![]() You can group together all of the units that are currently on screen or you can group together all of your units period. Your options for grouping units together are very limited. Managing individual squads out of your larger forces is rarely a necessity in Halo Wars 2’s campaign which is both a lost opportunity and a minor blessing because Halo Wars 2’s tools for complicated squad structures are virtually non-existent. Later missions in Halo Wars 2’s campaign attempt to complicate this by starting you at massive disadvantages to your enemy, but establishing a stable defense just moves to the top of the queue and then you focus on the other priorities next. With the exception of missions that task you with devising a defense when you’re outmanned and outgunned, strategy in Halo Wars 2 becomes rote tactics: crank out resource generating buildings, build defenses, turtle, blob the enemy once you have numerical superiority, victory. Individual unit types in those classes complicate the dynamic a little (an infantry robot who is excellent against vehicles, an anti-air vehicle, etc.) but there are enough complementary options for your squad make-up and such a surplus of resources that you rarely feel pressed for a counter. It’s a basic rock/paper/scissors set-up with infantry strong against air which is strong against vehicle which is strong against infantry. Halo Wars 2’s strategic element then involves the make-up and allocation of your combat units. Although you’ll likely be hurting for resources at the beginning of a match, easy upgrades to your base means you’ll be flush with resources by the mid/late stages of a match. Those same modular slots can also be used to make buildings that generate infantry/vehicle/air units. Resource generation is done through modular additions to your home base. Halo Wars 2 streamlines much of the busy work of base building and resource collection that weighs down the early stages of an RTS match. And while the new sequel shows flashes of a possible new and faster approach to RTS matches, which too often get bogged down in micromanagement, the challenges the game offers don’t use this pace to present any other new spins on a genre that has been relatively static in terms of structure and design since Warcraft 3’s release over a decade ago. HALO WARS 2 SERIESBut where the main shooter series balanced accessibility with layers of complexity, Halo Wars stripped the RTS down to its bare essentials at the cost of the tactical/strategic complexities that are the heart of the genre. Halo Wars took the battle between humanity and the Covenant into the realm of real-time strategy in 2009 after Command & Conquer 3 momentarily revived the console real-time strategy game (RTS). But with Halo Wars 2, the franchise spin-off treads water with both its chosen genre and the sci-fi universe it inhabits. The innovations in those games reshaped a market. The accessible, multi-player focused shooter dominates contemporary game sales because of Halo and Halo 2. Bungie and Microsoft bet that complex maps, vehicular warfare, and bombastic space opera would reinvigorate the console shooter. The Halo franchise began with a boast: Combat Evolved. ![]()
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