As it was we had to record this weeks show a bit sooner than the Halo Wars demo was going to be released so here are my thoughts on the demo now that its been set free on Xbox Live.
Up to this point my only experience with Real Time Strategy games comes in two flavors, Warcraft II and Kingdom of Kelflings. Now I know the latter doesn't really qualify but it is the whole building and collecting materials concept. When playing Warcraft II I thought I was the bomb commanding my troops, building bases and armies and kicking @ss and taking names. That is until the going got tough and hectic.
Playing through the tutorials in Halo Wars gives you a good idea of the commands and controls of the game and since its at a very slow pace it gives you a nice comfort level. After jumping into the first campaign level the game flowed nicely and I made it to the base and through the first battle with no problem at all. Commanding your troops and whatnot is a pretty easy task as was building bases and upgrading weapons, etc. At least it is early in the game, and therein lies the problem for me.
At some point this game is going to get HARD, there is going to be allot of stuff going on all around with allot of management to be done during battles. To be fair you can bring along a friend which is nice but something tells me this is going to be a game I won't see through to the end. Unfortunately I will probably buy it when or around the time it comes out since its Halo and I feel I need to give it a chance. I've labeled this game the only full retail game I'm getting this year (lets see how long THAT lasts) so maybe I'll put more into it. It would be nice to bring along a friend but I fear the others won't really get into this one. Maybe that's too bad.
What I will say is after only seeing the first introductory scenes I wish this was an original Halo Wars MOVIE instead of a game. Watching the cut scenes I looked at my brother in law and said "damn, this would make a great movie, it looks AWESOME". Indeed the cut scenes are pretty darn cool looking, maybe someday they'll do the Resident Evil Degeneration type movie and give us something really cool CGI style like Final Fantasy.
I have more to play of the demo, I did get cut off before I got to play the second mission (hopefully the game saved as demos usually don't) so maybe I'll have a better grasp on if this will be a game that I play or a game that collects dust.
In the end its Halo, if this were any other game we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now, but it is Halo. Because of that it deserves a look question is how long will I be looking.
So have you played the demo, are you looking forward to playing Halo Wars? Let us know!