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Each unit creation structure comes with three different units that can be created. The barracks can create basic marines, flamethrowers, and of course, Spartans. Each unit comes equipped with a unique special ability that can be upgraded. Marines can throw grenades for splash damage, flamethrowers can use a flash grenade to stun ground infantry temporarily, and in true Halo fashion, Spartans are able to leap onto an enemy vehicle, rip open the cockpit, throw out the driver, and take the vehicle as their own.



On the vehicle side of things, nearly all of the classic vehicles found throughout the Halo trilogy plus some new ones can be found in Halo Wars. Warthogs, Scorpions, Pelicans, Elephants, Wraiths, Ghosts, Banshees, and the list goes on. One of the new and exciting vehicles that we got to play around with was the Vulture. This flying behemoth is a slow moving uber unit that can lay down all kinds of pain and destruction with barrages of missiles that hit both air and ground targets and dual machine guns.

Management of your base and your armies is easy and intuitive thanks to a menu in the top left corner that lets you immediately focus on your bases, armies, and units that are being attacked via a simple press of the D-pad. Unit selection is done by simply clicking on a unit or holding down the A button to create a blue circle, which expands and allows you to select a limited number of units for a small army.

For a large scale attack, a simple press of the left bumper will select all available combat units. If you just want to grab the units that you can see on the screen, a press of the right bumper will highlight those units. If you want just a specific type of unit, you can press the right trigger to cycle though the various types of selected units. It’s micromanagement made simple and intuitive without feeling like it has been dumbed-down for a console.



In addition to managing your units and your base, you also have another option on the d-pad menu. By pressing up on the D-pad, you bring up a menu that allows you to choose between three abilities of the Spirit of Fire, which is the main UNSC ship that you will be reporting to in the main campaign mode. The three abilites to choose from include: Mac Blast, Carpet Bomb, and an ability that lets you heal an army of units like a regenerator would in Halo 3. The Mac Blast unleashes a powerful laser blast that can completely devastate a small radius of units and buildings. A carpet bomb, as you might expect, is an air strike that drops several bombs along a small line that you’re able to designate and will obliterate any units that get caught up in the explosion, as well as deal heavy damage to any buildings as well.



Every ability used from the Spirit of Fire has a long cooldown time which makes them great for use as an extra ability to help turn the tides of battle in your favor without making them too overpowered. You must be careful where you place them as well since these abilities make no distinction between friend and foe.

Overall, we walked into our demo with Halo Wars as skeptics, but walked away as firm believers in the strength of the team at Ensemble. Halo Wars might not be as complex as some of the bigger RTS titles on the PC market right now, and it is obvious that an effort was made to make it as accessible to the average console gamer as it is to the hardcore RTS fan, but even from just a short 45 minute demo we could tell that Halo Wars is full of depth and strategic possibilities.

The controls work great and manage to cover every one of our concerns about controlling an RTS on a console, the graphics and animations look fantastic, and the prospect of being able to play through another untold chapter of the Halo story is an exciting one to say the least. Get ready to continue the fight again when Halo Wars hits shelves in early 2009.