XBOX ONE | 'Halo Wars 2' Review
It’s been close to eight years since the first ‘Halo Wars’, and now series custodian 343 Industries and Creative Assembly - the creators of ‘Total War’ are finally returning real-time strategy to Microsoft’s Sci-fi universe.
With some decent story lore following on from the first instalment, as well as a decent control system, it’s a shame that the package is let down by a lacklustre single-player campaign and little development in the intervening years of the original game’s design.
But for fans of the ‘Halo’ universe, and those of you who crave more strategy on consoles, this is a welcome release.
What ‘Halo Wars 2’ gets right more than anything else is that it actually feels like a ‘Halo’ game. The visuals - particularly in the games gorgeous pre-rendered cutscenes, would fit in any other instalment of the series.
The cutscene showcasing the ship-to-ship battle is a particular joy, and the in-engine cutscenes prove much effort has gone into developing how the camera moves about the battlefield - smoothly and showing off some very impressive animation for characters normally seen from a distance.
Add to that the soundtrack - probably one of the series’ best.
In the gameplay, weapons sound powerful and each unit has dialogue and a personality all of its own. It’s clear that the developers have taken cues from Blizzard’s RTS games in this department. They’ve also followed Blizzard’s lead by designing campaign missions with a number of different objectives. One takes cues from tower defence games and another is essentially a domination multiplayer game against the AI. They’re welcome additions providing some very tense moments as you try to keep your units reacting to the approaching hordes or when you lose a point at a critical moment.
Overall, the challenge of the missions scale up naturally, and there’s plenty of optional objectives available to approach if one feels so inclined.
The multiplayer is simple yet effective. There are a few modes - mostly standard deathmatch or domination, but only one stands out: Blitz; this mode is a combination of take and hold with a collectable card game. The player is rewarded with packs for completing the campaign - with more available to buy, and they can use the cards those packs provide to build an army.
Each player has a steadily increasing supply of power and can use any card in their hand to deploy a unit or power to aid in their fight. It’s a nicely designed mode but with microtransactions as a major factor in it, it might descend into a pay-to-win mode.
Selecting and controlling units is simple enough, although scrolling across the map does take much longer on a controller than a mouse. In one particular mission where the objective is to avoid a powerful enemy unit, this can lead to some annoying unit deaths. The use of unit groups and command shortcuts to save time is absolutely necessary on higher difficulties, as the AI will take advantage of your inattention in no time at all.
The game’s main flaw however is that it doesn’t feel like a sequel. Much of the gameplay and design is similar to its predecessor, making it play more like a remake than a follow-up.
The story is barebones and seems rushed.
The acting is wooden - with the exception of the human’s AI character, and it possesses a script that provides little emotion or excitement.
The villain is both undeveloped and generic, and most critically, the game never pays off anything, ending with a very blatant sequel hook much like the first game. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another eight years to be resolved.
‘Halo Wars 2’ feels like a game trapped between two competing objectives. The first is to reintroduce the series and gameplay to this generation of consoles; the other is to satisfy the fans who have waited for a sequel for a long while.
Fortunately, the game manages to gratify for the most part. It is fun to command an army of Spartans, Warthogs and Scorpions, and use a MAC gun when things are about to turn your opponent’s way.
Hopefully this will lead to future ‘Halo Wars’ games, with a developed and improved formula.
‘Halo Wars 2’ is now available on Xbox One and Windows PCs.
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