After taking out the wraiths, we discovered the heart of the Covenant scum that had been pestering us earlier: an immaculate home base that bore all the stylish markings one would expect from the alien religious organization. In order to take this baby down we needed some major firepower, and the only way to get that was from our mother ship in orbit, the Spirit of Fire, which unleashed hell upon the Covenant base in an incredible explosion.

Now we did mention that the game will not permit you to toy with base construction too much, but it will allow you to fill in the vacant crater that your enemy left behind with another base to help the push into new territory be a little easier. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to do anymore expansion, as at this point our demo came to a close.

I don’t want to sound too confident in Halo Wars just yet, but even as one of those skeptics that refuses to believe an RTS can really be played without a mouse and keyboard, I was quite impressed with the way the game handled. Moving around the level and selecting units was a breeze, and having the snappy option of “teleporting” from a unit to the base using the D pad provided an element of immediacy that every console gamer wants. That being said, all this quick and easy RTS gameplay did come from shaving a lot of functions off and sticking with what Ensemble calls “the bare essentials” of a strategy game. While Halo Wars appears to be working on the 360, PC stalwarts may be quick to jab at its simplistic nature, casting it as a cannibalized RTS meant to accommodate twitchy shooter fans.

Regardless of any skepticism, and there will be plenty more of that to come, Halo Wars is shaping up to become what I believe to be one of the first genuine attempts at an RTS game made specifically with a console in mind. If part of that goal involves tinkering with certain elements of the genre, then maybe that’s what it’s really going to take. One thing that Ensemble has definitely done right is creating a game within the Halo universe, and make no mistake, Halo Wars feels like part of the franchise. Hopefully, the final version will replicate not only the color scheme of the Xbox’s most prized franchise, but also its tradition of innovating PC-centric genres for the consoles.