Halo Wars 2 (XO) – you’re the chief of this army

The creators of Total War bring their talents to consoles, in a fast action romp that is one of the best exclusives on Xbox One.

Halo Wars 2 is a really good game, but there are a couple of things that may stop people from fully appreciating that fact. The first is that it’s a real-time strategy game, which according to accepted wisdom means it’s slow and boring and doesn’t work properly on a console. None of which is true. The other problem is that it’s a Halo game. The irony being that a game like this wouldn’t get made if it didn’t have the Halo name associated with it, and yet the Halo stuff is the only bit of the game that actually is slow and boring.



Naturally, your mileage will vary in terms of how much you already enjoy the Halo universe and its lore. So if you’re a fan you can already knock that off the potential list of problems. But we found the dour atmosphere and po-faced storytelling almost impossible to pay attention to. For the record though you’re once again in charge of the giant spaceship Spirit Of Fire, whose crew had to go into hypersleep at the end of the last game because its faster-than-light engines were damaged.

Everyone is woken up just after the events of Halo 5, next to a Forerunner installation called the Ark. Here they find a breakaway sect of The Covenant called The Banished, who they decide to pick a fight with even though they’re horribly outnumbered. It’s all just as uninspired as it sounds, but thankfully the actual game is a lot more interesting.


The original Halo Wars was by Age Of Empires creators Ensemble Studios, and while it managed to present an excellent control system for making real-time strategies work on a console the game itself was strangely uninspired. It failed to encourage attacking play, and any strategy more complicated than just rushing straight at the enemy, and suffered from undernourished multiplayer options. Ensemble are no more and so this sequel has been given over to Total War developer Creative Assembly, who have identified the original’s flaws and done an excellent job of addressing all of them.

Sensibly they haven’t changed much about the controls, which at a basic level aren’t any more complicated than pressing a button to select your units and then pressing another to make them move to where you want them. You can be more specific about which units you want, set-up groups that are accessed via the D-pad, and use various other pre-sets but at the end of the day you just point and click where you want your army to go and that’s it.

Of course that’s not really it though, as success depends on whether the orders you’ve giving them are sensible or not. There’s a rock-paper-scissors relationship between infantry, armour, and aircraft and you need a balanced army to succeed, and a clear plan to be able to hold any ground you gain. Even the biggest army can be wiped out in seconds if it’s not properly supported, or doesn’t have a plan for circumventing enemy shields or the wide variety of leader powers – that range from healing to orbital strikes.

Halo Warrs 2 (XO) – you can play as the good guys or The Banished.

Base-building is also vital to success, but again no more complicated than clicking on a building and selecting what you want to construct, be it a new warthog or an upgrade like giving your marines the ability to throw grenades. Halo Wars 2 uses two separate resources, but these are collected automatically by specific buildings at your base, or can be picked up manually by your units.



Mechanically the game works perfectly, and we really can’t imagine a better real-time strategy on a console. The mission design can still be a little by-the-numbers at times, as you’re told to attack this artefact or hold that position, but there’s a good mix of different scales, from ones where there’s no base-building to all out wars on very large maps. Although the one flaw it doesn’t fix from the first game is that the whole campaign is rather short. Because it’s Halo the art design and backdrops are a little bland and predictable but there’s much more variety in units than we expected, including several new vehicles that are new to the series.

The campaign is perfectly good but the multiplayer is even better. Removed from any restraints, it gives you access to every one of the game’s toys across multiple different modes with up to six players. The rules for all the modes are full customisable, including fighting against the computer if you prefer, while you can also play through the whole story campaign in co-op.

Halo Wars 2 (XO) – Blitz mode is surprisingly great

Separate to the other multiplayer modes though is something called Blitz, which doesn’t have any base-building and is meant as a faster-paced alternative to the main game. In order to deploy new units you create a deck of cards before a match, each of which describes a unit or special ability and the amount of energy required to manifest it. You can only acquire energy by destroying other enemy units or collecting special drop pods, which encourages a very fast pace of play and punishes overly defensive tactics.


We were all ready to scoff at Blitz, especially as it allows for microtransactions to buy extra cards, but it’s actually a lot of fun and a very worthy addition to the game. But then we said at the start that this gets right almost everything to do with the actual gameplay. And yet even though it’s horribly unfair that strategy games are always labelled as boring (primarily by those that don’t play them) we have to admit that Halo Wars 2 is just a very clever way of fitting a square peg into a round hole.

The whole genre was specifically designed for working with a mouse and keyboard and at a fundamental level is wholly unsuited to playing on a console. And so the best thing we can say about Halo Wars 2 is that you’d never think that to play it.

Halo Wars 2 In Short: Easily the best real-time strategy on a console, and a fast-paced, accessible wargame that every Xbox owner should try and experience. Pros: The controls work perfectly and are extremely easy to pick up. Excellent multiplayer options, including campaign co-op and the surprisingly good Blitz mode. Cons: Appallingly uninteresting plot and characters that threaten to sap the life out of every scenario and cut scene. Bland art design and sometimes uninspired missions. Short campaign mode. Score: 8/10

Formats: Xbox One (reviewed) and PC

Price: £47.74

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Developer: Creative Assembly

Release Date: 21st February 2017

Age Rating: 16

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