Today marked the release of the demo for Halo Wars on Xbox LIVE. For those of you who don't know, Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game based in the Halo universe that has captivated the world from the FPS genre. Ironically, when Bungie Studios' original Halo: Combat Evolved game started out as an RTS for Macs. Now Ensemble Studios (known for Age of Empires on PC) has gone back to those roots and produced this... so how is it exactly? After all, its in a completely different genre and built by a completely different studio, there's plenty of room for things to go wrong.
I have to say, from my time with the demo (which lets you play the first two levels of the campaign as well as quick skirmish matches on one map), Ensemble has absolutely nailed the transition from Halo the FPS to Halo the RTS. It's fluid, easy to control, and fans of the shooters will recognize a lot of things going on. It's very polished, which it should be after being in development for over 3 years. I think they definitely accomplished their goal, which was to create a from-the-ground-up RTS for a console that will be easy from the primarily-FPS-playing 360 gamers to pick up and enjoy. The game is pure fun, and even in the demo you can see the layers of depth forming and different strategies to utilize. Good for any gamer, and a resounding GREAT for any Halo fan. Now if only I could get on with landing a job so I can afford to buy it when it hits the streets on March 3....
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