Halo Wars - Does Anyone Really Care?

Well, now that the release of the spin-off and cash-in of the Halo franchise is coming upon us, the internet is buzzing with impatience.

... Yeah, right. It seems that Ensemble studios just doesn't seem to have the same hype-causing, adrenaline-pumping feel to it that Bungie has caused in the internet since the release of Halo 2. Don't get me wrong, Ensemble are the same guys that brought you Age Of Empires, one of the best series of Real Time Strategy games to grace the PC, but it seems that Halo Wars just doesn't seem to interest the Halo crowd.

The simple reason to this being that for the most part (as a few minutes on Halo's multiplayer will show you) the crowd still interested in Halo is the same crowd that is targeted by Barney The Dinosaur, and who were barely starting education when Beyblades came out (you all remember them... You're a liar if you say you don't!).

The Halo franchise seemed destined for this path since the release of Halo 3 (making just under £120 million pure profit for the makers in one day), and its place on the top 3 games played on the Xbox 360 for months, and even to this day (with it placing 2nd just last week, over a year after its initial release). Unfortunately, as many, many attempts seem to have proven, RTSs just don't seem to work on consoles. Just take a look at the selection of that genre on the 360, and you'll see that the selection is extremely lacking if it’s quality you want.

However, it can be seen that this lack of Real Time Strategies might mean that Halo Wars could be able to carve a niche into the market of Xbox 360 games. Personally, I hope this isn't the case, since it would inevitably mean that many other companies would try expanding into other genres with their games... Imagine a dystopian future, where Bejewelled becomes an action-adventure, where you must save your family from evil diamond-shaped terrorists. Sounds horrifying, doesn’t it?

Halo Wars, however it may seem, still manages to be able to annoy the fanboys of the Playstation 3, at any rate... A 20-second-glance at Metacritic (a comprehensive site of reviews, combining many professional opinions into an unbiased score) will show the user-reviewed score to be a mere 0.8 out of 10. I doubt this is because of the people who are getting this as a console exclusive. It seems far more likely that the people doing this are the same people that dragged Gears of War 2's score down to below half before its release. Fanboyism at its best.

Of course, Ensemble studios is putting its full backing into the making of Halo Wars, confident that it will be a huge success, and fuel the company's profits for years...
What? Oh... It seems that Ensemble studios is shutting down after making this game, making Halo Wars either the last shining jewel in its cupboard, or the final nail in its coffin...
But, with the game being 3 years in development, it can't be too big a flop. This isn't Rock Revolution*, after all... (Bah-zing!).

* See “shameless, appalling knock off of Rock Band”.

Looking at some gameplay previews on websites, I see that the campaign will involve your standard "enemy over there. Kill them" and "protect the scientist while she does some stuff to make you win" missions... Nothing really new, but that wasn't to be expected from a spin-off of the shooter that uses the most basic FPS controls ever seen.

In conclusion, I think that while Halo Wars may be picked up by the fans of the original series, but since they seem to be dwindling, Halo Wars will probably go the same way as F-Zero on the Game Boy Advance… Y’know, the game that nobody remembers, because it tried to go away from the standard in the same way that one would moonwalk to get from place to place… It’s still going the same place as everyone else, except they do it in a weird fashion, that doesn’t really work, and that nobody is used to, so it becomes shunned and rejected.