Creative Assembly’s sequel is set to arrive this coming February, building upon the original’s gameplay. The added layer of strategic nuance from playing with keyboard and mouse is very welcome on PC, and something Halo Wars 2 can hopefully build upon. Halo Wars: Definitive Edition still makes for a great run in to the strategy spin off series. There have also been definite graphical bumps given to the weaponry effects too, but overall there’s little else to distinguish it from the original’s functional design. Meanwhile on Xbox One the visual upgrades are also apparent, with crisp clear visuals making the best of the fairly limited army and map sizes that the Xbox 360 was capable of. It’s a minor foible, considering how light the game is to run.
It’s most noticeable in the interface, that’s for certain, but it’s odd not to just let you pick a game resolution from a drop down menu. Your only option is to uncheck the “high resolution” option, which cuts the game’s resolution to a quarter – on a 4K 2160p screen, it’s then running at 1080p, at 1080p, it’s running at 540p, and so on.
HALO WARS DEFINITIVE EDITION PC SIZE FULL
You can’t pick a custom resolution, with the game automatically running at whatever native resolution you have – it filled the atypical 1920×1200 just as happily as full 4K 2160p. However, one thing that’s needlessly opaque is the resolution options. The game should scale down very nicely to lower end hardware, with options to step down texture resolution, shadow detail, and so on. The cinematics remain gorgeously rendered even after over half a decade, even if they’re not running at full HD. Though hardly on the cutting edge, it looks pretty good, with improved textures and some effects quality, but that improvement is diminished when it falls back to surprisingly juddery pre-rendered flyovers at a mission’s start – something that’s also present in the Xbox One version – that can hopefully be fixed for the final release. Halo Wars did little to trouble the Radeon RX480 in my PC, and it’s more than capable of running at 4K with a locked 60fps. Ensemble turned their years of experience making critically acclaimed real time strategy games to adapting and honing the genre for console, ensuring that Halo Wars was not only accessible but hugely enjoyable. You take command of Sergeant Forge and his steadily growing army of UNSC Marines, Warthogs, Scorpion tanks and, of course, Spartans, as you battle against the forces of the Arbiter. A sequel was eventually given the go ahead and the baton on to Creative Assembly, but Microsoft and 343 are letting us relive the original on Xbox One and PC with Halo Wars: Definitive Edition, available to play now in Early Access form for those who preorder Halo Wars 2: Ultimate Edition.įeaturing it’s own unique campaign set in the dynamic Halo universe, it follows some of the earliest encounters between the UNSC and the Covenant, set 21 years before the events of Combat Evolved.
A sequel was never guaranteed, though, especially not after Ensemble Studios were closed shortly after Halo Wars’ 2009 release. Halo Wars was something of a surprise when it originally released in 2009, being a rare and commendable attempt at bringing the traditionally PC-based RTS genre into the living room.