They are a bit cheap with this demo: I wish they gave more skirmish maps and commanders to test !!

I like the fact that you cannot/it is very difficult and costly to make a full upgrade (full tech tree) on a single base. it pushs you to invade more territory and take some risks.

I played it today and for it being a console RTS it pulls it off, however compared to PC Rts's I can't help but feel it's dumbed down. If you don't have a gaming pc or simply just like halo, or this is an intro to RTS games you might like it.

This is just a demo though so, can't really vouch for a whole game.

I've had halo wars on pre-order for awhile now. Demo was great. Controls were nice and easy to use.

short but sweet demo, its a very good rts, ive pre-ordered the limited edition

Is this available for Silver members yet?

@Euphoria14

It came out on Thursday for Gold members. If the download policy holds, it should be out this Thursday (1 week after first demo release) for silver members.

@OP

I found this RTS to work fairly well with a controller. I was actually surprised at how well the gameplay was tweaked to suite the controller. However, like many others I still felt the urge to want to hook up a keyboard and mouse. I did like the rumble with the game though. Can't do that on PC (unless you want to shake your mouse input. lol). Great game. Definitely on my radar now - just awaiting more user opinions on replayability and technical issues.

Initially it seemd short but you can bump the difficulty to heroic and do human vs human, human vs covenant, covenant vs covenant and covenant vs human (hope people know that you can play as the covenant). There are also stats that you can work on trying to improve each time your play or try a different strategy each time to see what works. Demo serves as a nice way to prepare for the full game. This game is easily worth the $60 as I see for me personally a ton of replay value and that is not even talking multiplayer.

I liked the cut scenes a lot, the story seemed very interesting. Controls wise I suppose a controller will never come close to replacing a keyboard and mouse. For the same reason the game play becomes heavily diluted when compared to a full fledged RTS on a PC. For example I couldn't figure out how to form smaller subgroups of my units and assign them a hotkey. Also during actual battle it was tough giving specialized orders to individual units. You could either select all and give them a command or you had to use the controller to select each individual squad/unit and give a command which was taking far too long. The same went for base construction where all your buildings had to be constructed within a rigid grid and you couldn't just put your buildings anywhere within your zone. I don't know if this was a problem or I simply don't know how to do it with the controller. On the plus side I did like the graphics and the presentation. Even the gameplay is pretty addictive if you like RTS and you haven't played too much on a PC.

@priteshmodi

Thanks. For some reason I thought it released last week Monday.

@ocnkng

That's just the way the game was designed. Selecting a special group of units and assigning a hotkey isn't included in the game's control set. Same goes for building base buildings anywhere. That's just the design of the game and not a problem with you being unable to figure it out. They pretty much just streamlined the controls to make them work with a controller. What they did works well for console players and even casual players. With the control change, they also altered the focus of the game - the battles. It's not about micromanagement or resource management. It's focused on the battles and for that purpose the controls work very well for console RTS's. PC RTS gamers will either adjust to the controls for the enjoyment of the game or find it absolutely dreadful.