Red Dead Redemption [review]

This stunning Wild West epic raises the bar for open world action games, and stakes its claim as one of the most engaging games this year.

The Good

• Superb cast of memorable characters
• Varied and always-fun story missions
• Loads of optional activities and challenges
• Story does a great job of building up to multiple climaxes
• Good number of enjoyable multiplayer options.

The Bad

• Infrequent but noticeable bugs
• Limited customization options for persistent multiplayer character.

As you ride the train west from the northern city of Blackwater, you have no idea what's waiting for you in the frontier town of Armadillo at the end of Red Dead Redemption's intro sequence. Conversations between other passengers clue you in to the state of the nation, and a quick look out of the window tells you that the territories are as untamed as they are beautiful. But it's not until you step off the train in the well-worn boots of protagonist John Marston and have to sidestep a drunk staggering out of the saloon that you realize how alive the world feels, and how much fun you're going to have exploring it. Similarities with recent Grand Theft Auto games are immediately apparent in the controls and the HUD, though both have been improved in subtle but important ways. Those basics, in conjunction with excellent gameplay, a great story, and a sizable multiplayer suite make Red Dead Redemption something very special.

In Red Dead Redemption, even escort missions are fun.

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When you arrive in Armadillo for the first time, you're a small fish in an extremely large pond. None of the townsfolk have ever heard of John Marston, and they're too busy believably going about their business to pay you much attention unless you bump into them. The gameworld stretches for miles in every direction beyond the confines of the modest town, and if it weren't for a number of mandatory missions that deftly familiarize you with the controls and gameplay mechanics early on, the prospect of venturing out into the wilderness could be daunting. Marston is a deeply flawed but very likable protagonist, and therefore it doesn't take long for him to start making friends in the New Austin territory. One of them, a ranch owner whom you meet early in the game, gives you both a place to stay (which doubles as a place to save your progress) and a horse to call your own, and it's at this point that you're more or less free to do as you please. Marston's lengthy and occasionally surprising story is linear for the most part, but it's told through missions that don't always need to be completed in a specific order, and you're free to ignore them for a time if you'd rather just explore the giant Wild West sandbox you're playing in.

Whether you're galloping between locations where there are missions available or just trotting around aimlessly, Red Dead Redemption's world is a far easier one to get sidetracked in than most. That's because in addition to the dozens of excellent and varied story missions, there are countless optional undertakings to enjoy--most of which offer some tangible reward in the form of money, weapons, or reputation. While you're in town, you might choose to gamble at card and dice tables or tear a wanted poster from the wall and do some bounty hunting, for example. And when you're in the middle of nowhere, opportunities for gunfights and the like have a habit of presenting themselves or even forcing themselves upon you. Random strangers in need of help can show up at any time, and while it's a little jarring to find two or three strangers in the same predicament back-to-back, most of their requests are varied and fun for the short time that they take to complete. You might be called upon to retrieve a stolen wagon, to collect herbs, or even to rescue someone being hanged from a tree. There's no penalty for ignoring strangers, but when you help them you collect a small reward and become a little more famous in the process.

This guy is about to get riddled with bullets, courtesy of the slow-motion dead eye mechanic.

Fame is interesting in Red Dead Redemption, because it's measured alongside but independently of your honor. Regardless of whether you're doing good deeds or bad, becoming increasingly famous is inevitable as you progress through the game. How people react when they recognize you is determined by your honor, though, which can be positive or negative. If you spend your time acting dishonorably, townsfolk might be terrified of you, but if you're considered a hero, they'll go out of their way to greet you and might even applaud as you ride into town. Either way, there are pros and cons to becoming something of a public figure. People won't bother to report you when you steal a horse if you're famous, and any bounty hunters or posses that come after you when there's a price on your head will take twice as long to try again after failing the first time, for example. On the flip side, as you make a name for yourself you become a target for gunslingers who are looking to make names for themselves, and so you're challenged to duels that play out entirely using the game's slow-motion "dead eye" mechanic.

In duels, even though speed is a factor, dead eye affords you an opportunity to place your shots precisely. The head is the most obvious target, but occasionally you might be required to (or wish to) win a duel without actually killing your opponent. With practice, you can shoot a gun out of an enemy's hand as he makes his move, which is especially satisfying and makes you more famous than killing someone outright. Dead eye can be used in much the same way during regular play, but a slowly replenishing meter limits how often you can trigger it, and given how effective the lock-on targeting system is, you're unlikely to need it much. With the exception of sniper rifles, you can lock on to enemies from a great distance with any weapon. Then, once you're locked on, you can tweak your aim to target a specific part of your enemy. Nudge your aim up just a touch, and there's a good chance you'll get a one-hit-kill headshot. (You do that so often that it's likely to become a reflex every time you raise your weapon). However, you don't always want to kill your enemies, because, for example, once you learn to use a lasso, you have the option to bring bounties in alive. It's more challenging, but it also doubles your reward, and it's extremely satisfying to shoot a criminal in the leg so that he falls to ground and can only try to crawl away, hog-tie and slump him over the back of your horse, and then deliver him to the local sheriff.

