All this in the space of around 10 seconds. Frenzied, I hurled fistfuls of cards at the battlefield and somehow ended up with a platoon of scurrying Locust death-ray machines, who promptly deep-fried the Kodiaks like so much brie. At one point I was muddling along with a gaggle of jump-jetting Brutes, ponderous Wraith tanks and fast-moving Choppers, only for half of them to be wiped out from off-screen by entrenched Kodiak artillery. The consequence is a game of pure micro and 1000 mph reversals that can be either a carefree distraction or a serious test of reflexes and tenacity, depending on the commitment and expertise you bring to bear – an experience in which army compositions shift moment to moment, as defenders are nuked and reinforcements conjured from the ether. You can dispatch individual units to forage, but given that drop locations are foreknown, it's easy for an enemy to choke off supply. Bagging one of these zones at the outset is straightforward enough, but every second you spend holding the fort is a second your opponents will likely spend scouring the map for energy. The twist is that Blitz is all about taking territory – three capture zones, on the Proving Grounds map that I played. In standard competitive Blitz, each player earns energy passively at a sluggish rate, but you can speed things up by farming crates that are dropped at preset locations around the map at regular intervals. Once in the field, cards are doled out randomly in hands of four, and played by spending energy points (you can also sacrifice a bit of energy to draw a replacement card). Each card is either a leader power (think healing auras, missile strikes and holographic decoys) or a unit, from entry-level UNSC Marines to exotic variations like Marauder tanks armed with cloaking devices and everybody's favourite surprise party guest, the kamikaze Grunt. In Blitz, players pick a general, which mostly determines the units you'll start a match with, and a customisable deck of 12 cards, unlocked through play or purchased - as will ultimately be the fate of all things - from the Xbox Marketplace. This is exactly what many fans are hoping for, I'm sure, but given Creative Assembly's success with the Warhammer license and Alien: Isolation, it's hard not to wish for a shade more, well, magic.įortunately, Creative Assembly has at least one ace in the hole - Blitz Mode, which is available in beta from 20th January, and is essentially Halo Wars with a punchy, team-based card game in place of the base and army-building you'll find in the campaign and traditional multiplayer. Startlingly little has been added or changed, whether you're talking about new units or a fresh approach to the typically leaden business of storytelling in a strategy game. Much of what made the original Halo Wars work so well on Xbox 360 has been preserved - the snappy, colourful visual design, the stripped-down resource and research aspects, the adroit translation of Halo's alien Covenant and human UNSC factions into the language of an Age of Empires spin-off. Last year's Xbox One beta suggested yet another Halo game intent on rebottling the lightning of a departed era - in this case, that fleeting, Quixotic period when the idea of RTS on console sounded like cash in the bank. There were no new entries other than Halo Wars 2 – Berserk and the Band of the Hawk didn’t even manage to break the PS4 top 20, let alone the all-formats top 40.I was all set to thoroughly dismiss Halo Wars 2, before I joined Microsoft for a spot of top-down Warthog-baiting earlier in the month, and I'm still not completely convinced. Battlefield 1 is at #6, Rocket League shifts to #7, Infinite Warfare fell one place to #8, RE7: Biohazard dropped a few positions to #9 and then at #10 it’s Forza Horizon 3. Last week’s new arrival Sniper Elite 4 meanwhile dropped from #2 to #5. GTA V held onto #3 while FIFA 17 remained at #4. We get the feeling that UK game sales were little sluggish last week, with many saving their pennies for this week’s triple whammy of Horizon, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the Nintendo Switch itself. Sales were down 71% from launch though, Chart-Track informs. It was Ubisoft’s For Honor that kept Halo Wars 2 at bay, making it two weeks on top. It isn’t clear how sales were spilt between formats, but it does appear to have sold reasonably well on PC – it’s also #2 in the PC chart, beating the likes of Overwatch and Farming Simulator 2017. Sales of Halo Wars 2 spread across Xbox One and PC, with THQ Nordic stepping in to publish the physical PC release. It was Guerrilla’s Killzone 2 that kept it off the top spot in two days’ time, Guerrilla’s anticipated Horizon Zero Dawn is released. Halo Wars 2 has entered the UK top 40 at #2, the same position the original arrived at back in 2009.
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