I played a LOT of Halo Wars. My friends played a lot. My son played a lot. We all rejoiced when we heard it was backwards compatible. I pulled out my game disk and popped it in, and we all started playing again…
It’s no secret that one of the reasons that Halo Wars was such a great game was how easy it was to play with a controller compared to previously released RTS games. It was the secret ingredient: Simplicity. Someone thought it would be a great idea to change that simplicity and make it …not so simple.
But, it wasn’t just the controller that was simple. The UI was easy to navigate. Things in the game were easy to understand. Units were easy to use and felt responsive. Someone thought it would be a good idea to change that, too.
Gameplay itself was simplified. IGN referred to Halo Wars as a “my-first-RTS” type of game, and although it wasn’t my first, I absolutely loved that about the game. That feeling is gone, too.
The game was more about military strategy than it was about upgrade paths, or managing resources. Someone decided it would be a good idea to add another resource to the game.
In short: The original Halo Wars did everything right. Someone has decided it was a good idea to “improve” the game by doing things wrong. But really, and I know we’ve all heard this before, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
All you needed to do was take the game system from the original game and give it new life with upgraded graphics and a couple new units or commanders and a bunch more maps.
I’ve heard that there will also be a remastered version of the original game releasing at the same time Halo Wars 2 releases. I will probably get the remaster, but as it stands, I will probably avoid this game. It;s a shame, really, I had such high hopes.