Ensemble: Halo Wars demo before release

by Richard Mitchell { Jul 15th 2007 at 9:30PM }

Gamers tend to be (understandably) cautious when it comes to real time strategy games on consoles. The reason for this is simple: RTS games on consoles have been uniformly bad, with the (arguable) exception of Battle for Middle Earth II and Command & Conquer 3 on the Xbox 360. Even with those games, however, the controls are far from perfect, which becomes abundantly clear in later levels. Halo Wars hopes to change all that, or so we were told by Ensemble. Still, we'd like a bit of a safety net if you please. Lucky for us, the folks from Ensemble told us during our Halo Wars E3 presentation that there is a demo on the way. According to producer Chris Rippy, the demo will arrive "for sure before the game comes out." While we were generally impressed with the Halo Wars presentation, our one nagging concern was the control, so it's nice to know that we'll all be able to try before we buy. Halo Wars touches down in 2008.

Tags: bungie, e307, ensemble, ensemblestudios, halowars, microsoftgamestudios

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Buckling @ Jul 15th 2007 9:38PM

w00t

NintendoFanbot @ Jul 15th 2007 9:52PM

I don't mean to rain on Halo Wars' parade, but in the term 'RTS' for consoles, would you include Pikmin in that? And Battalion Wars is excellent too.

I also like Star Wars Battlefront II, but I wouldn't know if that's a real strategy-focuesed game.

But good luck to Halo Wars I guess.

Triforceowner @ Jul 15th 2007 10:13PM

It seems that when "RTS on console" is referred to it is always thought of as Star Craft being ported to the N64. But you're right. Included in "real-time strategy" could be Madden, GRAW, Rainbow Six, and hack, maybe even Gears of War (its real time and there's strategy). I suppose once you define the genre a bit more concisely you can say what is in and out and whether there have yet been any games in that genre for consoles that qualify as good.