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I was actually pretty hopeful for this, and I believe that it has some potential. But screw Wars, give me ODST!!!!! DON'T MAKE ME WAIT TO GET RECON ARMOR!!

Seriously...? You want ODST because you'll be able to unlock Recon armour, more than because it's gonna be a freaking awesome game?

ODST?

The new Halo fps that is more of a stealth based game. Instead of playing as Master Chief you play as a Halo ODST soldier, a recon specialist.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I didn't think the game was TOO bad, I mean, it was kinda cool. But after playing Covenant for the like 10th time and using my SUPAH AWEZOM LAHZUR BEIEM! to blow up my opponent's base, it kinda got old. REALLY fast.

Console RTS = ROFL.

Gamespot gave it a 6.5, which seems probably about right.

Well from what I understand it is geared towards Halo fans and beginners. It is not very complex and really has no branching tech trees. Thus it's a bit of stripped down experience for people who are used to RTS games and the console controls might be irritating to someone wanting to use a mouse.

Techboss wrote:Console RTS = ROFL.

Gamespot gave it a 6.5, which seems probably about right.

Halo, Console FPS = ROFL.

Techboss wrote:Console RTS = ROFL.

Gamespot gave it a 6.5, which seems probably about right.

Actually, Gamespot's score is the absolute lowest given by any publication. The vast majority of them rated it much higher:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/halowars

yakface wrote:Actually, Gamespot's score is the absolute lowest given by any publication. The vast majority of them rated it much higher

A couple of points here.

1) Gamespot's review is probably a bit low because the reviewer seemed all butt hurt because he couldn't play as the flood.
2) However, most video game reviews are wicked high IMO. Fallout 3 was given a 9.0 even though it had a lot of bugs and a story that wasn't all the impressive. In general, most video game reviews are far to high when you really think about them. Unless the game is utter trash, rarely will it get anything under a 7. This means 7 is the true average, rather than 5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_journalism#Ethics

Good points in the above.

True, but reviews still help to give an idea of a game's relative quality, if not it's absolute quality.

Seggi wrote:Seriously...? You want ODST because you'll be able to unlock Recon armour, more than because it's gonna be a freaking awesome game?

naw, I just want a new motivation for killing brutes. They deserve to die for what their people did too mine. Besides, Ron Perlman might lend his voice to this as well, which'll be sweet!

I bought it today. It's nowhere near as bad as other console RTS games in terms of controls, ala Battle for Middle-Earth II. It's simplistic but awesome fun. And the cutscenes are epic too.

Bah, curse you and your release-date evasion!

What are you talking about? It's out in the rest of the world, right?

The release date was supposed to be the 27th, everywhere except North America.

Unless wikipedia is lying to me again.

Stupid rest of the world.

Happy March 3rd <3

I finished the story mode today. The game isn't super-complex but it's a lot of fun - and the cutscenes are epic.

Worth a rental, at least, if you're a Halo fan.

I may have to raise the difficulty on Skirmish, though. Once I've unlocked ODSTs with Captain Cutter, it just gets silly.

What did y'all think of the story mode? There's only one plot hole that I can see, really.

I just got through playing it today. They had a tournament for it at my local Gamespot. All I can say is, this game is impressive. Heck, it deserves a rental.


Although, I'm quite dissapointed with the Covenant. It seems that Ensemble didn't put too much thought into them. The fact that they need their heroes alive to win games is a disappointing factor if you ask me. The UNSC can walk all over the Covenant should the UNSC player know how to exploit the Covenant's pretty obvious weakness. They don't even need to have their hero alive to shoot MAC blasts.

Cryonicleech wrote:I just got through playing it today. They had a tournament for it at my local Gamespot. All I can say is, this game is impressive. Heck, it deserves a rental.


Although, I'm quite dissapointed with the Covenant. It seems that Ensemble didn't put too much thought into them. The fact that they need their heroes alive to win games is a disappointing factor if you ask me. The UNSC can walk all over the Covenant should the UNSC player know how to exploit the Covenant's pretty obvious weakness. They don't even need to have their hero alive to shoot MAC blasts.

To be fair, Captain Cutter is a very different beast imo than the Prophet.

But that goes more into the background of the Covenant, etc etc, with how Prophets are rallying symbols and don't entrust their power to anyone but themselves or the Arbiters(who basically have to off themselves if they fail, if I remember right).
Whereas Cutter's a ship captain that...probably wouldn't be too useful on the frontlines

I'm probably going to sell some of my old games so I can buy this one, as I am a huge Halo fan. That and I played the demo and the game just looks sweet.

It is a good console RTS. Since it was designed that way, and not ported from the PC, it works decently well. Very simple control, and the animations of the troops are nice.

Decent graphics, only the movies are truly great, but with an RTS the normal game doesn't have to look awesome-sauce.

Most missions have side objectives and several of them are very difficult. Unlike other RTS games a simple spam attack usually won't work very well. You generally need a good mix of units and put some sort of thought into your attack plan.

I would give it about a 7, but I don't like RTS games much at all. It's fun, but it isn't overly complicated.

Kanluwen wrote:

Cryonicleech wrote:I just got through playing it today. They had a tournament for it at my local Gamespot. All I can say is, this game is impressive. Heck, it deserves a rental.