When accompanying other characters, you can easily match your speed to theirs.

You can also use your lasso to rope wild horses, which is a fun way to upgrade or just replace the mount that you spend so much time with. After catching a wild horse, you wait for just the right moment to mount it and then, via a simple minigame in which you maintain your balance as the horse tries to buck you, you break it. Initially, you might want to change your horse just to get a color that you like (there are lots to choose from), but it's also fun to keep a lookout for rare breeds, because they not only look a little more impressive but are also noticeably quicker. Regardless of what kind of horse you ride (including those that are pulling carts and wagons), the responsive controls work in the same way and make it easy to adjust your speed from a walk to a trot, canter, or gallop. You also have the option to match your speed with that of any character you're riding alongside, which is incredibly useful.

As you spend more time with the same horse, it rewards your loyalty by increasing the length of its energy bar, which determines how long it can sprint at full speed. You shouldn't become too attached to your mounts, though, because Red Dead Redemption's world is both a dangerous place and one in which horses occasionally behave unpredictably. There's nothing wrong with a horse walking around a little when you climb off it, but if you leave it close to a deep river, you run the risk of losing it if--as we witnessed on one occasion--it stupidly steps in, because, like you, horses can't swim. Horses also have a habit of not staying put when you tie them to a hitching post, so you then need to whistle for them to come to you from wherever they've ended up or run the risk of inadvertently stealing someone else's identical mount. Other, more avoidable ways to lose a horse include its getting shot by enemies or attacked by wild animals, though the controls for shooting from the saddle are good enough that you really have only yourself to blame if that happens.

Red Dead Redemption's varied wildlife adds a great deal to the world and also makes it a dangerous place to let your guard down. Crows, hawks, eagles, and vultures fly overhead; armadillos, raccoons, deer, and skunks try to stay out of your way; and cougars, coyotes, wolves, and even snakes can be dangerous if they see you before you see them. All of these species and lots more inevitably cross your path, and whether they're solitary creatures or hunting as a pack, their behavior is always believable. Furthermore, all of these animals can be hunted and then--via an animation that sees blood spattering on the screen--harvested for their skins, meat, and other valuable body parts. Beavers, boars, bobcats, bears, buffalo, bighorn--all have something to offer, and all pose a slightly different challenge.

Other than the fun of the hunt, the main reason to kill most of these animals is so that you can sell the aforementioned body parts to a store owner the next time you're in town. Sometimes, though, there are additional incentives in the form of ambient challenges that, as the name suggests, reward you for objectives that you might complete in the course of regular gameplay. For example, sharpshooter challenges include shooting people's hats off and shooting birds out of the sky from a moving train. Hunter challenges, on the other hand, include one-shotting grizzly bears and taking down a pack of wolves using only a knife. For a change of pace, treasure hunter challenges present you with a treasure map that often amounts to little more than sketches of a landmark, and challenge you to locate the treasure hidden nearby. You become a little more famous every time you complete one of these challenges, and beating a significant number of them is a requirement for unlocking at least one of the different outfits that Marston can change into.

Standoffs like this one mark the start of every multiplayer match.

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Marston is an impressively detailed character whose scarred face and default outfit play big parts in making him wholly believable as a 30-something gunslinger. Other than donning a bandana that covers much of your face (and hides your identity so that you don't affect your fame or honor while performing certain actions), there's nothing you can do about the scars, but by putting on a different outfit you can change how certain people react to you. There are more than a dozen different outfits to discover and unlock. Some of them, like the duster jacket and the poncho, are easy to unlock and offer no real benefit other than making you look even more dangerous. Others, though, such as military and gang uniforms, can be obtained only after completing multiple challenges, and wearing them makes certain factions more accepting of you. There are even a couple of outfits that can make gambling more fun: one gives you the option to cheat anytime you deal in a game of poker, and another--acquired by signing up for the Rockstar Social Club--grants you access to a high-stakes game.

Believe it or not, even while cheating at cards and gunning down hundreds of enemies, it's possible--with only one exception during a plot-critical mission--to make it through Red Dead Redemption's entire story without ever getting on the wrong side of the law. It's fun to play as a heroic bounty hunter, but it's also fun to be chased by one, or several. Much like the system in GTA, being spotted committing a crime alerts local law enforcement, and until you outrun them, they pursue you relentlessly. Your crimes aren't completely forgotten the moment you escape in Red Dead Redemption, though, because every crime that you commit raises the bounty on your head, and the only way to clear that is to visit a telegraph operator and either pay the amount of your bounty yourself as a fine or present him with a letter of pardon--which isn't easy to come by. It's a great system, because in conjunction with fame and honor it really makes you feel like your actions have lasting consequences.

Shooting from mounts and wagons works every bit as well as shooting on foot.

