Halo Wars

Halo Wars is a rare case of a real-time strategy game designed from the ground up for a controller rather than a mouse and keyboard. Ensemble Studios, the team associated with the Age of Empires series, built the controls around radial menus, quick selection of all units with a single button, and bases with fixed slots for buildings. It sounds like a significant simplification, yet the result is a surprisingly smooth pace: the player doesn't worry about building fortifications or micromanaging workers and instead focuses on gathering resources, composing an army, and moving across the map. Combat follows a simple rock-paper-scissors principle between infantry, vehicles, and aircraft.

The story takes place years before the events of the first Halo and follows the crew of the ship Spirit of Fire, who stumble upon the remnants of an ancient civilization and try to stop the Covenant from seizing them. The campaign is punctuated by lavish pre-rendered cutscenes that were among the best the genre had seen on consoles at the time, and they greatly aid the clarity of an otherwise concise story. Missions offer side objectives and hidden skulls, giving players a reason to return on higher difficulty and chase better ratings. Besides the campaign, the game offers classic skirmishes against the computer or other players, letting you choose between human command and the Covenant, each side featuring several leaders with their own abilities.

Technically the game ran smoothly even during larger battles, and maps stayed readable even viewed from a distance on a television, a crucial detail for a strategy game. At the time it was received as proof that the genre could work on a console, with reservations about lesser strategic depth compared to PC classics. A sad footnote to its release was the closure of Ensemble Studios shortly after the game hit shelves. Today Halo Wars still serves as a textbook example of how to adapt strategy to a gamepad, and offers fans a glimpse of an era when humanity was still figuring out just who it was fighting.