New Halo Wars vid shows off 'Ice Level'

by Jason Dobson { Jul 15th 2008 at 9:30AM }

If Halo Wars' absence from Microsoft's E3 keynote left you blue, you're likely in the right frame of mind to enjoy a new gameplay video of Ensemble's tactical take on the Halo universe set upon a descriptively titled "Ice Level."

Marvel as Spartans rain down MAC Cannon devastation from above. Be astounded as good guys gather resources, and then spend them. Be astonished as you forget to care about Halo Wars well before the game's early 2009 release.

Tags: e3-2008, ensemble-studios, ensemblestudios, halo-wars, halowars, microsoft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jagzi11a @ Jul 15th 2008 9:39AM

I'm not goign to lie, I am really looking forward to this game. I love me some RTS

AwesomeTown @ Jul 15th 2008 9:40AM

There is way to much voice coming from the units. I don't think I can take a lot of it, especially the annoying grunts. There better be a way to turn it off.

Jagzi11a @ Jul 15th 2008 9:40AM

I think its called mute.

AwesomeTown @ Jul 15th 2008 9:49AM

Yea, but I want the explosions.

Jagzi11a @ Jul 15th 2008 10:17AM

make explosion sounds yourself! it makes the game that much more fun.

riggs @ Jul 15th 2008 11:06AM

ex: "BOOOM!! BOOM!, pew! pew!, GET IN THE CHOPPA!"

AwesomeTown @ Jul 15th 2008 12:17PM

I think you are on to something here. They should put the ability to create your own sound effects in every game.

Jagzi11a @ Jul 15th 2008 9:40AM

Going*

tc @ Jul 15th 2008 9:42AM

pacing seems a little off to me...but then i did just play the video with the sound off and "Tension Head" blaring through my speakers

Ant @ Jul 15th 2008 9:43AM

All i see from that video is that the covenant are ridiculously strong.

I think a lot of balancing still needs to be done.

GuardedMarman @ Jul 15th 2008 9:59AM

Well in the books they are like that but I guess they have to do something about that...

Ant Hutchinson @ Jul 15th 2008 10:18AM

Its just the fact that near the end. There is a turret shooting an elite and hardly hurting it!

NorCalSix @ Jul 15th 2008 12:39PM

Exactly what I was thinking, Ant. They get hit several times by the orbital guns and just keep right on mopping the floor with the humans.

Jerk Face @ Jul 15th 2008 7:02PM

Wait - people READ those books? Oh my goodness!

baby sea tuna @ Jul 15th 2008 9:44AM

"Be astonished as you forget to care about Halo Wars well before the game's early 2009 release."

What a dick post.

Dan @ Jul 15th 2008 10:00AM

I'm pretty sure it was really meant to read
"Be astonished as you forget to care about Halo Wars early 2009 release."

At least I hope so, or he's just adding fuel to the fire..

Derick @ Jul 15th 2008 1:21PM

I dunno...

I tend to agree with the original sentiment.

This gameplay could benefit from some MUSIC.

acefondu @ Jul 15th 2008 9:45AM

That skirmish seemed to take a while. I don't like how long units take to die. I'm still keeping my eye on this one though, and hoping it comes to the PC.

Jagzi11a @ Jul 15th 2008 10:20AM

doi it will be on PC, its the rightful throne for all RTS's

matt247 @ Jul 15th 2008 11:39AM

They said it won't be coming to PC

J @ Jul 15th 2008 9:56AM

That's not right. So many spartans dying? Masterchief could've taken out that entire fleet single-handedly.

Jagzi11a @ Jul 15th 2008 10:22AM

they said that the spartans are supposed to be really good, but not invincible. If you don't know how to give cover or flank, then they will die just like all of the other units. . .

Mal F4cti0n @ Jul 15th 2008 6:46PM

Those were not spartans fighting, they were just USMC soldja's.

Dan @ Jul 15th 2008 9:58AM

So far it looks pretty good, still far from finished if thats all they showing. The purple look on the covenant kinda blands out too much.

At least now Starcraft 2 has some competition.. but I still put my money on Starcraft being the RTS winner.

But for a 360 RTS Halo wars looks to be a possible winner.

daddycool @ Jul 15th 2008 10:10AM

What the hell is this? This looks like a PC game not XBOX. They need to quit bullshitting and just make Halo 4.

arrrgh @ Jul 15th 2008 10:21AM

no.

mr nimblewick @ Jul 15th 2008 10:22AM

Oh, those poor space marines are just fodder to give the big guns time to fire. I feel so bad for them. Thankfully the US Army does not operate in the same fashion. GO USA!

Anam @ Jul 15th 2008 10:39AM

So they're making an RTS game on the Xbox based on Halo but not made by Bungie...

While they're at it, why don't they just make a MMO on the Wii based on Zelda but not made by Nintendo? It would make at least as much sense.

Gabriel @ Jul 15th 2008 10:40AM

This article seems a little unprofessional. Jason Dobson needs to outline why he thinks so negatively about Halo Wars or it's nothing more than a childish jab. Fact is, the game is still in early stages in development, so let's see what a more professional analysis of this video would say.

First, "Ice Level" is a working title. Some of these levels don't yet have a story behind them this early in development, so of course the name will change when the story is completely fleshed out.

