Halo Wars 2 Hands-on Preview – A Captivating Beginning

In less than 4 days, gamers who pre-ordered the Halo Wars 2 Ultimate Edition will gain early access to the launch of the real-time strategy game created in partnership between 343 Industries and Creative Assembly. I’ve had the past weekend to explore the new Halo title on the Xbox One, spending most of that time in the single player campaign.

First, I want to mention that I’m not going to talk about the Halo Wars 2 campaign in detail to avoid spoilers in this short preview. Additionally, the footage below doesn’t contain any cut-scenes as it’s pure gameplay only.

I’m someone who enjoys strategy games, yet I’ve never fully completed one all the way to the finish. Company of Heroes 2 is a perfect example of a game I really liked until I hit a road block and stopped playing. I would say that I’m probably not the most patient when it comes to devising a perfect strategy for annihilating the enemy threat. Instead, I’m the type of player that wants a large army with massive firepower for overwhelming the opposition. Thankfully, that strategy works in Halo Wars 2.

Halo Wars 2 is intriguing right from the very beginning with a highly captivating build-up of the UNSC Spirit of Fire preparing to wage war on a new enemy known as the Banished. The opening story and cinematics for the campaign are absolutely superb to the point that it creates a lot of excitement and interest at the start of the campaign. It’s an incredibly forward-driven journey that I can’t wait to share about with you more when I publish my full review. And to compliment the enthusiasm that immerses within the player at the beginning, the gameplay is great at creating an easy-going, yet strategically beneficial experience for gamers of all skill levels.

Coming from someone who isn’t a hardcore RTS player, the beginning of Halo Wars 2 is all excitement and doesn’t become overwhelming at all. Developing a base is super easy to manage and upgrade. It’s a simple task to create as many troops as possible to have storm the battlefield before creating more to rush in behind them. Building random types of units without much strategy might feel like the easiest approach at first for some folks, however the more players get used to the interface and the enemy combatants, the more they’ll begin to understand how everything works and gain knowledge of what units are most effective against specific enemy types.

The best part about the beginning of Halo Wars 2 is that this feels like Halo. This will give chills to all who love the Halo universe, whether you’re a real-time strategy fan or not. And that’s what’s great about Halo Wars 2 so far as well that I’ve been playing on Heroic difficulty and able to progress without too much of a struggle even though I’m not an expert at RTS games. Sure, it hasn’t been easy and my completion times for the first three missions have been far beyond the par time given, but it’s still be an absolute enjoyable experience.

Halo Wars 2 has me completely captivated and excited to experience more. Check back soon for my complete thoughts when my review is published at a later date. Until then, take a look at my gameplay footage from the first two missions of the Halo Wars 2 campaign on Xbox One. As a reminder, no cut-scenes are shown in the footage below.

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