I freaking love real time strategy (RTS) games, but unfortunately, I'm also terrible at them. I don't play them as intended - instead of balancing your resources with production, upgrades to existing units, and maximizing your actions per minute, I save up a miser's fortune, I purchase upgrades before I should, and I don't even like building offensive units until A) I can afford them all or B) they're already upgraded.
But there's something so cool about Real Time Strategy games, especially those with an emphasis on combat - and I think it's because playing them I feel like someone who owns every single GI Joe i could possibly want and I'm able to smash them against every single Cobra trooper I can possibly imagine.
On top of that I'm a huge Halo nerd, playing *every game multiple times, following down rabbit holes on wikipedia (halopedia if we're being honest), and recently I even bought a Halo novel to on my phone to read on my commute, and... yeah, I'm close to reaching peak Halo nerd.
So the other day, not just remembering that there was a Halo themed RTS game but remembering that I packed it with me and have an xbox one that can play it made my second game for the Backlog Quest Log a pretty obvious choice.
And the fact that I play every single Halo game like a ravenous trashmonster, I beat it in three days, throwing off my schedule a bit for the BLQL, but giving me plenty of time to watch Celtics games or Beat Bobby Flay.
Which is nice. But let's kick it to the review of Halo Wars.
Set some 20 years before Halo Combat Evolved, Halo Wars opens with the UNSC essentially finding the hostile alien collective, the Covenant, right after they destroy the prominent human colony of Harvest. Humanity has met the enemy and the enemy has them outgunned, outnumbered, and out-technology'd. But more troublesome than the Covenant destroying a human settlement, it seems like they were looking for something on the planet of Harvest, more worrisome still - it looks like they found something, too.
You'll chase this particular fleet as they make their way through the system and eventually make their way out of it, and about 2/3 through the game you'll meet the other enemy known from Halo games - the Flood.
The story isn't anything revolutionary, but it does an adequate job to explain why you're going from one crazy situation to another, and why you'll get white knuckled trying to save the universe from a two pretty sinister threats. The cutscenes don't hold up incredibly well between people - that is to say normal humans talking on the deck of the main ship of the game, The Spirit of Fire. something about their faces looks too smooth and unnatural because of it - like everyone is wearing three pounds of foundation. The covenant faces look fantastic though, complete with scales and, y'know the gross sinew and musculature you'd associate with an alien race.
It's good that there's a low cap placed on your population because the UNSC unites are actually pretty powerful. The reverse of that though is having the same units throughout the level is kind of boring. Playing only on normal, I was pretty much guaranteed that any armored units I built would survive, and most of the marines I built would survive the fray as well. And on one hand, it's really nice to see that humans stand a fighting chance against the Covenant, which is something you don't really get from the mainline halo games, but part of me wishes this game were a bit more about reaction than preparation. For each mission there was basically one ideal unit that over-performed in some ridiculous manner, basically being untouchable, especially when complimented with the hero units of the game, some spare Spartans stationed aboard the Spirit of Fire.
The reason that a few units were all-stars in each level is because of how bases were designed, and they can only be built in very specific locations. There's a central structure that you build additions on, and can eventually upgrade to unlock more addition slots, but there's no real versatility. You're ostensibly forced to decide what kind of base you want to build at the beginning of each mission, with little wiggle room to improvise or redirect resources. In some missions you'll be given opportunities to to take over a second (or third or sixth) base location, but taking over more locations doesn't allow your basic unit population to rise, giving very little incentive outside of resource management to expand to other locations, especially once you have a decent engine running and can churn out the needed units at your original base.
The basebuilding makes perfect sense to be a streamlined, competitive console multiplayer RTS, but the concessions made were just a little too much. Even the final level, despite coming out nearly 11 years after Starcraft, still fails to reach the same level of epic deregulation that campaign ended with. Unforgettable games establish rules and then either break them or change them, and unfortunately Halo Wars, while overall fun, failed in this regard. A year later, Supreme Commander 2 would come out on 360 and push the the genre pretty far before it basically disappeared from consoles altogether.
The few levels where you're not constricted to base locations (like when you're fighting on the deck of the Spirit of Fire), are some of the standouts, and come the closest to breaking the established rules, but the lack of gather-able resources asks a lot of patience from the player. Unfortunately, you aren't really fighting either enemy (The Flood or the Covenant), at the same time in great numbers, so it's not a terribly challenging task that begs a lot of strategy, but still fun nonetheless.
It's sort of hard going back to a game that's nearly a decade old. Do you grade it on the merits of it back then, or now? Should it be compared to its contemporaries or its place in the genre now? Either way I'd mark Halo Wars a success, since it asked me to have fun in a fun universe, but a few tweaks could've extended the game into a higher tier of conversation. I'm stoked to finally check out the very recent sequel in the coming weeks, after I play a game called Firewatch that I've been curious about.