Halo Wars Demo Available (360)

If you liked and played AOE a lot (and lord knows I did), you may not find HW to your liking.

I love RTS and Halo so this game is right up my alley, but it's a very simplified RTS compared to AOE, C&C, Starcraft, etc. You can't garrison units, only select all units or only those on the screen (you can select a smaller group, but it's not fast). You don't have to go out and collect multiple different resources in HW, only build supply pads to receive a constant stream of "supplies". And rather than place a structure anywhere, you're limited to the areas on your fortress... as you upgrade the fortress you get more spots (start with 3, then 5 plus 4 weapons placements and finally 7). So far I'm finding you can't get by with just 1 base, especially past the first couple of levels.

Graphics wise HW and AOE are fairly similar... HW won't win any awards for graphics.

Upgrades work like most RTS... pay the supply price and build the pre-cursors to the more advanced stuff. With HW you need to build power stations to get to the higher tech levels.

Units wise, you can only built 30 max to start (different vehicles take differing amounts of your basic 30). About the 5th mission you can upgrade to 40 units. As an additional bonus, you can save captured units to go over the limit (just Warthogs so far) or an airdrop with come in with additional units (5-6 Spartans in mission 5 part 2 ).

I haven't ventured online yet as I like to finish the campaign first, so I can't really comment on it.

I've played for the last two nights and I'm addicted.

If there's anything else you'd like to know, just ask.

I've had a few days to really play with it and am really enjoying it. I certainly don't think it's a console seller, like Halo 3 or Rock Band, but it's an excellent game in its own right; well worth the $70 I paid for it.

I disagree somewhat with PrimeBane though. While the standard game play doesn't immediately make you go "ooohhhhhh", there's a lot of attention to detail -- the character animations, the vehicles and their markings, the buildings and their associated animations. The more I play the more impressed I am with the graphics.

As for the buildings, yes, you are constrained in where you can build. This is pretty standard fair for console based RTS games. The "Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth" games were the same. I think it's almost a necessity, just because of the lack of keyboard and mouse. They've simplified the building and gathering controls to make them easy to use on a console, but I think they've done it very well (I still miss being able to select groups of units using the number keys though).

I have noticed some nice controls like hitting A twice (like the double-click of a mouse) to select all units of that type, or using the Right-trigger to cycle through units types when a larger group is selected.

If you're a die-hard RTS fan, then the PC is probably your best environment. If you're an RTS fan and/or a fan of Halo, and already have an Xbox, then rent it at the very least. Ensemble has done an excellent job, as you'd expect.