Halo Wars Preview

The Covenant are confirmed as a playable race in skirmish mode

The d-pad isn't reserved only for movement. Up brings up an orbital powers menu courtesy of the Spirit of Fire, sister ship to the Pillar of Autumn, which is central to Halo Wars' mostly under wraps story. The E3 build we played had a number of special powers available, but in the final version you'll only have a very limited number of powers to play with, which are dependent on the general you've chosen to be in charge. We had fun with the Carpet Bomb - via a mini game you can devastate a number of heavily armoured enemy units in one sweeping stroke, as well as the MAC Blast, which acts like the most powerful sniper shot you've ever seen. Great for destroying enemy buildings in one shot, you target a structure via a heavenly sniper scope, press A then kablam! Building gone.

"The whole combat is built around the idea of using your special abilities and having the right guys fighting each other," Dave explains. "The tight base selection makes that happen."

For us the fact that Ensemble looks to have nailed the control system is a much bigger deal than how true the developer has stayed to the Halo universe itself. We're not saying it's not important though, so it's worth mentioning some of the changes and new units we noticed. It was inevitable that Ensemble would have to introduce new vehicles and infantry types, since the Halo FPS games simply do not have enough variety here for your typical RTS, to supplement the iconic Warthogs, Wraiths, Ghosts and Scorpion tanks. And it has.

We notice UNSC Hawks - swift helicopter-esque air units that spring forth from UNSC Air Pads. We climb the tech tree (via the construction of reactors) and build a Vulture, a heavy gunship that Dave describes as the "big, uber end game unit for the UNSC". Its Barrage special attack unleashes a huge missile salvo that's pretty much anti everything. We've already mentioned the new Flamethrower infantry units. And then there's the Spartans themselves, super soldiers who get up close and personal with enemy vehicles Master Chief style. It's new, and it's different, but it's wicked.

Classic units have been faithfully recreated, rather than re-imagined. Hornets, great for killing enemy vehicles like Wraiths but lightly armoured, fly as they should do, with speed and urgency. Warthogs, which dart out of your Command Centre when they're built, fishtail about in that powersliding fashion just as all Halo fans know they do. Warthogs, designed to be fast moving scout units, don't automatically come with a gunner - that's the first upgrade they get as you progress up the tech tree. It's clear that Ensemble has taken great care to make everything people know and love about the Halo franchise appear just as it should.

Ensemble has added to the Halo universe, not detracted from it.

The point to make about Halo Wars is that it has been built from the ground up for the Xbox 360. It's not a PC RTS that is being ported to consoles, like Command & Conquer 3 or Red Alert 3. Every unit, structure, the way resource is managed, how bases are built, indeed the entire design direction of the game, has been developed to work on Microsoft's console. And it's all the better for it.

There are questions still unanswered of course. We know the Covenant are a playable race, at least in multiplayer skirmishes, but we haven't played with them yet. And we're still hoping the Flood make it into the game in some capacity. Whatever happens, we reckon only having two races would leave Halo Wars light in the variety department.

And then there's the story, which we know next to nothing about. The E3 hands-on demo was on a Forerunner-inspired world, but we don't know how the mysterious race ties into the main plot. The game's front menu shows options for 'Five Long Years', what we assume is the UNSC two-player co-op campaign, which, Dave confirmed to us, will be playable split-screen as well as over Xbox LIVE. There's also options for Halo Wars 101, which we assume is a training mode, and multiplayer, which facilitates up to six-player skirmishes over Xbox LIVE.

There is much here for Halo fans to get excited about here - the music is the same, the sound effects are the same (gotta love those Needlers), the environments are familiar, the vehicles, weapons and everything else we know and love about the Halo universe, sans Master Chief himself, are faithfully reproduced, just in a different form. This is Halo, but not as the millions of fans around the world know it. It's different, it's an RTS and so won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's deserving of your attention and, from what we've played, could be the best console RTS ever made.

Halo Wars is due out exclusively for the Xbox 360 Spring 2009.