Hello Halo!

I'm still in space, fighting aliens! I'm doing a little Halo roundup, namely Halo Reach and Halo Wars. I've played Halo Wars a while back, but decided to put it in this post, together with one of the biggest shooters this year.


Review

Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2010

Halo Reach is apparently Bungie’s last Halo title and Microsoft is going to continue the franchise with another developer. What Bungie have done is modernise the Halo series, make it more accessible, varied and taken influence from other shooters. The end result is a fantastic experience.

If you're brand new to the Xbox 360 and have never touched the Halo franchise before, this is actually a great place to begin. Even if your interest is just to buy a new shooter in general, you'll end up loving this. It feels more as a modern shooter than ever for the franchise.

Should your interest for the series begin here though, I'd recommend you to then move on to Halo 3 and Halo ODST thereafter, review on the latter here. Halo 3 is a longer title than Halo Reach, but requires you to be little more acquainted with the series to fully enjoy.



Halo Reach perfectly blends the spectacular environments from Halo 3 and adds a pinch of that dark mood from ODST. What’s more, it's graphically modernised to be right up there with the best shooters, with even larger and open areas than before. The sense of being part of a large scale war is evident, the guns all look and feel more satisfying this time around and the environments ooze atmosphere!

The older Halo titles would sometimes have a lot of repetition, dragging on for too long with certain areas. Halo Reach, however, is extremely varied. Each, new environment looks distinctly different from the last and the your objectives are something new in each chapter.

I mean, for crying out: one level has you fighting an open, beach-landing, battle, followed by close combat in a building, which again has you jumping into a spaceship, travelling into space and joining a massive spaceship battle. Only to end onboard a huge mothership and battle it out in low-gravity on foot again.

Talk about extremely varied!



There's an overall more realistic approach to cutscenes and the gun designs, obviously influenced by the massively popular modern warfare styled shooters like Call of Duty these days. Combined with the Halo world, it ends up as an modern and amazing shooter.

Sure, I have some complaints. The framerate drops at times and it’s noticeable that the graphical overhaul on the Halo 3 engine has been pushing what this ageing console generation can handle. The length of the game is clearly made to compensate for impatient, modern shooter fans. In comparison, Halo 3 felt much longer!



Just like many shooters these days, you’re just getting into it all, when suddenly the credits roll. The length can be helped with a replay in the coop, which I highly recommend, and playing it on a harder level.

Even though you're a Halo fan, or a newcomer to the series just looking for a solid shooter, you should pick this up, without hesitation. It misses the top rating for covering a lot of old ground and being a little short, otherwise it's a fantastic swan song for Bungie's last Halo!




Review

Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2009

“It’s like Command & Conquer with a Halo theme!” was the first thing that came into my mind while playing Halo Wars.

In a way, that sentence sums it up well. Playing real-time strategy on consoles isn't something I'm very fond of, but Halo Wars proved it works well! The menus and controls are highly optimised for the Xbox 360 controller. The simple nature of upgrading units, building bases and commanding your units make Halo Wars enjoyable as a console RTS.

This isn't a Bungie developed Halo, but the series vibe is very much present. The vehicles, old and new, all look great and exactly like they do in the main Halo series. The cutscenes are fantastic and bring together an exciting story set in the Halo universe.

I played through it coop with a friend and I highly recommend doing so for everyone! You can share units and resources between each other. The best strategy being one player builds the base and units, while the other person concentrates on the battle against the enemy. It sure is challenging at certain points, allowing little time for decisions, and you’ll likely end up replaying missions.

Being familiar to the Halo universe helps understand which units are best suited towards which enemy, but prior knowledge of the lore is not a must. My main gripe, as the game progressed, were that I felt the number of units, and availability for upgrades, were limited. It felt like Command & Conquer light, I'm guessing the amount of memory and CPU on a console holds back. RTS titles are usually better suited for PCs.

Overall, I enjoyed my playthrough. The story was interesting and kept me going to the end. Gameplay is easy to learn and is probably the best RTS controls I've tried on a console. It’s a perfect title for anybody looking for an easy to pick up and play, C&C-like, RTS for their Xbox 360.

Halo fans will enjoy a title in the series offering a new genre, entirely.




Until next time, goodbye!