Deep Scrub: Halo Wars

I love the Halo universe. The games definitely have their flaws but the writing, plot, and action have been effective and enjoyable. Master Chief alone is one of my favorite protagonists, kind of my Gordon Freeman if you will, except that Master Chief has an actual personality rather than one you yourself have made up.

I'm also a fan of real-time strategy games (in theory, though less so in practice). But my typical qualm with RTS games is that "S" for strategy, which I don't feel has a place in the title considering how they often play. Most of these types of games simply have you throwing units at your enemy until you win, and if you don't, it's because you didn't throw enough. That's hardly strategy, but thankfully Relic Entertainment has been showing everyone else how to do it with the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War series, which actually require you to *gasp* think about what you're doing.

Too bad Ensemble Studios apparently hasn't played those games, as Halo Wars rips us from the warmth of their great advancements and throws us back into the Iron Age of strategy games. All while conveying the action through some of the worst piss-poor graphics I've seen on the Xbox 360 yet.  Halo Wars sucks like Paris Hilton, and if you want to know why, please read on...

My initial impression of the game was actually fairly positive. The menu itself sets the stage for your trials with haunting music that makes sparse yet emotional use of the piano. An FMV plays in the background and is paced with the audio, so before you even begin you can already feel the tension rising. Eventually the music segues into the traditional Halo theme song, reminding you of the scale of the quest in which you are about to partake.

Immediately afterwards the FMV assault begins. I'll make it clear right now that anytime you have me taking my hands off the controller while playing a video game you are failing me, but that does not mean there isn't a place or time for them.  However, my opinion is that RTS games are rarely the time or the place, since the way you play these games is so detached from the way cut-scenes convey story (I often feel like a mystical spirit that just watches what other people live their lives in-between skirmishes).

Their graphical fidelity of the cinematics are more than acceptable but the pacing and cinematography itself is uninspiring. The intro could have been a moment from any lackluster war game/movie but at least it does explain the current situation somewhat. There are pause and skip buttons during each one which I have to say is a welcome perk, considering how I am a fan of both story and my right to pee when I want.

The real-time graphics in Halo Wars however, are bland and sometimes irritating; the character models seem to lack any textures at all, there isn't any anti-aliasing worth speaking of, particle effects are rudimentary at best, and the shadows often come off as graphical anomalies rather than a reduction in light. I may be the most forgiving person on this planet when it comes to graphics, but this game is fugly.

The real kick in the pants is that the game looks like shit but then performs like it too. There is a noticeable loss of framerate any time you start any kind of action and really the only time things looked smooth was when I was controlling a lone Warthog in an area with little decoration. This is probably because there is so much superfluous detail in the environments. The Covenant look like purple turds but there is wreckage, smoke, fire, shields, debris, and all kind's of useless crap that only hurts performance.

Thankfully the controls feel quite close to perfect, which is a big deal considering that this is a console RTS. Move the camera with the left analog, rotate and zoom with the right, select all units with the left bumper and all on-screen ones with the right bumper. Using special abilities is as easy as selecting a unit and pressing Y and you can zoom to units and bases with the directional. Holding down A creates a circle which can be used to select multiple units and double-clicking on a unit selects all of it's kind. Nothing new here but it works, and well.

The combat itself is... I want to find a word here that fits properly... let's go with "brain-dead". Most of the time you're just throwing a larger mass of guys at a smaller one, and each battle plays out rock-paper-scissor style; this guy beats infantry but is weak to vehicles, this ones weak to vehicles but strong against air, et cetera. Vehicles will move a little during skirmishes but otherwise battles are usually just two units trading blows until one's dead.

You can take cover behind wreckage and debris and you would almost be stupid not to; it's everywhere, at every choke point, near every base, and strangely littered around almost every enemy encampment. It's placement never once felt natural, instead positioned as if to keep you from having to watch so many units die during firefights. Some structures can be garrisoned but getting any members from a group of units to enter one is fucking frustrating. Every man, ship, and vehicle will swarm it like a pack of jackasses and only after about 30 seconds of chest-slapping will a few of those units find their way in.

The path-finding is fucktarded in Halo Wars. Your units can not pass through each other so any time you try to move a group through a narrow choke point they clog it like John Goodman does his toilet, literally getting so stuck that most will no longer register move commands. At that point they are all too busy drooling on themselves to figure out how to escape and instead you have to extract them one by one until the keystone-clogger is finally pulled and the rest come spilling after.

There's nothing special about the base building in this game either, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this point. Make yourself some power sources, a building that generates resources, and a barracks, and then start churning out units until you have an army. You can find money on the battlefield in the form of collectible crates but I never were they worth the time to pick up, as I was always flush with cash. You can expand your base to other designated areas (which are few and far between) but each new outpost will be identical to the last, so this only offers to expand your resources and reach.

You can't even move your cursor over objects at the edge of the screen without rotating your camera which can make some objects unintuitive to obtain/destroy. The demo's worth of story and character development I got was boring and cliched but it's hard to speak about that too much considering.

So what we have here is a game that looks like shit, plays like shit, sounds pretty good, and controls really well. All in all, I did not have fun and if I didn't have this article to show for it, I would want my time back.

Of course, that is just my opinion of a demo and one would have to be foolish not to pick it up and try it for themselves. But if you were planning on running down to Best Buck and picking up a copy without consideration, please don't.

Unless you have a high tolerance for lackluster RTS games, that is. Halo Wars hits shelves March 3rd.

-Unfather

Comments

[dopeman]

you should get your stuff from me - all natural and it won't make you hallucinate. I played the demo and I think it kicks ass.

[Unfather]

Hahaha what's yer number man?

Maybe I'm just out of touch with what people want out of an RTS these days, but have you tried Company of Heroes or the Dawn of War games? They make this look like a PS1 port of a bad PC game. I spent a little more time with it and I have to say I'm still not convinced.

The full game may surprise me, but I don't think it'll be worth the investment.