Poll: Why was Halo Wars considered a bad RTS?

[spartandude]

tbh its limited by being a console rts, for a console rts however its quite good but compared to all other rts games out there it is terrible
again this is purely because its on the console and therefore the controls are limited meaning the game is limited

 

[Trivun]

Because it's just horrible, and broken, and even though I hate RTS games, even I know that you can only really play them properly on PC.

You hate RTS games, so you can't really be expected to make a point here that isn't biased in some way. Even if it is an unbiased point, nevertheless your points are mistaken. It's not 'just horrible', you don't even give any evidence to support that opinion or claim. It's certainly not broken, as the OP mentioned the game is very well balanced, and two half-decent players will certainly both have to keep on changing their tactics and strategy and whatnot when playing against each other. It's much more well balanced than many other popular RTSs for PC, for example, I have Halo Wars myself and also regularly play Dawn of War. In DoW, it's easy to overwhelm the opponent by simply turtling with tons of turrets in a single fortified position, and that keeps the enemy at bay long enough for even the most n00bish player to build massive amounts of whatever their most powerful units are. Victory is almsot guaranteed after that point. That, my friend, is a horribly broken RTS. Halo Wars, on the other hand, has a much better squad cap limit, and has limited base options and turrets and stuff that mean a good player has to defend as well as be able to attack. And to play a game like that takes serious skill.

Also, Halo Wars is certainly a game with a great set of controls. The lesser need for micromanagement means that the control scheme could be made more streamlined, and when I first played the game it took me perhaps ten minutes to get fully acquainted with the controls. That's about the same amount of time as it takes for me to get used to the controls of most newer FPSs I play, and indeed some games I've played have taken me a lot longer to understand the controls of (for example, Alone in the Dark, though admittedly it was mainly me getting used to being able to position my weapons on-screen to attack and having to get used to that idea...).

Overall, Halo Wars is, though by no means a perfect game (because lets face it, every game is bound to have some flaws no matter how much we may fanboy over them), it is definitely a good FPS game. Like many here, I was skeptical when it was first announced, and yet I grew to love it very quickly after buying and playing it. My view, therefore, is that the hordes of people claiming it's crap are mostly disgruntled PC fanboys and fangirls who are annoyed at the fact that their 'God Genre', that they were always most dominant in, has finally produced something that isn't only good on PC.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well I haven't played it but lots of people call it generic badly broken. Given that it is a console RTS(Even though it is developed for console) I am not entirely surprised that it is broken. There are somethings a controller is better than keyboard and mouse RTS games is not one of those things.

 

[baddude1337]

I thought it was fun, the best Halo game there is in my opinion. I think the main problem is that the controls are over simplified, as well the strategy was underwhelming, basically just massing lots of units. What did slightly irk me was that most reviewers praised the wheel selection system as being innovative for console RTS's, but Kane's Wrath did it before Wars, and much better too (if you do want an RTS on a console, this is the one).

 

[Christopher Parker]

Judging from the demo, it has the same problems as every game in the Halo series, IMO: it does most parts competently, but nothing particularly well. Remember Yahtzee's review of Halo 3, and where he says that Halo 3 isn't a bad game? Consider that section of the review quoted word for word.

 

[tijuanatim]

Most RTS fans are PC purists, and most Halo fans can't comprehend a Halo game that isn't a shooter. It was fighting an uphill battle from both sides.

 

[binvjoh]

I wasn't aware that it was. I remember it getting mostly average reviews leaning towards positive.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Well, when it came out, me and 2 of my friends all got it, and we played through the entire campaign on Co-Op. It was quite fun. Then we did a couple Skirmish matches. Those were quite fun too. After that though, we pretty much never touched the game again. There really wasn't any lasting appeal.

 

[Fishyash]

I would assume it's because that since it's on a console, you cannot micromanage. This means if you want a working RTS on a console you will probably need to dumb the game down greatly.

