Halo Wars 2

Halo Wars 2 is a rare specimen — a real-time strategy game designed primarily for a controller, and one that genuinely works. It continues the story of the crew of the Spirit of Fire, who wake after a long sleep near a giant installation called the Ark and run into a new threat in the form of the brutal warlord Atriox and his renegade faction, the Banished. The campaign is told through impressive cinematics and missions that alternate classic base-building with tasks where you're given only a handful of units and have to make it through to the end with them.

The controls rely on clever shortcuts: a radial menu for construction, buttons to select all units or all army groups, and a cursor with automatic target snapping. The base expands across predefined slots, which simplifies the economy to two resources and leaves room for decisions about how much to invest in supplies, research, and population. Alongside classic deathmatch and a tug-of-war over control points, the game brings the Blitz mode, where the army is built from cards and combat focuses purely on capturing points — a brisk variant that makes strategy a surprisingly accessible affair. The campaign can also be played entirely in two-player co-op, which is far from common for strategy games.

Visually, Halo Wars 2 is above average for the genre: legible units, well-differentiated factions, and flashy orbital-bombardment and airstrike abilities. The music works with motifs typical of the series and lends the battles appropriate weight even though you're watching the action from a distance. Reception was warm; the game was criticized for a shorter campaign and less content for long-term play, while its accessibility and how well it translates strategy to console were praised. Today it stands as one of the best proofs that real-time strategy can indeed work on a gamepad, and for Halo fans it's also an important piece of the series' mythology. After release the game received the Awakening the Nightmare expansion, which added a new campaign and the playable Flood faction.