

Once you fully upgrade the standard marines, they become ODST's. If you press up on the d-pad and access the special abilities menu, you'll find that the "ODST Drop" ability is available. You can fire 10 drop pods at a time anywhere on the map, each drop pod contains a squad of 5 ODST's. Also, fully upgraded Spartans have spartan lasers. So you can drop ODST's into the heat of battle and you can deploy units with Spartan lasers.

Another thing which bothered me was the micromanagement, or rather the lack of it. I must admit, I'm not very good at it. However, especially in a game like this, where units have primary and secondary abilities, you need to be able to micromanage your units. With the control scheme (hell with the 360 controller in general) they have chosen that is very hard.

When you select multiple types of units, their icons appear in the bottom of the screen. By pressing the right trigger, you can cycle through the different units and order commands individually. Also, if you put your reticule over a certain unit and double tap the "a" button, you will select every unit of that type.

And what the hell is up with the Covenant's 'AI's' voice? Why the hell does it sound so human? I really hope that it is something they have yet to implement because this is really lazy. They have cool sound effects for the other units, so was it really that difficult to also let the AI have a similar voice?

The demo is last year's build. Hopefully, they have it worked out by now. Probably voiced by an Elite. But it isn't a very big issue, it just detracts a bit from the immersion.

My main issue with the demo though, was how little command points you had to spend. You can't have epic battles when you have only 40 (50 talented) of those damn things to spend. I would like to see battles of epic proportions, damn it!

However, I did like the demo though. The controls were intuitive, the units were (with a few exceptions) pretty balanced and the game looks very good. Especially the "Spirit of Fire" looked awesome. I'm probably going to buy it.

I made 42 ghosts as the covenant, but there were quite a few drops in framerate whenever they moved around or did anything really. I think the unit cap is there to cut down on micromanagement and improve performance.

 

[Dealin Burgers]

I enjoyed it. Seemed well balanced and fast paced. I will certainly be buying it.

 

[Marv21]

I will rent it...rent it!

 

[SquirrelPants]

The Halo Wars demo impressed me. Especially because it was something made by Bungie, and had the Halo name slapped onto it. But it is great for a console RTS, those generally control horribly, but I find that this one works pretty well, and is actually quite fun.

 

[Abedeus]

The Halo Wars demo impressed me. Especially because it was something made by Bungie, and had the Halo name slapped onto it. But it is great for a console RTS, those generally control horribly, but I find that this one works pretty well, and is actually quite fun.

How many times should every one of us punch you in the nose to make you remember:

IT'S.

NOT.

MADE.

BY.

BUNGIE.

 

[Clutch Star]

I love halo, and i've been a fairly hardcore fan. and i also loved cnc. i think the unit types are at an acceptable level of variety. the only problem is the base building. they should've stuck with the formula, build seperate buldings for everything, same as tiberium wars.

great game though, definately buying it

 

[SquirrelPants]

The Halo Wars demo impressed me. Especially because it was something made by Bungie, and had the Halo name slapped onto it. But it is great for a console RTS, those generally control horribly, but I find that this one works pretty well, and is actually quite fun.

How many times should every one of us punch you in the nose to make you remember:

IT'S.

NOT.

MADE.

BY.

BUNGIE.

*Checks again*
Oh, it's not. My mistake, sorry.
Still, for something that could have been anything else, but had the Halo name slapped on it, it's damn good.

 

[jebussaves88]

I think it's probably one of the best RTS's currently on a console (based purely on the demo bare in mind). It could do for console RTS's what Goldeneye and of course Halo CE did for console FPS's. However, I believe the control system would be better if the triggers rotated the camera, and the right thumbstick was used to move around the minimap, so you can move quicker to a chose destination, just like wjen you click a left click a location on the map on a PC RTS. Other than that, I'm looking forward to it. Who doesn't want to send in a couple of Scarabs to wipe out the human scum before we glass them?