Basically, unless you have a completely different style of RTS on a console, it is not gonna work.

 

[Zechariah Riojas]

Having played RTS games on both a PC and a console, Halo Wars had great controls, a reasonable balance (although ODST were balanced fine before the first update) but didn't have a range of strategies once you got down to it. If you played one-on-one online, chances are you would get warthog rushed. If that didn't happen then the other person was either building an army of tanks or an army of hawks. As the covenant though you could actually build a strategy around having various types of units instead of a horde of one type. I've played Command and Conquer, and Supreme Commander for the console and Supreme Commander, Empire Earth, Age of Empires for the PC. As far as a console game goes, Halo Wars was not a bad RTS. It just wasn't great and probably would have done better to have more units so as to make more strategies.

 

[e2density]

RTS can't be played on consoles...it requires fast ways to move around the map + tons of hotkeys to do various things.

That's why Halo Wars couldn't be taken seriously.

 

[Liberaliter]

Well because it is on consoles, RTS game work much better on PC's with a keyboard and mouse. For a console RTS I guess it was ok, but that isn't saying much.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Even before any real details were known about Halo Wars, it was tacitly recognized as the pinnacle and face of all console strategy games. After all, it's a Halo game. And it presumably has more resources invested in it than any similar titles. Is this good reason to present it as the pinnacle that console strategy games can achieve? Even knowing nothing about it or similar titles in the genre? It was good enough at the time; good enough for every significant source on the subject I was exposed to.

And then we got the game. It was- weird. It was the most conventional RTS imaginable, but gutted, and played with half the buttons missing. Is this the best game that a console RTS can be? It must be. It's Halo Wars. And so Battle for Middle Earth II was forgotten with all the other successful titles. They were erased from popular imagination by the assumption that they could never have existed. The official review on this very website declared the console RTS was not viable and Halo Wars, declared foremost among them with no reasonable justification, was proof. The author admitted having no previous experience with any console RTS this generation. Check the comments. I'm there, clawing my eyes out.

Before Halo Wars, I perceived the console RTS as a growing genre slowly building an audience. Now I see it dwindling away. I don't blame Microsoft for hyping their game or for the way it was received. And I know this isn't a significant cause of hate for the game on the community level. But for me, this is the legacy of Halo Wars. The fair and odd RTS whose existence killed the console RTS genre, for which I had so much hope.

 

[kingcom]

Because it was on a console.

Because it was a Halo game.

basically because it was on console.

Answer: PC gamers hate everything on a console, it could be the best RTS ever and an entire community would hate on it, then add on the people that hate Halo with a passion and you have an army of negative reviews, and blind hate.

Its because "true gamers"* say RTS are only for PC.
*or some other BS like that

Huh.

 

[kingcom]

Funnily enough, this is how I play every RTS ever.

Unfortunately many RTS players dont play this way, hence their dislike for Halo Wars or the dubbing of the title "Baby's First RTS", great for someone who has never played it before but when your ready to stop riding that tricicyle and want to ride a bike, there are better options.

And the Starcraft series is an even bigger rip off of Warhammer 40,000. Go figure.

Provide proof (if your actually going with the commercial rip-off opposed to the idea rip-off). Otherwise your quoting the wrong source. They are taking ideas from H.R Giger's art, every military story ever told but first having power armour first popularised by the Starship Troopers novel. In terms of of ancient race in tune with high forces (nature, psychic etc), thats Scandinavian mythology.

Nobody is ripping anyone off otherwise I can accuse everyone of ripping off cavemen since ultimately these stories and concepts are so old that its probably sourced from them.

 

[katsumoto03]

It was on a console and it was Halo so no matter how good the game was, you'll get answers like these.

1. Obvious Cash in
2. Way to simplified.
3. Frat Boys didn't know that it was a RTS and were enraged LOL.

 

[zfactor]

Eh, I played it but it wasn't bad. There are cirtainly worse games.

