Halo Wars (Xbox 360)

Any Halo game is an important release for the Xbox 360, and finally Microsoft have managed to expand the series away from its traditional FPS roots. The question is; does anyone care about a Halo RTS?

Back in the '90s, Command & Conquer was the definitive RTS that everyone tried to copy. Thus the 'Scourge of the Strategy Game,' or the C&C clone, was born. It wasn't until the likes of Total Annihilation and Shogun: Total War that the RTS started to evolve and developers stopped copying Westwood/EA and started trying to beat them (I'm going somewhere with this, promise.)

Also back then, Bungie was one of those great RTS innovators. Their Myth games were very well received, and their next strategy envisioned a space marine versus aliens epic on a ring-world called "Halo".

However, at some point an enthusiastic Bungie member pulled the camera down to ground-level and pointed out that "this would be much cooler as a shoot-em-up." Thus (last "thus", honest) the Halo-RTS died and the Halo-shooter was born.

Now we've come full circle, except Bungie isn't the developer, Age of Empires dev Ensemble is. Sadly, this Halo RTS feels very much like a Command & Conquer clone...

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