Halo Wars 2 beta shows there’s work left to do

Microsoft chips away at the console RTS; bringing PC players in hasn't helped.
There are all kinds of problems associated with the console real-time strategy (RTS) game, as the original Halo Wars demonstrated with aplomb back in 2009. The limitations of a control pad compared to a mouse and keyboard make camera movement and unit selection difficult. RTS games are typically more reliant on the CPU than GPU, so processing power is limited. And because RTS games have never really had much success on console, there's far more hand-holding required to relay the basics to players. Despite its problems, though, Halo Wars was workable enough to be a somewhat fun entry into what is a fiendishly difficult genus to crack.
Now Halo Wars 2 will opt for an even more difficult task: a simultaneous release across Xbox One and PC. No longer can the design team overlook mouse and keyboard users in favour of the pad player. In theory, both sets must be catered for equally; in practice, as I sat down to play a beta version on an Xbox One, that's not the case yet.

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XBOX PLAY ANYWHERE: BUY THE GAME ONCE, PLAY ON XBOX ONE AND PC (MULTIPLAYER TOO)
Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3 both announced as cross-platform titles.
For the most part, this is a game that—eight months before launch, at least—has the same wider feel as its predecessor. Simplicity is the priority. Radial menus are still used to expand your base, construct vehicles, and train troops, while the units themselves have a wide footprint in order to make them easier to select using the analogue stick. There's also the returning Halo visual style, of course—a mishmash of sci-fi military and alien tech. Base management here is considerably more limited than other games in the genre.

There has been some expansion, though. There are now multiple races to choose from, new game modes, and new units. One of these new modes, Domination, is available through the Xbox One open beta that's running until June 20. Domination revolves around two teams battling over various points dotted around the map. The more of these points a team controls, the faster the enemy's "tickets" deplete. The team which loses all of its tickets first loses the match.

Sadly, there's a strict adherence to the classic rock-paper-scissors balance that can make for predictable matches. In most instances, foot troops are good against aerial threats, aerial threats overcome ground vehicles, and ground vehicles beat foot troops. This results in having to concentrate on putting together small groups containing all three types to make sure that you're not caught off guard. Essentially what you're doing is setting up small outposts at distant capture points, and those groups work independently of one another to win the game.

This independence isn't inherently a problem in an RTS, but the constant camera movement between groups and bases is made awkward and irritating thanks to the reliance on a control pad. Halo Wars solved many of the problems associated with playing an RTS on a pad, but the pacing of Domination highlights that the pad continues to have its limits.

I can see little reason why matches of Domination wouldn't work using mouse and keyboard, which itself suggests that some design decisions have been made specifically with the PC player in mind—or at least without explicitly thinking about console players. That is unlikely to go down well with an Xbox audience under the impression that Halo Wars was a franchise aimed squarely at them.

Need more pylons

At a core gameplay level, a change that is likely to affect every game type is the addition of a second form of resource. You must now acquire both "power" and "supply" points, with your base requiring both to operate at full construction efficiency. This is perhaps the biggest shift away from the extreme streamlining that characterised the first game, although it's questionable whether the added maths results in any greater need to think tactically.

Oftentimes, the dual resource system can make it feel as though you've got less options. For starters, your base has only limited slots to erect buildings. Having to use two of these to gather resources means you have two less slots to play with. Additionally, power seems to generate more slowly than supply, meaning that—in the beta at least—you're only really limited by the former. In turn, this makes it difficult to see why the latter is included at all other than to consume one of those base slots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjN1eWhzPeA

Resource generation is particularly impactful during games of Domination given just how important it is to send new troops out across the map in order to reinforce any losses. Some capture points are a long way from the base, meaning that any delay in sending out backup can be catastrophic. Over the length of a match, this can lead to a situation where players who manage resources well, rather than applying superior military theory to positioning and aggression of troops, will win the day.

The pinch of salt here is that Halo Wars 2 is still in beta and that there are many months remaining until the February 2017 release date. Still, I can't help but shake the feeling that some of the design decisions haven't been properly fleshed out. Even the content and delivery of the beta itself are a bit iffy.

Domination in its beta form is limited to online matches of 2v2 across a wildly unstable matchmaking system. I've been thrown out of matches before they've started or when they're halfway through, and the game has crashed multiple times at the title screen. The complete lack of a skirmish-against-AI option means the nuances of gameplay are inherently challenging to learn, too. The pressure of playing alongside a human teammate, against two human opponents, means you're rushing to pull your weight as opposed to taking the time to really understand the game's mechanics. I'm all for wanting to test network stability and find problems as early as possible, but the absence of any single player content does Halo Wars 2 a disservice.
While it's admirable that Microsoft continues to hammer away at the console RTS and deliver a game that works without a mouse and keyboard, this snippet of Halo Wars 2 fails to convince me that the company is any closer to realising that goal. Hopefully the feedback from this beta will be taken to heart and changes will be made before this series falls into anonymity.