Loved it. Normal difficulty is ridiculously easy, at least in skirmish mode, but whatever doubts I had are gone. The controls are pretty farking amazing for a console RTS, and I will definitely buy when it releases.

Ensemble didn't disappoint! Hell of a swansong for them...

I want to try this. I couldn't care less about the halo universe, but it sounds like they finally (finally!) got a console RTS right. Awesome.

Sounds like this will sell for four reasons

1: Its a halo game

2: Its Ensembles last game

3: The controls are finally done right

4: Its bundled

I haven't played the demo yet but I'm glad everyone likes it, I'll be dling it as soon as possible. I can wait to see how it fares at retail.

I'm not a fan of RTS games - probably played 10 minutes of another game before but didn't like it one bit.

Downloaded it and got my kids together (my kids love halo three) and they were very excited to see HALO game.
Then I tried the tutorial and by the time I finished, my kids were gone. They "boo"ed the game. haha

I only played the tutorial so far and got bored. I just don't get RTS games.
I will try to play the game tomorrow and hope that it will grow on me.
Maybe it will.

But it is good to see that the posts have been positive.

I liked it but it seemed kind of fast paced to me in terms of length. The cutscenes were great.

is it true that it has better graphics from HALO3???

Jesus christ. The game is way beyond my expectations. Some of the best CGI Ive ever seen. Also for the first time ever on a console, I didnt even think about a mouse or a PC while playing an RTS. In many ways I prefer the system they have with this than a mouse and keyboard. Gobsmacked.

Anyways normal is to easy, but the graphics and game are top drawer. First day purchase for me.

Halo Wars looks a 9/10

I don't really think so - it's not a "graphic powerhouse" type game - you're seeing a lot of things on screen at once so obviously the polygon counts for individual units and such are nothing like an FPS - but the graphics are really nice - nothing earthshattering graphically, but nice.

The controls are solid.  I'm not gonna say they did any special thing that "made it just work" on a console - more like they've continued to improve upon what we've seen console RTS's try in terms of controls - and more importantly they have changed the way things behave so you don't need to do as much nit-picking and selecting (stuff that's easy with a mouse and hard with a controller) - which makes sense both because it needs to be usable with a controller and because console gamers are generally looking for something a little faster paced.

It's still a way slower pace than an FPS of course, and this will still put off some FPS gamers, but I think the appeal is a bit broader in terms of gameplay than other RTS games have been - combined with the Halo name, the solid execution, interesting story (so far, there's not a lot in the demo) - I think it will do quite well.

No way this sells as well as Halo 3 of course, but it should easily outsell every console RTS before it in short order.

I kind of feel bad for EndWar - EndWar was far more innovative in terms of how to do an RTS on a console.  Now EndWar has it's problems, and it's so different that it may not interest the normal RTS crowd or the general action game crowd - but it's really quite unique - and anyone who hasn't tried the EndWar demo should at least check it out - just to see some ideas that are definitely going to show up in more games in the future (starting with the impressive execution on voice control).

Yeah, I'd like to see voice commands in a lot of games, but especially RTS of course.

I hope to try this demo soon.

*cries*

Still no answer to my question :(

How have they handled the controls specifically? If people can say it actually plays without having to think about a mouse... how so? I can't imagine they went for a "use both sticks to draw a square around certain units"-approach (as that would seem cumbersome to me)? Or did they and does it work like a charm? (I really want RTS to succeed on a console, so that's why I'm asking :))