Halo Wars is a good starter into the RTS genre.
Pretty short game cuz it ended just when the game was getting good. I had played through all the Act 1 missions in Heroic mode without any major problems. But the Act II missions in Heroic were pretty hard. I decided to give up and dial it back down to Normal so I can finish the campaign and enjoy the story.
The game was enjoyable although quite simple for a RTS veteran like myself. The controls were incredibly easy to work with and I kinda liked them. I wish choosing a small portion of your units were easier but it wasn't too annoying. The missions had a few varieties but I really hated the timed missions. There were just a tad too many of them which was annoying. Not only were you pressured to build quickly, but the enemies constantly attacked your base which made building up your tech increasingly frustrating. This is especially bad in Heroic mode. It's kind of a shame because there were some really fun unit types and upgrades if you can manage to tech yourself up all the way. But most people who rush through the missions with the regular units might not even see some of the cool ones like the Vulture. Hmm..
Graphics are clean and very colorful. The animation for the various units look really good. I wish I could zoom in more because I wanted to see more of the action close-up. The levels look very close to the Halo FPS games and Ensemble did a great job capturing the visual style of the original games. The music is another winner. It's nice to hear various songs from the original games remixed with its own original score. I really liked the soundtrack and it made the game feel like a Halo game. The sound is also excellent because the 5.1 surround sound mix is excellent. The bass is used quite often for explosions which made heavier attacks have a bit more weight.
The really interesting part of the game is the story. It's nice to see what happened before the regular Halo games. The cutscenes look really nice and were well directed. There were some nice epic action sequences. But the story doesn't explain everything and it certainly leaves a lot of questions out there for fans to ponder over. And the characters were pretty flat. You don't learn much about them which is unfortunate. Forge is your typical soldier-type along with the captain and scientist playing their typical roles. AND even with a British accent, the AI Serina ain't quite as charming or feisty as Cortana. But the story is decent and adds to the Halo lore. Kudos to the devs for allowing us to rewatch the cutscenes whenever we want.
The overall game is still enjoyable if you like RTS games. This is a good game to check out if you're a Halo fan. If you're only interested because it's a RTS, then you might want to rent it. It was pretty short. Hardcore fans can probably get the most out of it by playing the coop mode in the higher difficulty settings. Personally, I'm not interested in playing a RTS game in multi unless it's with a mouse and keyboard. Not my thing. Anyways, recommended for Halo fans.
