Halo Wars (Xbox 360)

I bought this game on the day of arrival, special edition and all. I had played the demo and it enticed me hugely. However, I was quite disappointed when I finally got round to owning this piece of software.

The gameplay itself follows Red Alert and general Command and Conquer games, with an overview of your forces, allowing you to tell them where to go. Now, this was quite difficult in the first place, considering this was going to be an Xbox game, rather than a PC game. Nevertheless, they pulled it off.

The graphics, despite it being an overview, where quite impressive. There was lots of shiny things dancing around the screen, but it was really good. I was pleasantly suprised as I thought it would be silly cartoon 3D models (similar to the late C&C games) but they stuck to their principals and managed to pull of some nice models.

The campaign was very "follow this route and do this", which some people work well with, but I do not. I prefer a 'little' bit of leniancy, but on the first levels I played, I was guided by the level design to where I needed to go.

The unit command was nice. It was easy to pick up, so noone would be left out. If you have ever played any C&C game, the controls aren't too different, but they're different enough to make you think about what you're doing: obviously! it's on an Xbox 360 controller. But don't worry!

The story line and cinematics were brilliant; the cinematic graphic were stunning and the story line was a nice little addition. In all honesty, I never take a massive amount of care for story lines, but this one did hold me (for the time I was playing).

If you're a fan of the C&C games, give it a go; because it's so different (due to it's platform) it'll be like Marmite. But let's be honest, it's a Halo game, and it followed Halo 3, so it must have SOMETHING going for it...?