Halo Wars Impressions.

So, Halo Wars demo got released yesterday over Xbox Live, and well, it's a really big, "eh" for me.
I am not the biggest RTS fan, but do enjoy Relic's work like Company of Heroes, or Dawn of War, and maybe some Age of Empires,

So, Halo Wars demo got released yesterday over Xbox Live, and well, it's a really big, "eh" for me.
I am not the biggest RTS fan, but do enjoy Relic's work like Company of Heroes, or Dawn of War, and maybe some Age of Empires,

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I enjoyed it, especially being on the console.  Yeah, it doesn't have the depth of Age of Empires, but without a mouth, I am glad it didn't.  I am looking forward to this because of how great the action and time playing it on Heroic was.  My friend and I were playing, he wasn't enjoying it until he saw it wasn't gonna be so easy to finish.  He is still iffy about it, but I am sold, maybe not.  I wish it had random maps.  Also, what did you want out of a demo, to give you everything the game has?

In my opinion its kinda like command and conquer the tiberium wars without the whole resource management

my interest is slowly rising over this game.. i am a halo fanboy apparently after all even though i dont go in much for RTS. mind you i'd sooner spend the cash on other things

I don't care for Halo, so I don't really care for Halo Wars.

I think you should tone down the amount of commas Dan. :P
And I'm on the same wavelength as DBoy here. The only Halo game I really enjoyed was the first one.
Besides, RTS for consoles is a dumb idea.

I don't think I'm going to do a blog anymore about it so I'll just write it here.

Overall it's pretty dang good. 
They seem to have struck a very nice balance.  Unlike many rtses, it's not a real time strategy resource manager and at the same time it's not a point and click game to activate battle.

They basically seem like they've balanced it to an extent where the game moves rather quickly.  It only takes a small amount of time before you can send units.  The strategy comes from the RPS method and what you build yes, but how you approach things make just as much as a difference two.  Each unit really feels like a character and they're just damn satisying to use.  By contrast, I find that most rtses have little instant satisfaction and are either about resource management or barely truly a rts (looking at you dawn of war 2)

It's actually suprisingly good.  The demo campaign levels are rather meh though.  But at the same time, I have to doubt that's how the actual game is set up though.
Skirmishes are the best part of the demo.

It felt like a big "meh" as well for me.

Coming out the same day that the Killzone 2 demo dropped (comparing hype, not actual game.) it seems this thing is going under everyone's radar. A bunch of quick promotional material, I had almost forgotten the game completely until I had read a few days back the demo was being released.
Gearhead said:

Halo has a huge following, bigger than maybe any other game, everyone knows it. But people who play Halo, 99% of them will not play this game because it is, well, and RTS. So if you are going to make an RTS game, try to at least make one that people who are a fan of the genre, will actually enjoy playing.

I haven't played too much of the demo, just the two tutorials and a little bit of a skirmish.

Overall though, for a console RTS it is pretty good. But that is the problem, in the end a Console RTS game is not going to be nearly comparable to a PC RTS game. Once you take that into account, you realize not that many people on consoles would really even want to play an RTS which means their interest and how good they think the game is, is much lower than for something on the PC.

What I am attempting to get at is that, for the time its feeling like the best console rts on the market, but there aren't many and none of them are amazing. They can't be, because of what an RTS is. There's not enough buttons on a controller to do it properly. So to make it work it needs to be "dumbed" down for the sake controls. (The thought that it is being dumbed down because console gamers are stupid is ludicrous. They just don't have the same interests.)

So my prediction is that it is going to do alright as a game. Though you'll probably see quite a few ending up in the used section of your Gamestop sooner rather than later. It will probably get a pretty avid, active following of a good number of pepole that will play it for awhile. Most though will probably pass over it after a short while.

The demo is a BEAST (literally, it's 1.40 GB!).

It's been 3 hours and it's only at 54% completion. Is this normal, how long did it take for everyone else to dl?

In my opinion Halo Wars is MUCH better than Halo 3 ever was. Halo 3 gets boring quickly...this may not. So far it looks like it won't.

I thought the game was terrible.

I DL'd it thinking it would be a quick go and a quick dismissal.   I like the Halo games and the whole mythos, so I thought I'd at least try the demo. What I found was a pretty fun game, and after several runs through the campaign levels and several skirmishes, I find it pretty addictive.  It controls super easy, and although I don't usually play RTS's, I'm sure it has been simplified too much for the hardcore pc player....but that's not who M$'s studios was aiming at.  They intend that all Halo fans can get into it.  It will cover events 20 years prior to the Halo event so the ground the story covers will be fresh.  And the cg cutscenes that do the story telling are simply gorgeous, and worth playing through the campaign for alone imo.  Day one purchase now for me...and kudos to M$ for putting out such a huge sample in their demo.  BTW, it's much more fun on the Heroic setting in either mode.  And I look forward to playing the legendary mode w/a friend online...woot!!!

"I thought the game was terrible."