Mission accomplished. The console RTS has finally arrived. Beyond being just a functional strategy game, Halo Wars masterfully streamlines the core elements of strategic play to ensure accessibility while maintaining depth. It carries the banner of both Master Chief and master of the genre, a rare and defining title.

Set twenty years prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, you take control of UNSC forces as they wage war against the Covenant on the planet Harvest. The protracted conflict becomes a lethal quest to stop Covenant plans following the discovery of an ancient artifact. Together with the military bravado of Sergeant Forge and academic foresight of Professor Anders, it's your job to decipher the alien motive and halt its destructive efforts.

You accomplish this objective by deploying a range of specialized infantry, vehicular, and aerial forces on each of the worlds you visit. Establishing a base allows you to commission various structures for drafting units, researching upgrades, and collecting the necessary resources. Halo Wars judiciously streamlines resource collection and base building, the former limited a single, generic resource. It's an important step in eliminating concerns over resource management, instead shifting the emphasis to unit management and combat tactics.

Bases are self-contained complexes with a central hub surrounded by expansion pads. These pads are for building structures such as a barracks to summon infantry units, supply pads for resources, and reactors to facilitate advance unit construction. Each base begins with three expansion pads, which can be increased with upgrades available through the central hub at a substantial cost in resources. This means you must carefully manage space, only selecting structures vital to your strategy. Additionally, tying structures to discrete space adjacent to the base eliminates the chore of arranging buildings with the controller. It saves times and distills the strategic aspects of base building.

Thanks to the concise manner in which Halo Wars deals with resources and the construction of bases, most of your time can be spent directing your units in battle. Although unit diversity is limited, the tactical relevance of each infantry squad, vehicle, and air unit is amplified. Working through a circular relationship that pits infantry against air, air to vehicle, and vehicles to infantry, the game emphasizes the need for wise deployments.