Yet another conflict in the war with the Covenant, but this time there’s no Master Chief
It took forever, but I finally finished downloading the Halo Wars demo Thursday night and got to check it out. As a big fan of the Halo Universe, I’ve been looking forward to some backstory, and am also cautiously optimistic about what Ensemble might be able to do with a RTS game built specifically for the console. The demo contains two playable levels from the campaign and a taste of the skirmish mode, which is what I assume online multiplayer is gonna be like. In the demo you can only choose from two commanders (one Covenant and one UNSC), each with their own special abilities and special unit.
Since I’ve been in an e-mail thread with some friends about the game, I’ll just give my impressions in the form of a FAQ after the jump.
How does the game control?
The control scheme is pretty interesting. LB maps to all units, RB selects all units on screen – both I think are pretty useful. Once you’ve selected a mixed group of units, you can use RT to cycle through the different unit types and manage each of them that way. Hitting B deselects the specific unit group and drops you back to the entire group. I found that I could do a decent job of attacking multiple targets at once. The other nice thing is that the alternate attacks of each unit are mapped to the Y button, as opposed to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 where you need to hold RB to switch modes then hit X and then do the same thing if you want to switch back. I can “Y attack” a target and my infantry will alternate attack by lobbing a bunch of grenades and then switch back to regular guns while the grenades are recharging.
Base building/management is pretty streamlined because you don’t have to spend time choosing where to put stuff. Each main base has “pods” around it and you just click on one of the pods to build something, but everything is interchangeable. You can only build a limited number of things though so I think the trick is going to be quick expansions. The D-pad basically substitutes for hotkeys, which is interesting. Hit left, you go to your base (hit it again to cycle through bases if you’ve expanded). Right brings you to the latest alert (and you can cycle through past alerts as well). Up brings up the special leader (hero) powers for UNSC and automatically selects your leader for Covenant – which is nice because you don’t have to find the leader in the heat of battle. Down cycles through your “armies”, which means if you have units spread across the map you will warp to each of them successively.
Halo Wars gives you old and familiar units from a new perspective
What is lacking in the control scheme?
You can queue up units at your base, but only if you have the supplies for it (you gain supplies automatically through “supply depots”). I found it a bit difficult to fight a battle while still making reinforcements, since when I started the battle I didn’t have enough money to queue units. As I was fighting the battle it was tough to go back to my base, although I tried it and my army held its own for those 5 seconds.
Something lacking (or at least I couldn’t figure out how to do it) is whether you can have hot groups and cycle through them. Also when I selected all I couldn’t figure out how to deselect one unit type (if I wanted to leave them there). Another thing I couldn’t figure out (or is not present) is the ability to queue commands, so I couldn’t send a scout and get them back without microing that. I tried every button press I could think of, but still couldn’t figure it out.
Other Concerns?
My other concerns revolve around the skirmish. When I was playing skirmish (1vCPU) I would get alerts that basically made scouting unnecessary. “The enemy is building up their defenses so you have time.” “The enemy is preparing for a quick attack.” And the all important one, “The enemy’s attention is elsewhere” or something to that effect. Can that be turned off? That is a way that things have definitely been dumbed down and in multiplayer if that’s always happening then it gives beginning RTS players (who don’t scout) an advantage over more advanced ones. Of course I didn’t mind the alerts, since I was having trouble queueing commands for the scouts anyway.
Speaking of dumbing down, is the gameplay experience going to be too simplistic?
I don’t think so. There are tons of upgrades and there actually is a significant amount of variety of units to build – more than are advertised on the official Halo Wars website (which seems dated). There are 3 or 4 of each type of unit (infantry, vehicle, air) plus leaders, and almost every unit can get some sort of upgrade. In skirmish there is the potential for many different strategies, provided the units are balanced. Obviously I did not get enough experience to determine how balanced the units were, plus I was playing on normal so the AI kinda stunk. So we’ll have to wait and see, but if there is a decent amount of balance between the units, I think the gameplay can be pretty deep.
How’s the story?
As for story, it looks like it’s gonna be typical Halo fare, which is good enough for me.
The graphics look pretty nice…
Final thoughts?
Overall, I think the game has promise. The graphics are beautiful (I can’t remember how good Halo 3 was, but I definitely thought in my head “this snow level might look as good as Gears”). Then again, it doesn’t take a lot for me to be impressed by graphics. The control scheme is obviously simplified but I definitely think it’s workable. I liked cycling through my armies and choosing specific units from each army, I definitely felt like I could do more than “attack-move” which I’ve been doing in RA3. For example, when I was attacking a base in the campaign, I had my marines lobbing grenades into fortified positions while my warthogs drove around running over grunts without too much difficulty.
The other thing I liked from skirmish was the feeling that I could change strategies mid-game to adjust to what the enemy was doing. I was only playing on normal, so I didn’t expect too much from the AI, but when I was warned that the enemy was massing hornets I had like no anti-air. Then 5 hornets rolled in and started decimating my army of warthogs, marines, and Spartans which I had to retreat to my turret protected base. Within like 3-5 minutes, I had an army of hornets/AA vehicles and I destroyed the enemies army and then subsequently their base. I thought that was pretty fun and actually felt like I was playing an RTS.
It still won’t be as fun as Starcraft, but the demo definitely made me excited to try the real thing. As I’ve said before tho, this is a game that I want to be good so my glasses may be a little rose colored. I think the controls felt more solid and user-friendly than RA3, and RA3 already has pretty decent controls, so I’m happy about that. I do hope that you can hotkey armies though, I can’t imagine playing an RTS game without that. Although I guess my final thought would be that it does seem like Halo Wars is trying to make a different type of RTS game, i.e., one that requires veteran RTS players to adjust their thinking about how things should work. I guess we’ll see if that pays off in about a month!
Demo was fun. Its a nice change of pace on the Halo universe over FPS, at least until Halo:ODST comes out. I’ll probably rent though, never could really get into console RTSs. Some XBL or system link limited skirmish coulda been nice.
I had tons of fun Ramming enemy infantry with Warhogs
You mean skirmish for the demo or the retail game? I’m pretty sure there will be online skirmish in the retail version, tho I’m not 100%
Oh sry bout that. Yea, I meant lack of multiplayer for the demo. I’d say 100% that there is online multiplayer in the retail. I have nothing to confirm this, but they’d be stupid not to put it in. Half of an RTS experience is playing versus friends and other people.