Halo Wars 2: Is It Good?
2017 Episode 50 February 17, 2017
Reviews are hitting for Halo Wars 2. Want to know the highs and lows before you drop your money on it? We've got you covered.
love RTS's and loved halo wars, but this gets a Jeff Goldblum one big pile of skip.
That's good that Halo Wars 2 is generally good, but sadly has its drawbacks.
I guess... but maybe they could have put a bit more actual, genuine thought and care into the game and come up with something that didn't have such problematic drawbacks... drawbacks that mean it is little more than a revamped graphics version of countless other games out there... (and adding in things like being able to group units means it is now up to the heady heights of Age of Empires (1)!?!?)
Gone are the days that big companies are interested in putting in some serious work into actual content (rather than just making gamers themselves create it via multiplayer)... that why I stick with the Indie stuff... even Minecraft has suffered from this despite having been created by Indie dev's... Microsoft's updates are tamer and making the whole thing more bland - the mods are the only reason that Minecraft still rocks the world (and the boat).
As a big halo fan (who primarily buys xboxes FOR halo games) I was on the fence about whether or not to buy Halo Wars 2, but hearing about the micro-transactions decided it for me. I'm not getting it, and will just hear about the story later.
This Blitz game sounds like exactly what Halo 5 did with War Zone. They made a great new game-type, but muddled it up with micro-transactions, affording high-paying players more opportunities to gain advantages. I put hundreds of hours into Halo 5's Ware Zone (and never purchased anything with money for it). It was certainly fun. But it was pretty clear, especially early on, that the people who shelled out a bunch of money could, AND DID, use that as an advantage over the people who didn't pay up (for example, spamming ultra-ghosts and oni-warthogs every match).
It's pay to win. It's subtle, and can't be pointed to on any single match, but on an overall scale, it's pay to win. They tip-toe around the issue with talk about chances, and some stupid concept of really lucky players totally being able to get the same "opportunities" as the extra-paying players, but it's just false representation and they know it. Micro-transactions should be restricted to purely aesthetic extras (ie TF2 hats). When micro-transactions have real, functional effects on how the game is played, they will always get abused, and give the extra-paying players advantages.
If they'd just up the base price to cover their costs, and then give EVERYONE the same functional opportunities for free, I'd be fine with it. I'm just sick of full-price games repeatedly trying to nickle-and-dime us for more money after the initial purchase.
It's absolutely P2W... Microsoft has been wanting in on that golden cash cow for a while and this is another attempt by them to catch up (a running theme for them since the company was created). If it doesn't work then it'll be Minecraft mods have to be paid for once they get enough of the player-base on the Windows 10 and can lock them in to it (and Linux support along with other OS support will vanish). Typical big company policies; for the company profits, never for the customer... unless those actually happen to align (pretty rare, that).
I get the impression the modding community might well subconsciously (and consciously too) realise this ... ever paid attention to how many mods are maintained but still on 1.7.10 compared to all of the mods combined that are on 1.10.2 (never mind 1.11 or 1.12!)
It would be interesting to know what the future plans are for the game. As the micro transactions in Halo 5 were mostly to offset giving all the maps and updates for free. I believe the plan from rumors is that multiplayer DLC will all be free but there may be a paid campaign expansion.
I loved and played the shit out of Halo Wars and I'm really excited to get my hands on this because of being able to play against people on windows 10, plus the updated graphics obviously and new characters/abilities
i liked Halo wars 2, but for a person like me who is quite bad at RTS games it was difficult on a couple of missions. With the first halo wars it was easy on normal mode, but with Halo Wars 2 there were a couple of missions that threw a lot of units at you really fast, that could however just be me not having my head wrapped around the power system(which i still do not enjoy) but it could also be a ramp up in difficulty.
So, the review says play it for the story not the gameplay. Except for the one gamemode thats p2w. Shame. RTS are supposed to be about the gameplay.
"Too short and ends on a cliffhanger." THIS IS A HALO GAME THOUGH. Name one Halo game that wasn't either too short, ends on a cliffhanger, or both.
Halo wars 2 will be the reason I eventually get an xbox one!
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