Halo wars begins twenty years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved on a planet in the Indi Epsilon star system called Harvest.

You are quickly introduced to some of the important characters from the Halo universe, including Captain Cutter of the Fire Spirit and Serina. It takes the position of Cortana from Halo as the ship’s holographic constructed artificial intelligence system. Wearing a hat and smoking a cigar, Captain Cutter is portrayed as more strict, but equally decisive as Captain Keyes from Halo: Combat Evolved.

We also meet a few others: Professor Anders, a very young and sexy scientific researcher whose role in the Fire spaceship is not entirely obvious, and Sergeant Forge, who plays the role of the battle-scarred hero. We didn’t see much of Serina, other than a few mega-short encounters with Cutter, as well as a bit between her and Anders.

The gameplay is excellent! In the first encounter, the game screams enjoyment factor at you and the easy-to-use controls and navigation system make the game an absolute dream! The items on screen while playing are limited to just two, a map and a command box, but this is great as it allows your eyes to focus on the action rather than a variety of distracting boxes.

The creation of Halo Wars is still underway, and the team will work around the clock to polish the game for release. All the rendered material looks immense, while every aspect of the game is so polished that no other game has done Halo so much justice.

Halo Wars is set to enhance Halo 1,2 and 3 at the same time with its unique take on the genre and could possibly take the crown for best game of all time at next year’s game awards.