A Solution to Boredom

As many of my friends know, my lovely wife pre-ordered the Halo Wars collector’s edition for me as a Valentine’s Day present.  Knowing that I have loved the 3 main Halo games she rightly assumed I would want Halo Wars even though the game play differs from the typical Halo FPS.  She had also heard me talking about the demo which I downloaded off of Xbox Live for free.

In all reality it was quite a gamble for her to get the game for me as I probably did not seem to have that many good things to say after playing the demo…  In case any readers have not played the demo, it contains the two in game tutorials (basic and advanced) as well as a the first couple missions of the game.

Now before I go into my opinions on the game play let me preface it with the fact that I have only played about 8 or so missions into the game and only played one online match.  At this point I still have not gotten 100% used to the controls nor do I have a firm grasp on the upgrade structure of units and buildings.

First of all I feel as though the developer, Ensemble Studios,  have done a good job at making many of the tasks performed by a typical RTS (real time strategy) player easy.  This is not necessarily an easy task as RTS game have usually been solely built for play on computers.  Reasons for this include the use of a keyboard which has many more buttons than a console controller and the use of a mouse which is much easier to maneuver.  One must wonder why it is that consoles have still not allowed the use of a keyboard and mouse in game play…  To make it easier to select units in a variety of ways the following methods were created which are similar to what has been used in computer gaming.  Left Bumper (LB) can be used to select all units under your control.  Right Bumper (RB) can be used to select all local units, or those which are currently on your screen.  Holding the A button will create a circle, call the “paintbrush” which can be used to highlight all units you wish to command.  Last but not least, placing the cursor over a unit and pressing the A button twice will select all units of that unit’s type.

Although the methods for unit selection are great, there are a couple things I cannot figure out.  How to select multiple units of different types from within a cluster of units is one such thing I just cannot figure out.  You can try to use the paintbrush method but it the cursor just gets to big for fine picking of units.  Another and possibly even bigger loss is the group selection that I miss from games like Warcraft and Starcraft.  If you are unfamiliar with what I speak of then let me explain.  In typical computer RTS games there is usually the ability to select units and then bind their group to a number key on the keyboard.  That way when you press a number it centers your screen on that group and highlights them all so that they are ready to be commanded.  In Halo Wars the only way to do this is to use down on the analog pad to cycle through your groups of units.  This is not nearly as efficient as pressing a single key, but I suppose is the best you can do on a console.

All said, I do enjoy the game.  If you like RTS games and/or the Halo plotline I definitely recommend that you either buy, rent, or better yet, borrow the game from someone you know.  With stunning cutscenes and pretty decent in game graphics it is quite a beauty to look at.  From what I have seen so far it adds a decent amount to the Halo universe.

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