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We go hands on with the Halo themed real time strategy game to find out if the series successfully makes the jump from FPS to RTS.

Real Time Strategy games are generally not a genre that easily translates over to consoles. With all of the complexity that RTS games bring with them and the constant need for hotkeys and shortcuts that can only be provided by a keyboard, it’s no surprise that it’s a genre that primarily keeps its roots set on the PC front. However, the good people over at Ensemble Studios are looking to change all that, and what better franchise to do it with than the Halo series.

Halo Wars is a Real Time Strategy game that has been specifically designed with the Xbox 360 in mind, and based on what we saw and played at E3, Ensemble has somehow taken a puzzle piece from a different puzzle and made it fit into their own.



While all questions regarding the story of Halo Wars were answered with a response of “We can’t talk about that yet,” what we do know is that it is a prequel to the Halo series that takes place in the year 2531, 21 years before the events of the original Halo. The main campaign will focus on the war of the UNSC against the Covenant and will feature all new characters and units on both sides of the war. The representatives from Ensemble were tight lipped about whether or not the Flood would be a third race, but they did hint that they could perhaps be a non playable race that you might encounter in the campaign.

Our hands-on time gave us control of a UNSC base and charged us with eliminating all of the Covenant forces in the area. To start out, let’s talk about the unique base building mechanic of Halo Wars. Now in most RTS games, you start out with a main building and several workers who can collect resources and build structures. Not so in Halo Wars. In fact, there are no units used for resource gathering at all. In Halo Wars, you start out with a main building and a Warthog which you can use to scout the surrounding area. Your base comes with six empty slots for main buildings with four slots for turrets on each corner of the base. By clicking on an empty building slot, you bring up a menu that lets you choose what kind of building you want to create.



We were advised to create a supply depot first so we can get our resource income flowing. That’s right, instead of using units to harvest resources, you instead create supply depots which increase the rate at which you gain resources. To get resources faster, you can either create more supply depots, or upgrade the ones that you have. The tradeoff here is that because you only have a certain number of slots to build structures on, you have to balance having enough supply depots to fund your expenditures, but while also having enough open slots to build unit creating structures like barracks and vehicle factories.

Of course eventually you’re going to run out of room to build more structures, in which case you’re going to have to expand. Suitable expansion spots are marked by little squares on the minimap and can be utilized by simply sending any unit over to one, clicking on the silhouette of the building, and selecting the option from the pop up menu. Of course after razing an opponent’s base, you will be able to build your own expansion there as well.