by David Hockenbroch

Created on: March 24, 2009

If you're a veteran of RTS games and a fan or Ensemble's older games, don't buy Halo Wars. If you're new to the RTS genre, by all means, play it. It's a great introduction to RTS games.

For those who are used to RTS games, you'll be a little disappointed with many aspects of the game. Your choices for building a base a very limited. Initially, you can build on three predetermined spots around your base. You can upgrade the base once to gain two more building spots and the option to build up to four turrets. Upgrading again gives you another two building locations, for a total of seven. That's all you get until you build another base, which you can only do in a few predetermined spots.

The game's controls for selecting units are clumsy at times. You can press the left bumper to select all of your units, or right bumper to select all of them that are currently on the screen. You can also press A when you're on a unit to select it, or hold in A to make a larger circle appear and "paint" a group. Two major things are missing from this control scheme. First, once you have a group selected, if you want to remove just one unit from that group, you can't. You'll have to move that unit individually somewhere else so you don't accidentally select it again, then reselect the entire group. Second, once you've selected a group, you can't add new units to it. For instance, if you want two groups from opposite sides of the map to converge on a target, you'll have to use that brush feature to select them all at once. You can't select one group, then add the other.

The tech tree for this game is also very broad and shallow compared to other RTS games. You can build almost all of the buildings or units you'll ever be able to build immediately. You can upgrade most of the units and leader powers three times, or four in a few cases. You'll never really research new units. You'll only upgrade the original ones.

Resource management is very basic. You can build supply pads or warehouses (depending whether you've chosen a Covenant leader or a UNSC leader) which will bring in a steady stream of supplies. There are also a few crates laying around that your infantry units can use to collect more. There is only one type of resource to manage.

You also have a population cap of thirty, which can be upgraded to forty with some research. Different units use up different amounts of that limit, from one for basic infantry on up to twenty for the Covenant's scarab. Your technology level is also important;

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