Halo Wars gets February release date

By Robert Purchese Published 7 November, 2008

Limited Collector's Edition unveiled.

Microsoft plans to release Halo Wars next February, in both Standard and Limited Collector's Edition guise.

The latter is chock full of extras, according to Microsoft's Gamerscore blog. Included will be early access to the Mythic Map Pack for Halo 3, bizarrely, featuring the Assembly, Orbital and Sandbox areas.

There's also the Halo Wars: Genesis comic book created by lead game designer Graeme Devine, Halo novel writer Eric Nylund, and artist Phil Noto. This book adds some backstory to the Covenant interest in the world of Harvest.

On top of that are unique in-game "Honor Guard" Wraith vehicle, some trading cards of faction leaders, and a Spirit of Fire patch to begin the game as a member of the SOF crew.

Pre-orders of the standard version will be given access to a special in-game Warthog, which has an eye-catching flame design on its bonnet. Vroom.

The Limited Collector's Edition sells for USD 79.99. There's no sign of the bundle anywhere on UK retailers just yet, and we're waiting to hear back from Microsoft about pricing and availability.

Halo Wars is the Xbox 360-exclusive real-time strategy game from Ensemble Studios, the brain behind PC series Age of Empires.

Microsoft announced recently that the studio would close after the game was complete, unfortunately, but none of this seems to have negatively impacted the game.

Head over to our Halo Wars gamepage to find out much more.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (8) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • mcmonkeyplc #1 3 years ago

    Sold!

  • JonFE #2 3 years ago

    Please do not cut the contents of the limited edition just before release this time Microsoft, OK :-s

  • EzyRyder #3 3 years ago

    Although never a fan of the AoE series it is a real shame that Ensemble Studios will close after the completion of this. Don't they make loads of money? I would have thought so, after all, all their games sell really well, and I expect this one to see well too!

  • Mr_Dodger #4 3 years ago

    I hope the UK edition gets the comic too. That's something that's often missing from UK LE's.

  • Lutz #5 3 years ago

    Bet the specially edition gets whittled down over the months to just the making of DVD.

    /not bitter at Fable 2, no, not at all.

  • sneetch #6 3 years ago

    @Lutz [mod]
    "Bet the specially edition gets whittled down over the months to just the making of DVD.

    /not bitter at Fable 2, no, not at all."

    No, you'll also get cards to unlock the special units... although those will be missing from many of the boxes sold and you'll have to wait for Ensemble or Microsoft to come up with a way to fix that. I hope these special units only differ on the textures, no one should get an advantage in these games based on the version bought.

    Also, if they're shutting down the studio afterwards then I hope it's high quality right out the door, it's somewhat difficult to get patches from a non-existent team. Future map-packs and other post-release support could also be kinda tricky.

  • $olokid #7 3 years ago

    That's it, I gotta get this one.
    Edited by 1 at 27/11/08 @ 21:34

  • $olokid #8 3 years ago

    Not that I didn't have get any of the other Halos. ;)