You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here
Ensemble Studios, the developer behind the hotly anticipated Xbox 360 RTS Halo Wars, has said it aims to do for strategy games on the console what Halo did for the console FPS.
Speaking in an update on its official site, Ensemble’s Bruce Shelley said that the team was “very excited” about how Halo Wars’ control scheme is currently working and hoped that it would provide a shot in the arm to the strategy genre on consoles.
He said: “I may have mentioned many blogs ago that we reprogrammed Age of Mythology to be playable with an Xbox controller as a proof of concept. Designer/programmer Tim Deen got to the point that he could play AoM better with the controller than the mouse/keyboard. We are very excited about how the new, built from scratch, control system is working. We know that if we do a good job with Halo Wars, especially the controls, it could encourage a much more rich and interesting genre of console strategy games for the future. Ideally we would like to do for strategy games on the console what Halo itself did for first-person shooters on the console.”
Shelley also revealed his impressions from recent Halo Wars testing, saying that the pace of the action is “pretty high” and that many games are over by the 25 minute mark.
“First, the pace of the action is pretty high,” he said. “This is not a strategy game where you don’t interact with your opponent for the first 15 to 25 minutes. Many games are over by that point. Second, you have strategic choices. You can invest deep in technology or get into the fight fast. There are unit combinations to try. You can’t build and invest in everything, but you have to be flexible if your current plan is not working. Third, there are opportunities for players to demonstrate skill by matching up the correct units to take advantage of strengths and weaknesses.”
Halo Wars doesn’t currently have a release date, but will “hopefully” be shown at E3 in playable form in a few weeks. We’ll be there to give you first hand impressions if it is.
About the Author