Although, I'm quite dissapointed with the Covenant. It seems that Ensemble didn't put too much thought into them. The fact that they need their heroes alive to win games is a disappointing factor if you ask me. The UNSC can walk all over the Covenant should the UNSC player know how to exploit the Covenant's pretty obvious weakness. They don't even need to have their hero alive to shoot MAC blasts.

To be fair, Captain Cutter is a very different beast imo than the Prophet.

But that goes more into the background of the Covenant, etc etc, with how Prophets are rallying symbols and don't entrust their power to anyone but themselves or the Arbiters(who basically have to off themselves if they fail, if I remember right).
Whereas Cutter's a ship captain that...probably wouldn't be too useful on the frontlines

You're absolutely right. I'll probably just end up protecting my heroes more then.

There are definitely aspects of this game that I like control wise.

Although the LOTR rts on 360 made some good advances as far as base building and using special powers and such, but Halo Wars really streamlined it. No workers. No holding a trigger button to keep a tab up while you use another stick to select powers. No opening up power tabs to get units to do their special abilities. Just press y for the alternate attack. Easy to use control groups. It really is an unusually easy to use interface for a console rts and I love that.
As far as the balance goes, I don't really know because I don't own the full game but it seems like the Covenant needs to keep up pressure and rush to win while if the UNSC can last up to its power units then it gains a nice battlefield advantage. Jackals are a must early on to combat Marines, but big mobs of cheap grunts can smash buildings quickly with plasma grenades, which seemt o be more powerful than the equivalent Marine power. Vultures and Hornets really ruin ground units, but covenant vampire fighters take them down easily.

You know what, this is gonna actually seem quite wishy-washy, but after playing the game for a while at my friend's house, I had an epiphany.

As I went through online games, I kinda feel that it became a constant rush-fest. UNSC marine spam, Banshee spam, wraith spam etc. Railguns has basically summed it up perfectly.

I am slowly beginning to think that I won't buy it.

Now of course, it seems quite wishy-washy, but I hadn't played the full game

Cryonicleech wrote:You know what, this is gonna actually seem quite wishy-washy, but after playing the game for a while at my friend's house, I had an epiphany.

As I went through online games, I kinda feel that it became a constant rush-fest. UNSC marine spam, Banshee spam, wraith spam etc. Railguns has basically summed it up perfectly.

I am slowly beginning to think that I won't buy it.

Now of course, it seems quite wishy-washy, but I hadn't played the full game

I can't speak for PvP, but when playing skirmishes against the computer I do think it is possible to counter spam and defeat it by tooling up your turrets (which are cheap to customize) and taking a balanced force. Leave the units that are good at dealing with the enemy spam units at your base and then send the rest of your other units out to capture stuff and/or attack the enemy base when they're not expecting it.

But even so, I definitely think the game is flawed by sticking too much to the traditional RTS game conventions. Yeah, they did away with the workers collecting resources and they condensed the base building down into a single building, but I really do believe these games are more about managing your buildings then they are about strategies and tactics.


I've just started playing DOW2, and I think they are soooo much closer to making these games the way they need to be made (for my taste, at least). But even DOW2 doesn't go as far as I think it could in the multi-player mode. I think they could have borrowed more from the campaign to make the multi-player genre defining.

Here's how:

The one thing that DOW2 in the campaign does brilliantly is to make sure that your squads never totally die, they just whittle down to the 'hero' who then topples over waiting to be recovered by a friendly unit who moves near him (kind of like Halo does with its stand-alone heroes). If the hero is recovered they have to fall back to a safe point (a beacon or the drop pod the mission started at) to 'recover' the rest of their unit.

I think the DOW2 multi-player should have carried this idea over. Your squads should never fully die out but should get whittled down to one model who remains on the battlefield for you to 'recover'. Then that hero for the unit would have to fall back to one of your objectives that you hold to recover the rest of the unit. This would take time to recover, so the enemy could still easily ambush a unit sitting on their objective recovering.

Alternatively, players could 'abandon' a fallen hero and just recycle the unit back at their home base, but again this would take even more time to do (so players wouldn't be excited about doing it).

This would force players to fight to recover their fallen units and it would force players with damaged units to fall back to their safety points. . .something I don't think happens even in DOW2 and doesn't represent (IMHO) well how battles can ebb and flow as one side gains an advantage in a certain area.

Just my 2 cents!

I think that while it may take the streamlining conventions too far in general, I consider it a necessary evil for console play. I can't imagine trying to manage a Warcraft 3 style base on an Xbox 360 with workers running around and several different tech buildings and unit production buildings spread out.

As far as playstyle is concerned, it seems to be that you generally treat your first base as an economic center with about 4 supply depots, 1 reactor and a couple of unit producing buildings. Build up a force from there and then you tech up by capturing a nearby building site and using it for reactors and such. This strategy does make sure you have the resources to upgrade and keep and decent force running around so I generally stick to it, but I scout with my beginning hog to see what the enemy is up to and if they are teching up I'll rush with marines and research rockets to take out their buildings.

I just bought the game today, and the game is amazing and so much fun to play.