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Posted on: Nov 09, 2007

Halo Wars

WORDS BY: Ryan McCaffrey

Can you spot the new Wolverine? Hint: there are four in this shot.

Talk about going old-school. Halo Wars — the headline announcement at last year’s X06 show – is taking Halo back to its origins. And no, we don’t mean with a shooter prequel. Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game, which is how Halo was originally conceived. It’s being handled by Ensemble Studios, who will rely on their glowing RTS track record (Age of Empires series) as they do the heavy lifting while Bungie provides support.

Set in 2531 at the onset of the human-Covenant war (read: before the events of the first Halo), the story follows the crew of the UNSC support ship Spirit of Fire and spans multiple planets. Every Halo standby is included: Warthogs, Banshees, Scorpions, Ghosts, and so on, plus a slew of new rides, including the tank-esque Rhino and the Wolverine, an anti-air tank/Warthog hybrid. They all sound exactly as they should, and thanks to the carefully crafted physics engine, everything moves properly, too. In fact, watching Warthogs fishtail around the UNSC base was like watching a Halo 3 match from a god’s-eye view.

We got to see the Warthog splatter a few Covies here.

The highlight of the gameplay demo was a massive skirmish with vehicles and infantry on both sides. As Covenant Banshees plastered UNSC Warthogs — which were busy shooting at and ramming Covie ground troops — the humans countered with the aforementioned Wolverines before the aliens brought in a Scarab, which proceeded to vaporize every foot soldier before Ensemble summoned the UNSC’s MAC cannon (an orbital Hammer of Dawn–alike) to even the scales.

Though we didn’t get to play, the controls seemed even easier than those in Command & Conquer 3: pressing A selects, double-tapping A selects all units of the same type, B unselects, X moves, Y accesses powers and abilities (like calling down a MAC-cannon shot), and LB selects everything. If you’ve never played an RTS, odds are the canonical reverence oozing from Halo Wars will get you to start.

Anyone see Sidewinder around here?

COMMENTS:

this game is going to be sweet! first of all it is going to explain the halo story better being in the beggening of the war and second of all it is just plain going to rock!

halo has bin asome from the start. Makeing it into a RTS game is grate as a prequal but I think makeing a halo 4 because the legendary ending were chief runs into the planet.

this game seems great in writing lets see if they can pull it off. personaly i cant wait

i hope its not a nother battle for middle earth

im gtana hold my opineion tell the games finished and i try it but i think its going to be intrsting and HOPEFULLY it wont suck like the preveus RTS on the xboxes i hoped this guys have copeyed C&C's game play for halo cuse i think its the best for a consule RTS

This game is gonna rock. I wonder if it will come out on PC... Cross platform gaming... it gives some interesting posibilities.

THIS GAME IS GONA BE AWEWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

email me at Barthvader43@yahoo.com or play w/ me (Beast at 3)

< sickGAM3R > i never really liked strategy games but this one looks sick (probably just because it says "halo" on the box)

I wish they would give us a release date!!!

ensemble is a great RTS game maker, so this game will be good, can;t wait



the game is nice this will be replaceing halo3

Can't freakin' wait man!!!

Chippy

This game looks awesome!!!!

Does seem pretty good. Hope everthing goes great with it's making.

Gamertag: R3VO1V3R 08
hey i bought that SPNK case.....well anyways i hope Ensemble does a good job..its Halo after all...

Another Halo Item to add to my collection...I still need to get that SPNKR case from Issue #78.

Looks like a good game.

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