Halo Wars to have co-op campaign

By Robert Purchese Published 10 June, 2008

Plus: six-player online battles.

Halo Wars is to sport a trendy co-operative campaign for you and a friend; the same feature boasted about for Red Alert 3 not so long ago.

Developer Ensemble is also offering online battles for six of you, according to a preview in magazine GamePro (read by TeamXbox).

The piece goes on to talk of how Halo Wars has had its learning curve shortened in favour of picking-up the pace during battles; assaults can be prepared in less than a minute, we're told, which is faster than toasting bread.

Halo Wars was unveiled at X06 by a fancy trailer during the press conference. The hope is that Ensemble can have the same impact on real-time strategy that Bungie had on first-person shooters using Master Chief and his alien nemeses.

We've not seen a great deal of the Xbox 360-exclusive since then, with assets only spilling in dribs and drabs onto the Internet recently. It looks unlikely to make it to shops in 2008, but we expect to hear more about it at either E3 or the Leipzig Games Convention later this year.

Until then, pop over to our Halo Wars gamepage to find out 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 (15) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • Jimbob89 #1 4 years ago

    Awesome, looking forward to this!

  • DFawkes #2 4 years ago

    I'm still not convinced RTS games go well with controllers, but this looks good regardless. I loike co-op RTs games too, used to play Battle for Middle Earth in teams of 2 to mix and match styles.

  • Darren #3 4 years ago

    The early gameplay demonstration of this game blew me away, it looks excellent, better and more interesting dare I say than the previous two instalments of the FPS trilogy. I definitely welcome the change in direction for the game as I'm kind of getting bored of FPSs but the Halo universe is still an intriguing one to set games in.

  • Dizzy #4 4 years ago

    It is not really a traditional RTS. Ensemble are trying to go more for a skirmish game... so quick action and no resource gathering and minimal building. A bit like an overhead version of the Halo FPS ;)

  • DFawkes #5 4 years ago

    If they keep it squad based with units levelling up, I can see that being awesome. Group of Spartans, Warthog unit, support fire from some Marines with Rocket Launchers... it could rock.

  • bad09 #6 4 years ago

    @ Arbiter

    "I understand Dizzy. But honestly it seems to me that they are missing the point of what makes this type of game appealing. Why do something in a RTS style if you aren't interested in strategy?"

    I think HW is trying for fans of Halo rather than RTS fans. I would imagine most people interested in HW are not interested in the resource gathering building armies. They just want to play Halo on a large scale, which this seems to do.

    Personally I don't do these types of games so not really bothered (but I'll keep an eye on it as I like Halo), and to be honest I can't really see this appealing to the average Halo player but we'll see......

  • Dizzy #7 4 years ago

    >Why do something in a RTS style if you aren't interested in strategy?

    Well tabletop boardgames have many different types of battles. Strategy has nothing to do with building or gathering. You can have big or small battles. Tactical or strategic.

    Like I said.. this will be more of a skirmish game... there is definitely a possibility of strategy (depending on the setup of course.. it could be pure action twitch based as well). And TBH most computer RTS games score very badly on the "strategy" front ;) They are usually all about optimized building and quick mouse/keyboard actions. I guess for true "strategy" you can only go turn based :)
    Edited by 3 at 10/06/08 @ 10:42

  • CreepinJesus #8 4 years ago

    "assaults can be prepared in less than a minute, we're told, which is faster than toasting bread."

    Not if you use the barbecue on full flame :) Mind you, its not really toast, then...

  • Xerx3s #9 4 years ago

    My buy-o-meter just went from maybe to a good possibility. :o

  • agparrot #10 4 years ago

    am a bit more interested now.

  • BobsUncle #11 4 years ago

    I hope it has some sort of ranking system, because even though love RTS's, I'm fucking shit at them.

  • Xerx3s #12 4 years ago

    "SC2 > Halo Wars"

    So do you compare chess with martial arts as well just because there is conflict in it?

  • Lutz #13 4 years ago

    Not 2008? Bastards. Was meant to be September. :(

  • hiddenranbir #14 4 years ago

    What will be the halo equivilant of a Zerg...

  • Cider86 #15 4 years ago

    Interested to see how this compares to Endwar and Supreme Commander when they're out
    Edited by 1 at 11/06/08 @ 14:38