Joystiq E3 hands-on: Halo Wars (Xbox 360)
After all this time we finally got to touch Halo Wars and ... it was good. There's visual polishing to be done, but the user interface (UI) is as intuitive as developer Ensemble Studios has been hyping since (what feels like) the time of the Forerunners. This is an RTS game clearly made for a console first.
The UI is incredibly intuitive. Left analog moves the camera, right analog zooms, A selects, X is the move/attack button and Y activates special moves. If you've played other RTS games ported to the Xbox 360, this is a very different experience.
%Gallery-1676%
One of the key features of the UI is selecting build/research actions through a circular pop-up interface. Dave Pottinger, lead designer of the game, says the company has "the magic rule of eight" with the ring selection screen. No more than eight things can be on it, which keeps the pace of the game moving and reduces selection clutter. The menu is intuitive and fast for a controller.
The action in the game consists of making squads of diverse classes and sending them out to slaughter the Covenant. Unlike most RTS games, Halo Wars isn't about making four or five diverse squads and just sending them into battle all over the map without a second thought. From our time with the game, it seems like players will make a squad, battle in a location and try to push forward. Then a second group can be made to hold an acquired strategic choke-point on the map. Once in battle, players will quick select troops to strategically attack certain enemies.
The squads we got to work with consisted of staples in the Halo universe like Marines, Spartans, Warthogs, air units, and the introduction of the Elite crisping Flamethrower unit. The game takes place 20 years before the first Halo so there's plenty of Spartan to go around. Once in battle, it's easy to quick select a certain unit with the right trigger and then have them use a special attack by pressing Y on the intended target. For example, the Spartan will jump onto the Covenant's Wraith tanks, punch its way into the cockpit and hijack the vehicle. Voila, now we have a Wraith at our disposal.
In orbit over the planet is The Spirit of Fire, a colonization vessel, which will supply air support when it's needed. When a skirmish isn't looking good, a bombing raid can be called in or a MAC canon can shoot down a single devastating blast. The game actually switches to a drawn out targeting reticle view to give the feel a player is shooting from high above from the messy battle below.
One other quick thing is how building is done. Players will have a main base with seven slots around it. Buildings aren't just placed willy-nilly in Halo Wars; they are an extension of the main building. Barracks, generators, vehicle factories are some of the additional buildings we saw. Once again, the entire process is done to keep the focus on the combat in the game, instead of getting too involved in placement strategy.
The easiest way to describe Halo Wars to a gamer would be to say it is to RTS games what Civilization Revolution is to Civilization. It's not RTS lite, but just RTS different. A judgment on the game is going to require giving the title a chance and seeing how it shakes what Ensemble gave it over many hours. It could introduce a new form of RTS we haven't seen yet.
