Halo Wars: First Look
We get a peek at the RTS set at the beginning of the war against the Covenant
Tags: Halo Wars Categories: Previews, Xbox 360 Previews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Sep 26th, 2007
Halo Wars has been in development for 2 and ½ years, the first six months of which were spent working on the controls. Developed from the ground up for the Xbox 360, this is an important aspect of the game. Set 20 years before the original Xbox launch title, halo Wars depicts the start of the war between the Covenant and human race.
Players will press “A” to select a unit, double tap it to select all of that type of unit. “X” will send the selected unit or units to a specified area. Alternately, players will have the option of pressing down and holding the “A” button down to select the units within a specific area.
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What units will be available? Expect to see virtually everything from the Halo trilogy to appear here, as well as a number of new items. The UNSC Hawks are aerial vehicles and just one of the new vehicles created for Halo Wars. The Wolverine is a vehicle specializing in anti-aircraft weaponry. Of course the Covenant have a few new tricks up their sleeve. The Scarab is reminiscent of the Star wars AT-AT, but with more legs and a bug-like appearance. Even though it is rather large, it can be taken out with the aid of the human’s ship in orbit.
Looking around the human base, players can see the missile silo, command center, a supply pad, vehicle depot and more. There are even some Marines behind one of the buildings doing pushups. Halo Wars will have an economy and some resource management, but the developers didn’t want players to endlessly dig in the dirt.
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All of the battles will take place on land – meaning players will be able to run over their opponent with a Warthog. The Scorpion tank even has a “honk” command, which will gather various ground infantry in the area to hop on for some extra fire power. While everything will be land based, the action will take place on three different planets.
Spartans as well as land mines will be in the game, but the whole array of available units has not been finalized or revealed. With the game coming in 2008 (late in the year) there’s still plenty of time for things to be worked out. One thing we were told is that players will not be able to utilize captured enemy technology – once an enemy unit is captured it is destroyed. That’s too bad, actually.
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Some of the audio is being provided by Bungie, but most is being newly recorded. Bungie does have a hand in how the game will play, such as helping with the new units and how they all work against each other. While this bodes well for fans of the franchise, what makes us even more excited is the prospect of playing through the game’s campaign in co-op. Yes, there is a versus style portion to the game, but playing a strategy game with somebody holds great appeal.
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Tags: Halo Wars
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Sep 26th, 2007 and is filed under Previews, Xbox 360 Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
