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Halo Wars Game Review
By Naked Crook
The New Order Administrator
I personally believe that the gaming community has two war camps; gamers who like RTS, and people who hate RTS. What's an RTS? The acronym stands for Real Time Strategy, and it is the ultimate test of micro-managing skills. Sounds difficult if you ask me! Well, its not that hard with all those hot-keys, mouse movement, and macros, it really isn't a test of who is better at micromanaging, but who can afford the best keyboard with the most macro-keys. Hey...this game is on the Xbox 360!
WHAT!?
You heard me! No several dozen hot-keys here, no click-able mini map, all you have is your quick thinking! Shall we dance?
To help the readers evaluate how I feel about this game during the course of this review, I will use the star system. We will start at 5 stars. After each paragraph, you will see whether the game loses or gains stars based on how much I praise or trash the game. We will start with 5 stars. How I feel about the game is unrelated to the final score it is given at the end of the review.
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Halo Wars, Halo Wars, Halo Wars...I enjoyed it, did you? This game really has four fundamental aspects to it; single player, co-op, multiplayer, and the little extras. Seems pretty balanced so far, we have something for everyone; we have a single player mode for the lone wolves, co-op mode for the honeymoon (because there is nothing better to do on your honeymoon anyways. Who can afford kids today anyways?) We have multi player for when you feel the need to kill tiny little men on the screen with some guy you have never met in Norway, and the extras, the fun little unlockable game secrets for the kids with encyclopedic knowledge of Halo. Something for everyone! Essentially, when it boils down to it (and it will boil down further into the review) Halo Wars is a competent game that managed to get its four primary game aspects in perfect harmony. You can't overplay one aspect of the game and get bored of the others at the same time. That was the first thing I noticed. That's a good thing!
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So, lets dive further into the game types shall we? Lets talk single player! I had to do a bit of research on the Halo time line to get things down pat. Essentially, this game puts you in the year 2531, six years after first contact with The Covenant; a political, and religious allegiance of Aliens. Think of it as The Federation and The Catholic Church combined. Add a dash of genocidal craziness, and that's your recipe for The Covenant. You have religious leaders, political leaders, and military leaders, otherwise known as Regret, The Arbiter, and The Brute Chieftain (affectionately nicknamed Chocolate by my Brother and I. I will explain this later). The player plays as the UNSC, or the United Nations Space Command. Think the United Nations in space. So we have our two factions...killing each other...fantastic! The Game takes place on the outer colony world of Harvest, the first world to feel the ravages of war. The game then branches off, takes use off Harvest and brings us to a shield world, an inside out forerunner planet built around a really small (possibly artificial) sun. This shield world houses a massive fleet of Forerunner Ships. If the Covenant get their hands on this, the war is over, the Covenant wins!
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Alright, the storyline is pretty solid, things make sense. The story progresses, and its easy to follow. Lets talk about main characters. First, we have Sergeant Forge, basically, the guy the player plays as, in a sense. Story wise, he seems like a decent guy, but I really couldn't connect with him. He sounds like he tries to care, but he is a dull character. I blame the voice actor! As a person, he seems to care, about his soldiers, about his co-workers, but it's not in his voice. You have to look at his actions to get a real sense of who he really is. We have Captain Cutter, the captain of the ships Spirit of Fire, your command ship so to speak. This guy is pretty bland. He has a scruffy mustache, and he is boring! He does nothing. Anything that he is forced to do, the ships AI does for him. This character means nothing to the story. I care more about the carbon copy marines being created at my base camp then I do about Captain Cutter. If Captain Cutter died, I would not have cared. Then we have Professor Anders. I hate this character! I should mention (for the record) that when I was reviewing Ultimate Alliance 2, I neglected to mention that I HATE Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four! Professor is another Reed Richards. I wanted her to die in the game...sadly...there was a love subplot between Forge and Anders. Too bad...I would have loved to watch an Elite gut this person.
Let's talk about our antagonists. We have Regret, the Captain Cutter counterpart. I do not even like his species, so I do not even like him as a character. He is annoying, he jumps to conclusions, and he is mouthy! He will get his soon enough. We have The Arbiter (A different Arbiter from Halo 2 and Halo 3) and he is more like-able. He was a good leader for his Elites. He got the job done, and he did it with style. Those two energy blades look sharp. Then we have The Brute Chieftain, aka "Chocolate", who has no character because he is not even in the campaign! They left out potentially the most colorful character, who would have possibly some of the best lines simply because they would be witty. After playing Halo 3, and Halo 3: ODST...I have come to think of Brutes more as witty, then as aggressive war mongers. We could have had a bit of comic relief, as well as some interesting dialog...but no, the Brutes got no love in this game, and they were limited to one mission, and no cut scenes. This game lost major points for me because of this.
