I was impressed with the ease of Halo Wars as compared to a series like Age of Empires. This went from being off my radar completely to something I'm pretty interested in. The contextual nature of the controls was very helpful as well - it seemed that my units would use their special abilities only when it makes sense, so I didn't have Warthogs trying to knock over a Covenant base. I felt the micromanagement was a little *too* dumbed down, but controlling all of the assets at my disposal was very straightforward and I didn't feel like I was fighting the system at all. I just got through the demo, and I quite enjoyed it. This game just screams out that a PC port will be coming because with mouse and keyboard support it would probably be the at the same level quality as previous Ensemble games (RIP). The cuts cenes seen in the demo were high quality and the game certainly feels like it is in the Halo universe even though it is told 20 years before the Halo incident.
This game exudes a lot of class and seems relatively streamlined for an RTS, which a console RTS needs to be. Now, after many hours this may become secondhand, but I felt in the couple hours I played I felt no more confident in the precision of the controls and wished for mouse and keyboard support. Using the 360 controller, even when bringing the speed down quite a bit, I still found myself overshooting targets in order to unleash a smack down on the Covenant as well as having to backtrack many times after overshooting a spot in order to setup the correct way point I wanted. I grew up playing RTS games using hot keys and a mouse. The game seems top notch with the caveat that although the controls are well done, it would be so much easier if there was mouse and keyboard support on the 360. Unfortunately there's no co-op play to be had, but you'll still get a good idea of just where this title is heading. Nick had his own first impressions to share of the demo, and I simply sought to elaborate on that just a little bit by asking some of the staff what their personal impressions of the brief demo were. Thankfully they didn't drop Halo's staple of having co-op. Taking a best selling first person shooter, and changing the scale, and style of game so it's barely recognizable.well, there were bound to be some thoughts on it. Of course, the Halo franchise means different things to different people – but the direction Halo Wars has gone is most interesting to me. This month has been a big one for high profile demo releases, one of which is Halo Wars.