The main problem I had with it was the controls. I've played PC RTSs and the "click and drag" functions are dearly missed. Also holding shift to deselect preselected units without deselecting all of them. And assigning teams. Nitpicks, I know, but annoying nitpicks when you use them all the fucking time on other games...

Smaller issues I had were with buildings and unit caps. You can only build bases in cirtain areas (unlike other RTS I have played, with the excpetion of Celtic Kings: Rage of War [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Kings:_Rage_of_War], but that's more of a "Civilization in real time" game than an RTS.). This means you can only build turrets next to you bases, not at the critical choke points. So you build some tanks instead, but soon run out of people because of the unit cap (which most RTSs don't have, or its so fucking high, you will never hit it unless you build 50000000 units). Take Red Alert [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Alert] (1 and 2, I don't have 3...) for example. There is a unit cap. It's just hidden and has to do with the game not being able to address a million billion units because of memory issues. I actually hit the RE2 unit cap once because I was building hundreds of GIs and deploying their heavy machine guns all around the enemy's base. If he tried to leave, death ensued. Or Supreme Commander 2 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander_2]. There normally is a 500 unit and building cap (which you hit easily once you get good at it, also done for memory reasons). You can also easily edit the game xmls to raise it to, say, 5000. The AI can't handle that many units (probably another reason for the cap, he just piles anything over 500 in his base), but you can. It tends to fuck up saving and loading, but it sure is fun.

My point is I didn't like the controls or the unit cap.

I do like the squads of soldiers, the upgrades, and the units themselves. And you can make Spartans. Win.

Overall, OK; fun, but annoying at times. Would have been better on the PC because then I could mod everything bad about it out.

On that note, does anybody know of an Xbox 360 emulator (for the PC)? Because it would be cool to do what I just said.

 

[Treblaine]

Because RTS fans are pretty hardcore... and the only way it works on console is to soften it up a heck of a lot.

Also a lot of bad blood around how Microsoft treated the studio that made the game. I mean firing them ALL right after it goes gold, that's cruel.

 

[Brandon Storck]

There are not really any good Console RTSs out there from what I have seen. Halo Wars sold well because M$ could count on Halo Fan-boys (Myself Included) to but it, and we did. Ensemble studios was officially shut down about a month before the game's release. There were several inconsistence plot elements. The most infamous being the presence of the flood, being that Halo Wars should take place before the Fall of Reach (Halo: Reach) and that the Flood was accidentally released by the Covenant on the 6th mission of Halo: CE. This is also where the Master Chief meets the Monitor of 'Installation 04', 343 Guilty Spark.

This combined with the fact that the game was not very good or fun was the reason for it's decline and is generally disliked among fans and excluded when discussing the Halo Timeline.

 

[BlastedTheWorm]

Provide proof (if your actually going with the commercial rip-off opposed to the idea rip-off). Otherwise your quoting the wrong source. They are taking ideas from H.R Giger's art, every military story ever told but first having power armour first popularised by the Starship Troopers novel. In terms of of ancient race in tune with high forces (nature, psychic etc), thats Scandinavian mythology.

Well, I don't know how much in depth I can really "prove", I suppose it's just the impression I get.

But here goes...

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine

Starcraft Terran Marine

Warhammer 40,000 Tyranid Hormagant

Starcraft Zergling

Warhammer 40,000 Tyranid Ravener

Starcraft Zerg Hydralisk

Although as you yourself alluded to, both of these species are heavily inspired by Giger's works, but if you ask me, they share more characteristics between eachother than Giger's alien.

Although there are more comparisons to be made (Starcraft's Protoss with Warhammer 40,000's Eldar and Tau factions), I am honestly too tired to hunt down more pictures, and quite frankly don't care anymore. StarCraft to me is more of a rip-off of Warhammer 40,000 than Halo is of Starcraft, but hell, they all come from the same damn place down the line.