A powerful Brute, formerly of the Covenant, by the name of Atriox, has built a formidable army of fellow Brutes and ruthless mercenaries, The Banished. They will need to wrest control of the Ark’s incredible power from a new enemy. But as Alice-130 and Douglas-042, two-thirds of the Spirit of Fire’s Spartans, discover when they go to investigate this mysterious structure they’ve been summoned to: humanity is going to need to fight for survival once again. The Ark, introduced in Halo 3 as the birthplace of the Halo rings themselves, sets the stage for Halo Wars 2. It’s one gorgeous, gleaming map after another, peppered with stunning cut-scenes in between. While this isn’t a first-person shooter, Halo fans will rejoice at how familiar the environments look and feel.

But Creative Assembly’s Halo Wars 2 begs to differ. Respectable RTS games like Starcraft and Total War required the precision of a mouse and keyboard.

Between the blighted ports of games like Command and Conquer: Red Alert and Battle for Middle Earth, there was a sizable void that no one dared to fill. The sequel to 2011’s Ensemble Studios’ spinoff makes big advancements, particularly by adding PC players to the mix, but controls once again hamper the RTS experience on console.īefore the original Halo Wars on Xbox 360, console-based RTS games didn’t have a whole lot going for them. Halo Wars 2, a for-console real-time strategy game, straddles the line between joyful and jarring.

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