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The best console RTS I've ever played.

Halo Wars marks not only the last Real Time Strategy title for venerable RTS vets Ensemble Studios, but their last title ever, and while it might not be the game fans were wishing they had went out on, it's still really solid, and probably the best attempt I've seen at bringing the PC RTS experience to consoles. I do have a few issues with it, but for the most part I found myself pretty involved in the campaign, and I'm looking forward to diving into the online stuff a bit more than I've had the chance to so far.

Right off the bat, Halo fans will notice how remarkably similar the menu design and overall look of the game is when compared to Halo 3. Even the multiplayer has a ranking system that plays out in a similar fashion to the FPS one. Obviously that's not going to be the only similarity between this title and the rest of the Halo franchise, with just about every unit you've seen in the games between both the Covenant and UNSC forces making an appearance or being available to use in some capacity.

The campaign starts off easy enough, and on Normal difficulty I didn't run into a great deal of problems outside of about two or three missions. There's an optional tutorial you can start before beginning the game, with two different modes, and it's going to be a good idea for newcomers to check this out so they can get a handle on the different controls. Not that the control scheme in Halo Wars is overly difficult, in fact, it's surprisingly simple while still being mostly effective. I never felt like I could be as detail oriented as I wanted to with unit selection and placement, but for the most part I had little to no issues with controlling different units in the field and setting them up however I saw fit.

The controls work like this: Selecting a single unit is as easy as tapping the A button while you have them highlighted with a cursor. Moving the cursor to whichever location you want and pressing X will move your units into whatever position you'd like. The same thing is done for targeting enemies, and while the units will auto-fire and occasionally follow anything near them, if you want them to target a specific enemy unit then you'll need to direct them a bit. They don't seem to prioritize anything over something else, so during battles with multiple unit types you'll want to hold their hands a bit. You can select multiple units with the shoulder buttons, either by pressing LB to select all or pressing RB to select local (as in whatever you can currently see on the screen). You can also select individual unit groups after selecting all units and then cycling thru a small menu that pops up on the bottom of the screen with the left trigger. This menu also gives you information on how many units you have available. My only real issue is that I'd like to be able to create smaller armies with mixed groups, possibly split them off from one larger one. The only real way I can do this is by individually selecting each unit, moving them a bit off screen, and then selecting local units only. That's definitely a pain to do, but thankfully I don't find the need to do it too often.

When you start building, you'll have a small base to work on which you can upgrade a couple more times. Resource gathering and base building is pretty different from what I'm used to, but works well for the simple set-up the entire game has. The base stays in one spot, and you build around it things like barracks, factories, air pads, and so on. The places you build on are all connected to the base, so when the base begins you only have three spots (or 5 depending on the leader you picked), and when you begin to upgrade the base you'll gain more options. Depending on the side you pick, when you start pumping out units you'll start with a somewhat small selection of unit types, but as you build more and more factories you'll start to increase your tech level, which in turn unlocks more units, and different powers that can be used to upgrade those units. There's really a surprising amount of stuff to uncover thru the tech system in the game, and you can make some really powerful units as you build it up. Along with that, there are a few turret spots that unlock around the bases as you upgrade them, allowing you some automated defenses if you don't want to keep friendly units nearby to cover your bases. They're not fool proof, but you can also upgrade them by three levels and then add special bonuses against infantry, vehicle, and air units if you choose to.

Online implementation seems to be pretty much on par with a lot of Xbox 360 titles, with different modes to pick from, a pretty solid selection of maps, and currently the ability to play as Covenant or UNSC forces (I wouldn't be surprised to see one more added eventually though). The matches I played were completely free of lag, and took anywhere from a half hour to an hour depending on the skill of everyone involved. You can do 1vs1 style match-ups, or team up with a couple additional players for a much larger battle. You can also play local matches, or against the computer in various skirmishes. There's even a co-op mode for the campaign too, which has both players splitting resources and units pretty much down the line.

All together, I definitely enjoyed Halo Wars, and look forward to playing around online quite a bit more. The campaign mode is really fun, and does a great job of getting the player primed for different scenarios in multiplayer, while at the same time delivering a pretty engaging chapter into the Halo universe. The music borrows a lot of cues from the main series, along with some familiar sound FX, but there's a little bit of original stuff offered up that's also really well done. It's a shame to see that Ensemble had to close their doors after this, because it's really the best attempt I've seen at bringing over a solid RTS experience on consoles, and I hope it's a game that other RTS fans (and even non-fans) will give a try, because it's definitely worth picking up.