As far as the video, I would agree that there are too many voice-overs going on at the same time. Their frequency needs to be adjusted. THe balance issues need to be fixed. It looked like the humans were really getting it handed to them in this video. We all know that balance issues plague Starcraft, though, with the "Zerg rush" being a major determining factor in the outcome of each match. Still, with only two sides (that we know of. Could there be Flood in Halo Wars?) both sides should be near even. This is best for gameplay and story. I'll elaborate:

For too long we have been allowed to view the humans as weaklings just waiting for a Spartan to come and save them. The problem is, the Spartans can't be everywhere. The legendary status of Master Chief is questioned if all we have to compare him to is a bunch of cowards who can barely tell which ways up on a battlefield. Give Master Chief the best of the best, who are beaten by the Covenant by only a small margin, and Master Chief is a deserving icon. If there are no truly great heroes for Master Chief to outshine, all Master Chief has going for him is luck.

Anam @ Jul 15th 2008 10:46AM

Not to get off topic, but StarCraft balancing problems? Zerg rush a factor in each match? I would argue that you either don't know how to play the game or were playing on too small of maps.

...sorry, I'm defensive of StarCraft.

Dan @ Jul 15th 2008 11:05AM

When Starcraft was first released it did have balancing issues, it took multiple patches to finally get it to a point that many agree with it. The Zerg rushing was a issue as well in the beginning.

Anam @ Jul 15th 2008 11:18AM

Oh, ha ha, in the beginning. That would make sense given the context of his post. I retract my statements.

...unless he meant it's *still* unbalanced, in which case I retract my retractment.

Mike @ Jul 15th 2008 12:15PM

By "a more proffesional analysis" did you mean "a more fan-boy analysis?"

I think Dobson's post is pretty professional because his attitude is the only appropriate reaction to such a generic looking video. I don't care if the game is still in "early stages." If the devs thought this video was good enough to give people a favorable impression, then its not a good sign for the standards they have set for the game. Also...its clear from your post that you are such an incredible Halo fan that you are prepared to embrace any level of mediocrity the franchise drips out, and thats fine. But let's be honest, the video makes the game (up to this point) look like a pretty solid 6/10 prediction.

Anam @ Jul 15th 2008 10:56AM

Joystiq, your comment system really needs to be fixed. I replied to Gabriel, then when I refreshed the page it didn't show Gabriel's comment or my own. I refreshed it again just to make sure and they still weren't there, so I wrote a comment about it but then my comment didn't show up but now I can see Gabriel's again.

This is really irritating. Please fix it.

klassobanieras @ Jul 15th 2008 11:52AM

Watched the vid, and agreed 100% with the 'meh' tone of the post. But you're all clearly seeing something I'm not. Anyone care to fill me in on what I'm overlooking?

Ethan @ Jul 15th 2008 11:58AM

Looks hard. Tbh I just wouldn't go to battle on a giant plain.

Knight Marquise @ Jul 15th 2008 12:06PM

Looking great. Can't wait to get to play this one. I'm hoping the controls are as good as Ensemble says.

GenBanks @ Jul 15th 2008 12:30PM

Without wanting to sound like snob, this looks fairly... ahem... rubbish :(

Compared to Dawn of War 2, or even the nearly two years old Company of Heroes, the game looks like a PC game from 10 years ago. A cloud of health bars, uninteresting artistic style (compared to say, StarCraft 2), devoid of interaction with the environment (a la CoH), little sense of scale... At least in FPS games you can gloss over uninteresting mechanics of a game with good production values, interesting/popular lore and epic marketing campaigns. Not so sure you can do that with an RTS...

With strategy games it's hard to tell whether it'll be fun from a video though, so I'll remain open-minded.

Geist @ Jul 15th 2008 2:05PM

I agree. Yeah, great, and RTS for the consoles. Like Halo, it's great if that's all you have, but PCs have been doing this genre far better for far longer. There's only so much you can do with an analog stick or two.

Wildgophers @ Jul 15th 2008 1:54PM

This looks like CoH with lasers, they really aren't doing anything really new or interesting here.

Lekko @ Jul 15th 2008 3:53PM

I read the words 'ice level', but my mind heard 'Hoth'.

Now THAT would be awesome.

Gabriel @ Jul 15th 2008 4:39PM

My gripe is that from less than 3 minutes of early development gameplay footage, Dobson concluded that we would forget to care about Halo Wars long before its release. If you look at gameplay footage from early development of about any of your favorite titles, you might not be too thrilled about what you see. The development process rarely comes together perfectly before the last couple months.
May I add, I sincerely doubt that Halo Wars will come close to competing with Starcraft in level of quality. The balance issues in Starcraft that I referred to were pre-patch (Sorry I didn't elaborate before.) I played through the balance issues, though, and started losing interest because of getting modded. That's the same reason I quit playing Halo 2. And to those who think I'm a Halo fanboy, I pointed out in my post that the voiceovers are annoying, and it looks like there are balance issues. GanBanks is right that the graphics look dated but graphics aren't usually touched up until later in the development cycle. If we don't see some improvement in graphics by sometime this winter, there might be cause for concern. However, even some of the prettiest games can be no fun to play. Would you rather have something that's fun and intuitive to play are a masterpiece that just doesn't work well?
A major concern with Halo Wars (and I believe that Ensemble is doing their best with what they have) is that Ensemble has to work within a certain realm involving units that are, for the most part, familiar to the Halo universe. A lot of these units have clear limitations that you don't have when you build an original IP. If they are given the freedom to develop new units and new functions for existing units, Halo Wars has a chance. We'll have to wait and see.