Halo Wars gets February release date

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.