Halo Wars

[CyberEvil]

i think it has great potential but after playing it for several hours i have found massive flaws...

right out of the gate let me say i had fun. i would not have continued playing it otherwise. but the flaws i found are the kind that i cant imagine being patched or absent in the retail copy.

the AI is a very mediocre player. it will gladly waste weak forces in a hopeless battle against vastly superior forces. it is terrible at trying to seize an advantage if it ever wins a battle. it makes mediocre use of the prophet of regret's special death laser power (arguably, in fact near certainly, the most powerful weapon available to the covenant). it does not micro, at all. it does not retreat weakened units and seems to only focus attack buildings. in short it is TERRIBLE.

terrible AI is a serious strike against the game, but does not have to be a fatal one. unfortunately, there are other significant issues that would also need to be addressed. the total absence of a natural base defense forces each player into an immediate rush strategy, which in turn ensures the victor of whatever initial skirmish occurs should win the game. this can be resolved with the addition of a single free turret at the starting base, but i really doubt that this game will see post launch support.

there are numerous interface tweaks whose absence are noteworthy, such as the ability to remove a spartan from a vehicle or the ability to terminate your own units.

and finally, this is an RTS on a console. i think it has the smoothest interface for a console RTS i have ever seen, but every time i play it, i still long desperately for keyboard shortcuts and hot keyed units.

if this was a PC game i would strongly consider buying it terrible AI and all, but it is a console RTS.

The AI is actually pretty good on Heroic, but there is a higher difficulty in the full retail game similar to the FPS in the series, Legendary. My assumption is that since you are a seemingly god-like player, you should try that. Or try Heroic if you're just playing normal because normal is very much an easy match up.

Also, the base defenses are awesome in my opinion. My guess is you didn't realize you could add on one secondary gun to each turret (anti-air, anti-infantry, anti-vehicle), or that you can upgrade the turrets to Medium and Large turrets that get successively more powerful. They won't stop an attack by a Scarab or a couple Vultures, and they definitely won't stand up to 3 upgraded Spartans or a Covenant hero unit, but they will definitely shred any normal army.

Play it more and dive in. I think you'll find your grievances were already addressed.

 

[DC97]

I thought the AI was rather impressive on Heroic. However my only complaint is lack of resources at the beginning of Skirmish (which may only be that certain map) and how overpowered the Scarab and Prophet are. Honestly, on heroic, I created 2 Scarabs, the Prophet of Regret, a few repair drones, and my two bases were filled with Supply Pads. With my money increasing tremendously I put the Prophet to work with the Scarabs and I destroyed the enemy bases in seconds. Other than that, this game is great.

P.S. I don't play PC strategy games often so I don't mind not having hotkeys and things like that.

 

[smilingsaint]

i am not an expert player, but i only play games on the hardest difficulty.

the ai is terrible. i can give you many examples of this.

if you are attacking an enemy base and the ai is producing reinforcements, it will simply walk the reinforcements through your army to its rally point, typically resulting in the death of those reinforcements for no gain. over and over and over. forever. no matter what. its just that stupid.

if i am attacking an enemy with a prophet of regret and many weakened or damaged units, the enemy will try to kill my prophet of regret and ignore my weakened units (and thus lose horribly), in fact the computer plays a lot like a right clicking noob in wc3. it will "right click" its units on my prophet and all i have to do is micro the prophet away a bit to win a battle with ease where it's mindless ai chases the prophet around while getting slaughtered. i have actually had to stop even that level of micro simply because the game would be too easy.

it will rarely retreat units from a lost battle and simply lose the game as a result. when it does retreat it usually retreats too late by far and also retreats the units into its own base rather than away from its own units like it should if it wanted to win.

i do not think it is reasonable to discuss unit balance at this early date, but i feel compelled to comment on the statement about scarabs.

how could you possibly have gotten a scarab before you had already won? it takes forever in many different ways to produce a scarab.

 

[Binarical]

I have to disagree on several points. Firstly you said Halo wars would have been better as a port, I played both command and conquer 3 games on PC and they were both garbage, far worse than halo wars. Porting it doesn't make it good on one and average on the other it just makes it bad on both.

Secondly you said there is no micro, as I said before while there is not nearly as much as in SC or WC I do think it's definitely there.

I believe the way they approached base building in this one is one of the game's better features.

As for more potential on the PC? Yes it does have more potential, but then again so does any RTs, I'm glad they brought it to the console exclusively, it's nice to have one that actually requires a bit of strategy and micro instead of some crappy port.

You misunderstood my comment on C&C (that or I just didn't state it the way I wanted to; if that was the case, I apologize for the confusion) Allow me to redress that. C&C on the 360 was and is horrible. That much is true. Now, I've played C&C on the PC as well. I think it's pretty good, but whether or not you do is your opinion, and I respect it. Now, Halo Wars is a good game. It's not a great game, but it's good. It definitely looks much much better than the C&C ports because Microsoft made it with the 360 controller in mind. The C&C team clearly did not. Thus, Halo Wars looks much better (and plays much better) than all other RTS games on the 360.

However, many PC RTS gamers will be looking to compare Halo Wars with PC counterparts, like WC or SC or even Homeworld 2. And that's where it falls short of being a great game. Rather than being its downfall, the 360 simply limits Halo Wars. At least, that's my feeling on it.

As for the base building, you're right. It's very well done. It's really the only way to do it on the 360, since the cursor system is limited to just being a circle on the screen.

As for micro, I'll admit I was overly zealous on that. There's a little, but not enough to make it handy. While it lets you select via units on screen, or specific unit, there's not enough precision to split your forces effectively.