The million dollar selling franchise Halo is soon turning another page in its history, marking the transition from first person shooter to RTS. You may not know that initially, Bungie designed Halo: Combat Evolved to be a real time strategy, but their acquisition by Microsoft resulted in a change of developing direction, and thus we have the Halo we all know and love today.

Halo Wars is a prequel and takes place in 2531, 20 years before the first game in the shooter trilogy. The human UNSC forces fight the Covenant once again, and you play the role of a commander instructing your forces what to build and who to attack.

The game, while cool and based on the innovative Halo universe, takes a lot of elements from other successful RTS games and simplifies the gameplay and interface quite a bit to make it a suitable experience for the Xbox 360.

While this is an interesting experience - a strategy game on a console - it isn't unprecedented. Command and Conquer 3 did a good job with its Xbox 360 version if I remember well, and bought innovation with the radial menu system.

But getting back to our game, you should know it is developed by the infamous Ensemble Studios, Microsoft's "Ace in the Hole", previously known from their work on Age of Empires. And you can see a lot of effort was put into the game.

The similarities with C&C don't confine to the command interface, but you can see this influence even in combat design and balance. Nevertheless, Halo Wars is based on an epic universe and every fan of the game will be happy when they see the vehicles and units they've grown to know and love in a top-down perspective.

In order to select units, you can use the A button while hovering on them, and then you can issue a move/attack command with X. Units in Halo Wars can also gather resource supply crates that can be found spread on the map. Y causes a unit or group to use the special ability, whether it's grenades for infantry or rail guns for tanks, and so on.

The arrows can be used for quick access to important location, like the down arrow, which centers the camera on your primary base when used.

Base building is easy but management and the way this feature is implemented reminds me of an old, call it obscure if you want, title: Dark Colony. I was a big fan of this game, and the deal is like this: you can only build in pre-defined locations around the base. There are several constructions slots, and you have to choose carefully what building type to make. Create more supplies and you'll be limited with power plants, thus limiting your tech level and your ability to construct more advanced units. Own more energy reactors, but have a slower flow of cash.

This is an interesting concept indeed, and it also means you will have to expand eventually to at least a secondary base location in order to get everything you want, and because base locations are limited and pre-defined on a map...

Anyway, I'm insisting too much on details already. This is after all only a preview. You will have to wait and see, or rather read the review when it comes out. So come back and visit us soon!

As an end note, it is worth to mention the fantastic music soundtrack composed by the talented Stephen Rippy, the awesome cinematic moments in between missions that ease you into the story and the appealing graphics and fast paced gameplay that will certainly draw a lot of gamers to Halo Wars.