The single player campaign of Halo Wars is very much like any other RTS campaign; it slowly brings you through the learning curve by showing you how to control units and build bases until you have to fight off wave after wave of unrelenting enemy forces towards the end of your campaign.

The story is a prequel to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved and takes place six years after the fall of the planet Harvest. Many familiar themes come into play; the Prophets stop at nothing to continue the great journey, you go toe-to-toe with Grunts, Elites, Hunters, Jackals, Brutes, and many familiar vehicles, as well as some new ones, and you have to blow up some forerunner technology to save everyone's lives.

The gameplay within the storyline is slightly different from multiplayer or skirmish matches. For one thing, there are some campaign-exclusive units that effectively change battle scenarios throughout the campaign. They usually give you an unfair edge over the enemy and make some missions a cakewalk if you're playing on the "normal" difficulty level. On top of that, in some missions you're given ridiculous amounts of something, like 11 Spartans as opposed to the maximum 3 in multiplayer, 40 Mass Accelerated Cannon rounds, or free drops of fully-upgraded ODSTs.

The hero system within the campaign is different as well, marking Spartans as hero units, as well as your leader. When any of your heroes die, you can revive them as in Age of Empires III by bringing a friendly unit close to them. In the other game modes, heroes just die and they have to be resurrected, and as a balancing issue, UNSC leaders do not actually enter the battle yet act more like the governors in the AOEIII system.

The game's graphics are the best I have ever seen in an RTS. It includes incredibly detailed, slightly different renditions of the characters of Halo to take time difference into account. The sounds within the game are ripped directly from the Halo series, and their quality has been improved to allow for sound cues within battles.

Playing online is incredibly entertaining because each of the six leaders has a different way of playing the game, therefore making an effective six races. Because the game is not as strict as other RTS games such as StarCraft, no two players can play the game the same way. The limitation of how many buildings one can create force a player to specialize in one aspect and utilize it to its full effectiveness.

Ensemble claims that there is a rock-paper-scissors type balancing within the game, but I found that to not be completely true. The game's unique style of play puts strategy over production, and in a battle of ODSTs versus Grizzly tanks (Scorpion tanks with two cannons) a good commander on the ODST side has about as much of a chance of winning as the commander of the Grizzlies.

The largest drawback to playing online isn't caused as much by the game as by player mentality. When I first got Halo Wars, I ran through the tutorial levels, fought some skirmish battles, played online, then played through campaign mode. The average player, however, would play the campaign before they would play online. Because the campaign only covers the UNSC, about two in every three members of the online community play as the UNSC. Regardless, battles still turn out interesting with every player having their own unique strategy, making every battle different.

Overall, Halo Wars is a great game, earning most of that greatness through its uniqueness. Being a veteran of many RTS games, I can comfortably call this one of the simplest – but simultaneously one of the most fun – games I've played. I wouldn't recommend buying it if you don't have access to LIVE, but the skulls and achievements allow for a lot of replay value, as does the ability to create your own scenarios through the skirmish option. Even with LIVE, the $60 price tag seems a little steep, but due to its addictiveness, Halo Wars is definitely too valuable to rent. Chances are, the price won't drop because it is part of the Halo franchise, so do a few odd jobs and the game will pay for itself.

great.

Game Informer: Halo 3 Recon '3 to 5' hours, earn Recon armor / GI: Halo 3 Recon is open-world (Joystiq): According to the latest issue of GameInformer magazine, Halo 3: Recon will not be "a $60 game" and will bemore like "a three to five-hour expansion pack." Not just that, but according to the article, Recon is also an "open-world" title, meaning that Bungie is ditching the linear, run-and-gun FPS gameplay of the previous Halo games. Even though users will be able to acquire the rare, Bungie staff-only "Recon Armor" through the game, I question the validity of a "three to five-hour" "open-world" title. In a "real" open-world game, you spend three to five hours in your inventory alone!

Sony to Release Madhouse's Marvel Hero Anime Worldwide (Anime News Network): Madhouse's anime adaptations of Marvel superheroes will not only be releasing in Japan. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will distribute the series in America after the Iron Man and Wolverine series premiere on Japanese television in Spring 2009. Without question this is Marvel's attempt to fight the popularity of animated feature Batman: Gotham Knight (read Uncle Yo's review). The DVD - propelled by The Dark Knight, no doubt - soared to the top of the anime sales charts in the past months, giving Warner Bros. a significant edge over Sony in the casual anime market.

That was quite a while ago, however, and for now, the spotlight is on Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat, as their map pack compiling not three, but four new maps was released on April 4th for voracious players to drool all over. These include: Broadcast, set in the television production studio and parking lot of the 'Charlie Don't Surf' level in Call of Duty 4. Chinatown is a direct remake of the classic Call of Duty 2 map, Carentan, but in the foggier, grittier, and certainly darker ambient of Chinatown. Creek, which is perhaps Call of Duty 4's most colorful map, is set outside [by a creek] in a large, wide open combat ravaged village with scarce cover spots, and might I say, it looks beautiful. The final map is called Killhouse, a desolate training warehouse with several cover spots, not all of which are entirely safe.

One more thing that I found laughable is the trailer for Halo 3's new map pack...well, two things...

Second laughable material: Its theme is very peculiar. It seems very off-the-beaten-path, yet it feels somewhat Halo while being significantly off. Death, ancient battles, scars, and darkness were some of the more notable keywords amidst all these maps and the trailer; the reasons why could be speculated, but I'm not going to do so here.

Are these maps worth the money, or should we all just wait until they are offered free of charge? Maybe, maybe not -- but I've given you what you need to decide if you want one, the other, both, or even neither!

[news data via Bungie / Kotaku]