Even if you’re a big Halo fan, the concept of Halo Wars may leave a bad taste in your mouth. Understandable, if you’ve ever played RTS games on a console. Perhaps you found the interface cumbersome, the pace of the combat (and the reactions it asks of you) directly at odds with the flexibility of the controls. Perhaps you’re thinking that things will be no different this time. But having seen gameplay in motion, we reckon Ensemble has finally cracked the RTS genre on console - Halo Wars is fast-paced and simple to control, and retains the feverish strategy that makes RTS games so addictive on PC.

Set twenty years before the events of Halo, Halo Wars’ status as a prequel to the main Halo story arc means that there’ll likely be no Johnson, Keyes, Cortana or the rest… although given The Fall of Reach is going to be the climax to the game, it’s safe to assume Master Chief will make some sort of appearance during the Campaign.

The main setting is on the outer colony of Harvest, one of the first human colonies to fall under the Covenant’s attacks of 2525. The UNSC ship Spirit of Fire is a Phoenix-Class colony ship that can carry thousands of marines and numerous Scorpio. You’ll be leading it into battle, soldier.