Halo Wars, Ensemble Studio’s last project as Ensemble, takes the Halo franchise to the real-time strategy battlefield, where players assume control of hundreds of units, rather than just one single character. If you haven’t heard of Ensemble studios, you’ll perhaps recognize them by their flagship franchise, Age of Empires. While Age of Empires has lost its appeal and steam over the past few years, Halo Wars has done nothing but gather up its own layer of hype. It always astounds me how the gaming community gets so excited for each successive Halo release, yet get pissed off at the developers when the game finally releases. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but maybe gamers should just stop setting their hopes up so high.
Originally intended as an RTS, the Halo franchise finally makes its way into the strategy genre in Halo Wars.
Anyways, an earlier post here at The Update has outlined the game’s various release packages, the two of which are aimed at the casual gamers and hardcore collectors, respectively. The game, while exclusive to the Xbox 360, is shaping up to be one hell of a purchase, for RTS fans or Halo fans alike. For those interested, Halo Wars delves further into Halo’s rich lore (most of which has been developed over time in the Halo novels), and puts you in command of different units from the Halo universe, some of which are taken from the novels in addition to the games.
There have already been several videos posted up around the net on Halo Wars, as well as a few trailers posted up on the Xbox Live Marketplace. If you’ve got the time, I encourage you to check them out, there’s several good ones in there, including a lengthy game play preview.
So yes, Halo Wars is coming out, but now, the reason for this blog post. Halo Wars was originally slated for a release date near the end of February. The U.S. release has now been delayed, however, and Halo Wars’ release has now turned into one of the only times I have seen the European players get the game before the U.S. players (in Xbox 360 releases that is). For those interested, Halo Wars will debute on February 27th for European players, and on March 3rd for U.S. players. The game is pretty high up on my list of games to buy for 2008, so I’ll have to see how well it turns out.
