Picking up 28 years after the end of the first Halo Wars, with the UNSC ship Spirit of Fire adrift in space, the crew’s cryo sleep has ended due to an anomaly in an uncharted sector. With lessons learned, and another veteran RTS developer at the helm in Creative Assembly (known for the terrific Total War series on PC), Halo Wars 2 finally arrives on Xbox One. Perhaps that’s why Microsoft decided to take a chance and give Halo Wars another chance to shine.

That’s not a dig at the fans by any means hell, I fall neatly into their ranks myself, but that reason is precisely why Halo Wars could have done much better – if I could play and enjoy it, any other Halo player could too. It was fairly well received and was certainly well made, especially as the RTS formula rarely translates well to consoles, but this meant that it was largely overlooked by a Halo audience used to simply shooting its way through any problem. When 343 Industries stepped in and Halo 4 eventually arrived (a game I personally loved), fans were quite heavily split, and when Halo 5: Guardians arrived in 2015, things weren’t exactly looking great for Microsoft’s flagship series.Īmidst all this, Ensemble Studios, the studio behind Age of Empires, released Halo Wars in 2009, a real time strategy game set in the Halo Universe. But once Bungie took its final bow in 2010 with Halo: Reach, leaving both Microsoft and Halo behind, many thought the franchise would be lost.

Halo 3’s ODST spin-off was also full of great moments, even introducing the co-op brilliance of Firefight, and boasted a cast that reunited a few of the Firefly cast – Nathan Fillion’s character even went on to play a starring role in Halo 5. The original trilogy was loved by the fans, be it for the hugely entertaining multiplayer content (Halo 2 is arguably the reason why Xbox Live initially succeeded) or for the immense depth of its bonkers story, there is no denying the quality on offer.

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