Let's Go To War!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...ok so maybe it's a long time in the future but humanity goes to war. We face an opponent that will decimate us and crush our hopes but thanks to one man, Spartan Sierra 117, we wil perservere and we will win...all in one convenient trilogy available for the Xbox (Halo 1 and Halo 2) and Xbox 360 (Halo 3). But for those of us who are geeks and wanna know more there is another part to the story. No, I don't mean Halo 3: ODST, which wasn't a bad game but was somewhat of a disappointment to many. I mean Halo Wars by Ensemble Studios.
Now I played part of this game when it came out and it received pretty good scores, if memory serves me right. But somewhere along the line I lost interest in it. Maybe it was the real time strategy instead of a shooter or maybe it was because Master Chief was nowhere in sight, but I dropped the game like my New Year's resolution to lose weight. Recently I decided to be more disciplined and decided to pick up those things I had left behind. Realizing that my New Year's resolution would be alot of work, I went back to Halo Wars, and wow was I surprised. I really enjoyed this game. The main story is a combination of different mission goals such as survive until reinforcements arrive or protect an item until you reach the end. But the best part of the game is the multiplayer/co-op. Doing missions with your friends changes the way the level is played. Different tactics are employed and you can even feel like a real General by assigning jobs to each player. The multiplayer offers many maps that you can battle your friends on and gain achievements through. As with most other games, there are things to collect. Like all Halo games you can collect skulls that will alter the way the game is played. Of course there are achievements doing so. one for your first time (aww how sweet) and one for collecting them all (Pokemon!). There are also Halo timeline events that are unlocked by retrieving black boxes during the missions and by playing a skirmish game on each skirmish map. Halo Wars also features dosnloadable content which adds a different dimension to gameplay with different modes of gameplay and different maps to play them on. As of today, two DLC packs have been released.

Finally, my favorite moment of this game is the cut scene before the final mission. This scene shows 3 Spartans taking on a small army of Elites and killing every single one of them. It also features Forge, the main character in the game, taking on the Arbiter successfully. Just watching this cutscene brought a smile to my face and made everything worth the gaming. I really enjoyed this game and would recommend it to everyone. You can find it at your local game shop for around $20 or you can even download it via Xbox Live's "Games On Demand" for $29.99. In this situation, do yourselves a favor and pick it at your local game shop. So until next time, that has been your game review for the moment!