The Halo Wars demo on Xbox live came out a couple of weeks ago. Halo Wars is an RTS set in the Halo universe. It was developed primarily for the Xbox 360 by Ensemble Studios. Being a big Halo fan and a small RTS fan, I immediately downloaded the demo to try it out.
First off, credit where credit is due. Ensemble Studios have done a fantastic job in capturing the feel of the Halo universe. From the initial menu screens to the intro movie and the look and sound of the various units -everything screams Halo. Particularly important considering that the Halo FPS crowd is going to be one of the big demographics for this game.
Unfortunately, that's the last good thing have to say about the demo.
The problem is that RTS's just don't work on consoles (or at least, I've never played an RTS that has worked). The issue is that you are using a gamepad instead of a mouse and the lack of fine control isn't something that can be overcome using software. Ensemble have done a relatively fine job in mapping the controls to the gamepad and also in designing the game so that it can be played using a gamepad. However, I can't help but think how much better the control scheme would be if I were using a mouse.
So why is the lack of fine control an issue?
In any RTS, the key thing when you engage in combat is to get the right type of units to attack. For example, you want your anti-infantry units to be attacking infantry instead of attacking tanks. Similarly, you want your tanks to be taking out enemy armour instead of wasting its high caliber cannon on infantry. Managing this tactical element of RTS games is key to winning.
However, in Halo Wars, all you can really do is send your entire army into the fray and hope that the AI of your units is sufficiently good enough to target the right enemies. And if you think that doesn't sound like fun, then you are absolutely correct - it isn't. And this is where the gamepad just fails as a controller for RTS games.
Using a mouse, I can quickly and easily select the anti-infantry units and tell them to attack the enemy infantry. Using a gamepad, I have to move the cursor over to my unit to select it, then move the cursor over to the enemy unit to tell my unit to attack. Repeat this several times for different units in each battle and you quickly get frigging tired of the whole thing!
Whether you like Halo Wars will really depend on whether you have played an RTS on the PC. If you haven't, then there is probably enough in Halo Wars for you to have a good time. However, if you have, then the flaws and shortcomings of using a gamepad will rear their ugly head and you will have a hard time accepting it. Ultimately, this game doesn't even come close to comparing with Company of Heroes.
6 comments:
Consoles are good for certain types of games only - they should just accept that and not try this sort of thing
To be fair, you can't really blame them for trying. Not that long ago, people said that you couldn't make a good FPS for consoles. Then Halo came along and blew that theory out of the water.
Now, FPS games are one of the most lucrative markets for the X360 console. In addition to FPS games, you also have loads of TPS games which shares a very similar control schemes to FPS's.
I guess people want to be the next Halo but for RTS games.
Yes, but they got the FPS and TPS to work for the masses by shit like auto-aim. Otherwise your typical gamer just wouldn't have the dexterity to aim properly in time using the joypad - or at least compared with the mouse.
True - but the key difference is that the auto-aim fudging doesn't make any practical difference in gameplay (to me, anyway).
For example, when you play against the AI, the AI's accuracy has probably also been reduced so that you still have a chance to kill him before he kills you. When you play online, other people are also using gamepads so you have a level playing field.
In practical gameplay terms, I still kill the other guy before he kills me (most console FPSs have regenerating health so you don't even have to worry about damage ala Half Life).
However, in an RTS, the difference in controller makes me think that it does cause a practical difference. For example, if I had been able to deploy my troops more efficiently, I might have suffered less damage. Over the course of a long and tight campaign, this might make the difference between victory and defeat.
Even if the difficulty is reduced so that I can still win with sub-optimal tactical targeting, I still can't help thinking - could I have done that better?
Now, if the console RTS developers could find the RTS equivalent of the auto-aim (ie a fudge which makes the game fun but has no practical implications), then they might have a huge hit on their hands and effectively spawn a new console genre game.
This is why I can understand why they keep trying to develop RTS games on consoles even though, imho, they have all failed so far.
So far, the closest I have seen a developer come to a good RTS experience on the console was when I played the EndWar demo. EndWar uses voice commands so that you can easily direct units to attack specific targets. Having said that, I only played the demo so I'm not sure how well the control scheme would hold up in the full game.
Bro - have you seen the latest Zero Punctuation? Review of Halo Wars:
1. Bloody hilarious, best one for a while
2. He agrees with me that RTS on consoles suck
:)
hehe - Yahtzee really didn't pull any punches on Halo Wars.
:)
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