Co-op is an added bonus to this game. Instead of going at it by yourself, you team up with a friend, and fight the war together. You will need a second Xbox 360 and a second copy of the game for this to work, but, that is expected. I am glad they didn't try split screen!
Single player was pretty good all in all. The story was good, but it could have been implemented better in terms of character development. But...single player is not the entire game. We have the multi player, or skirmish if you want to call it that. In Skirmish, you basically pick your faction (Human or Covenant) Pick your leader and then go to town against the AI, or with friends over XBL or System Link. You can choose six different leaders; Anders, Cutter, Forge, Regret, Arbiter, and Chocolate. Remember, I nicknamed the Brute Chieftain Chocolate because he has no name. I will explain this nickname later! There are a wide variety of maps in this game, including bloodgultch, which vary in size, ambiance, and climate. They all play the same, but each map has its own quirks. The one thing I did notice about Skirmish is that only the Covenant have heroes! You can play as Regret, Arbiter, or Chocolate, but Anders, Forge, and Cutter, sit in the background and are there in spirit! Not a big problem, but it can be unfair. Regret and fire lasers from space, and Chocolate can summon electric tornadoes with his Gravity Hammer. Oh...interesting. Generally, the Skirmish mode was fun, I did have some fun times and I didn't notice anything game breaking here.
Lets talk about the little extras to this game. Throughout the campaign, you can collect Skulls and Black Boxes. Skulls can either help you or hurt you. They are a good addition if you want to replay the game with a bit of a challenge. Black Boxes unlock Halo time line events on the main menu. You can read the entire history of the war and gain some good insight. A neat addition if you ask me. Extras never hurt anyone, and its good that Ensemble Studios stuck with tradition and kept the Skulls, and added a bit more candy to the pile with the Black Boxes. Nice work boys!
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Lets talk a bit about the game mechanics, namely controls and graphics. The Controls, and by extension, the user interface was nicely done! Ensemble Studios took a new approach to the Halo Wars UI and optimized it for the console. Halo Wars uses a popup menu interface that is designed to work with the D-Pad and the joysticks. Multi player is enhanced by the fact that you can see what your ally is looking at on the mini map. You can see what part of the map they are looking at, as indicated by a color coded circle moving around the mini map. This makes coordination much easier. The graphics, are nicely done for an RTS game. The units are well defined, and things look nice. Like always, graphics don't make the game, they make it better!
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Let's talk about the soundtrack. I love soundtracks. Halo Wars did not disappoint. I enjoyed the background music in this game, and at some moments, it really got to me. I don't want to spoil anything, but when you see the first SPARTAN, and that brief 4 seconds watching him fight, with a very light, low key Gregorian Halo tune playing in the background...that is effective! I have never been so impressed by a CGI event! All you saw were civilians dying at the hands of the Covenant, and in that brief 4 seconds...you actually feel the tide of battle turning.
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Well Halo Wars, you might have skipped out on the character development, but you sure hit the nail on the head with game play. It took me longer then it should have to write this review to be honest, I am playing the game right now! I better wrap this up so I can get back to the game.
Lets break it down into score categories:
Multiplayer 5 / 5
Graphics 4 / 5
Story Mode 3 / 5
Ambiance 4 / 5
Functionality 4 / 5
Music 5 / 5
Overall 25 / 30 --- 83%
So why did I name The Brute Chieftain Chocolate? Funny story! My brother and I were playing a skirmish game. It was us two vs 2 AI. I was the Brutes, my Brother was The Arbiter. I told my brother that my "...Brute was almost dead". My brother replied "Which brute, you have dozens of them!" Naturally, I had the Chieftain with a bunch of Brute squads. He had a point, which one was he supposed to heal? I told him "Heal...whats his face!" He said "Who is what's his face? I have no clue who that is!" I said "Heal the Chocolate!" Why did I say this? I have a real gamers lounge in my basement. We have a ton of TVs, so I can play games and watch TV at the same time. I was watching a commercial for Dairy Queen Chocolate Brownie blizzards. We were forced to laugh over this. However, I corrected myself and said "Heal the Chieftain. From that point forward...the Brute Chieftain has been known as Chocolate.
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Halo Wars - Video Game Review (Xbox 360)
04-18-2010
Linear Mode
