Ensemble did the impossible: they made an RTS that doesn't suck with the controller
The story takes place 20 years before the events of the Halo trilogy on the planet Harvest. The Covenant are looking for something that will help them start their "Great Journey". The humans have won back Harvest after it was taken over years ago (read the book "Contact Harvest") but must stop the Covenant. The campaign is 15 missions long and about 20 minutes each on average. During the campaign, you can earn medals depending on your stats (gold, silver, bronze, or tin) and you can collect skulls in which each skull has a different function (like in Halo 3).
There are only two playable factions in the whole game but there are six leaders (3 for each side) which are, of course, the UNSC and the Covenant. The Flood would have been nice too but one step at a time. There are a ton of units to build in Halo Wars such as the vehicles that you may know like warthogs, scorpions, hornets, ghosts, wraiths, banshees, etc. and newer vehicles like vampires (aircraft), wolverines (anti air), etc. There are also infantry like marines, grunts, elites, spartans (only 3 but they have shields and they can hi-jack enemy vehicles), etc. which may also help you. Bases only have 7 slots that you can build in but you can take over other base areas in the field should you run out. For the most part, both sides build a little differently but they seem pretty well balanced.
You get to choose one hero before you go into a skirmish match. For the UNSC, you can choose Captain Cutter (MAC Blast, fires cannon from above), Sergeant Forge (carpet bomb, works like an air strike) or Professor Anders (cryo bomb, freezes your opponents). For the Covenant, you use the heroes on the field and each has his own power such as the Prophet of Regret (shoots some laser down from the sky), the Arbiter (Rage mode, where his attacks become faster and more powerful), and a Brute Chieftan (some orb appears and kills everything around it). Each leader not only comes with an etra power but special units and other advantages as well.
Skirmish and multiplayer is fun but there aren't very many options. There is a good selection of maps but there are only two game modes; standard and death match. Standard is just a normal RTS game (eliminate your oponent) but in Deathmatch, you start out with everything upgraded to maximum and you start out with a lot more supplies. You can only do 1vs1, 2vs2, or 3vs3 as well. It's not bad or anything but I do wish they gave a few more multiplayer options. Oh well, there's always DLC.
Making an RTS enjoyable on the console is pretty hard to do but Ensemble nailed it. The controls are very simple and easy to pick up and play for anyone, whether you've played RTS' before or not, and it's just all around fun. I'm glad to see that Ensemble worked hard enough to make sure their last game counted.