

Although micromanagement is encouraged (units typically have access to an active ability), you'll find that Halo Wars 2 takes cares of a lot of the busywork.

You can see the Xbox One's influence in more than its controls too. An RTS game on the PC - better with a controller? 2017 is turning out to be quite the rollercoaster. Gosh, I can hardly believe I've written that. It's almost enough to consider playing with a gamepad instead. Even if you're playing on that platform (and you'll need Windows 10, by the way) with a mouse and keyboard, you'll be battling with radial menus and some very awkward keybinding options. Unfortunately it does feel like PC players have been somewhat shafted as a result. So yes, it plays very nicely with a controller. 'What's that, Isabel? This new splinter faction of the Covenant doesn't like us and wants to have a Halo War? That's unexpected!' That last one is particularly great to see, as it's something we expect from the genre when playing on PC and yet Halo Wars 2 is one of the first games to make this work on the consoles. It all works exceptionally well.įrom that point, you can cycle between each unit type and give them orders individually, allowing for some basic micromanagement, or if you're feeling especially fancy: create custom groups and assign them to the d-pad. In fact, double tapping that same shoulder button has you controlling every unit on the map.

If that sounds a bit fiddly, you could hold down a button and paint over those you want to control, or tap a shoulder button to select everything on screen. With a gamepad you can select units individually or double tap them to grab every unit of that type. Unit selection is perhaps the best example of this.
