It’s good to be back
Halo Wars was my first RTS, and I gained a newfound appreciation for the genre. Of course, it was much simpler than a Starcraft or C&C for the sake of bringing it to console, but I feel that the devs did a nice job of porting this game to PC. Again, I have no experience with previous RTS games so you’ll have to keep that in mind when I talk about the controls, and if they feel ‘right’.
Performance is much better on XBO & PC
For my first game I loaded up campaign, and I could see and feel the difference immediately. On Xbox & PC the controls were smoother, the frame rate was steady, textures were crisper. In legacy HW I would take my time and admire the little details on my marines and warthog, and I enjoyed the hell out of sending my marines into certain death, yet sometimes prevailing with a final marine squad, and I wasn’t worried about getting gold or hitting par-time. The only difference with the Definitive Edition is that I no longer drop frames in big battles, or find muddy textures, and that’s a huge plus for me.
On PC, the KB&M gives you better control of your army (DUH)
Everybody knew this would be the case, but it just feels so good to add units to hotkeys and give them move orders while you keep your camera at base to pump out more units and do other things that you just can’t achieve on a controller. Not a big deal to most RTS vets out there because that’s what you guys are used to, but transitioning from your favorite console RTS and to finally gain that ability to multi-task more efficiently is a relieving experience.
It’s Halo Wars and it’s back, long-time fans should be satisfied
Seeing a bit of negativity surrounding the game here on the forums, but that doesn’t seem to be anything new as you can never make this fan base totally happy. Personally, I feel like they did a good job with the game, with one missing feature on PC that I hope they add soon: in-game text chat. The only other complaints that I hear are that the Covenant leaders have horrible controls on PC, which I have yet to see for myself, but I’ll take their word for it. Also, there’s people upset about the matchmaking, which I can understand, but doesn’t really matter to me seeing as the ranking in the previous game wasn’t the greatest. The game is far from perfect and there are some things that could use some fixes, but overall I think the game is going to do moderately well for Xbox and PC alike.
Going forward, I hope we can grow a better community than before
At the time of this post the PC crowd is noticeably smaller than Xbox, but I’m chalking that up to the game being in Early Access and the fact that Halo Wars is a console RTS first. I hope all you Halo Wars fans out there help keep the community fair, fun and welcoming. My personal experience with pubs in the past was something I never enjoyed about playing Halo Wars (No mics, quitters, toxic players, etc.) This isn’t to say the community was all bad, and in all honesty it’s part of the reason we have Definitive Edition and why we’re getting a sequel – I just hope new and returning players to come to a community that has matured and helps people out instead of always going for the win or BM’ing lobbies. Whether you’re competitive or casual we should all be compromising our strong beliefs to give 343 and MS Studios the meaningful feedback they need to improve the game.
Now let’s enjoy some classic Halo Wars and get hyped for the sequel!
Have fun everyone, and I hope to see some more people hop over to the PC version 