Depending on how much time you spend completing optional challenges, Red Dead Redemption's single-player mode can take you anywhere from 20 to 40 hours to play through. If you're in a rush to get through the game for some reason, you can use stagecoaches and quick travel options to move between key locations on the gigantic map instantly, but there's so much fun to be had out in the wilderness that bypassing those areas isn't recommended. You should also know that while bugs and glitches are few and far between, there's at least one stagecoach driver who apparently isn't great at math and might inexplicably charge you $100 (not an insignificant sum of money, given that it's enough to buy property) on top of the quoted price for a journey. Other problems worthy of note during our 30-plus hours in single-player included a conversation between Marston and another character in which only Marston's lines could be heard, an attempt to crouch behind a decrepit overturned wagon that resulted in Marston being thrown high up into the air, and a cutscene in which two versions of the same character--one injured and animated, one neither--appeared alongside each other. You might also notice characters having some pathfinding problems when confronted by hitching posts, stacks of crates, and the like, but beyond these extremely rare issues, the world of Red Dead Redemption is very difficult to find fault with. It looks incredible, it sounds superb (though the excellent soundtrack occasionally swells up without reason), and it's just a fun place to spend time regardless of what you're doing or whom you're doing it with.

In addition to its lengthy single-player offering, Red Dead Redemption boasts a good number of multiplayer modes that support both competitive and cooperative play. No matter which mode you want to play, all multiplayer sessions start out in Free Roam. Here, you and up to 15 other players are free to do whatever you please with the entire gameworld at your disposal. You can shoot each other, you can cause trouble with townsfolk, you can form posses to complete gang hideout missions, or you can become the session's most wanted outlaw and then kill or steer clear of any other players who come looking to collect the bounty on your head. Your character in Free Roam mode is persistent, and as you earn experience points you gain access to additional character models, better weapons, and superior mounts. It's unfortunate that you don't get to design a character from scratch, and it can be frustrating to enter Free Roam as a level-one player riding a burro and armed only with a pistol, but it doesn't take long to level up, and even high-level players can be killed with just a few bullets if you can get close to them.

In multiplayer, the entire map is your playground.

When you enter competitive online modes, you don't get to use your persistent character, and everyone is on a level playing field. The five modes on offer are free-for-all and team-based versions of Shootout and three versions of Capture the Bag. Clearly, these modes are variations on the traditional deathmatch and capture-the-flag themes, but they do more than just apply a Wild West lick of paint to them. For starters, all multiplayer games kick off with an awesome standoff in which all players stand around in a circle (or in two opposing lines if it's a team game) and wait for all hell to break loose when the word "Draw" appears on the screen. And in Capture the Bag modes, the bags of gold that you carry weigh you down so that you move more slowly, making you an easy target in the free-for-all Gold Rush and making escorts or cover fire vital in the team-based Hold Your Own.

Between the Free Roam and competitive modes, there's enough great multiplayer content to keep you playing Red Dead Redemption long after you've watched the credits roll at the end of the superb single-player mode and gone back in to finish up any optional challenges and missions that you missed. This is an outstanding game that tells a great story with memorable and occasionally laugh-out-loud-funny characters. Think about great moments that you remember from spaghetti Western movies, put them all into one 20- to 40-hour epic feature, and picture yourself in the starring role. Now you have some idea of what's waiting for you in Red Dead Redemption.

READ MORE - Red Dead Redemption [review]

Army of Two: The 40th Day

Plenty of shooters are set in locales rife with political turmoil and social upheaval, but few take the genre into full-blown disaster zones. Sure, there are some good reasons for that--most of them beginning and ending with the fact that people would likely be too busy fighting for survival to fight each other--but it's a setting that presents designers with a lot of room to explore new ideas. EA Montreal has been doing just that with the development of Army of Two: The 40th Day, a shooter that takes place in Shanghai as the city is falling apart left and right.
In a recent look at The 40th Day, we explored a crumbling office building that, at one point, toppled over at a 45-degree angle that we then had to traverse down in the middle of a heated shoot-out. That's certainly one of the game's bigger set pieces, but even the game's less spectacular environments are pretty striking. Take, for example, our latest hands-on time with The 40th Day. Dual co-op protagonists Salem and Rios have made their way into the Shanghai Zoo, which has been hit hard by the destruction going on all over the city. In one continuous sequence, we gazed up at the sky to see a jetliner crashing down to earth, quickly followed by a shoot-out in which our only defense was--and this is the best part--taking cover behind a dead hippopotamus.

That general feeling of "What the heck is going on here?" is something that EA Montreal wants to instill in players early and often. The developer's goal is to take your expectations of typical third-person shooter settings and toss them aside in favor of the unexpected. That theme carries over into the type of weaponry you'll be using, as well. You can use cash earned in-game to customize your guns like in the original Army of Two, and while you can still unlock a gold-plated finish for your weapon, the general look of your customized loadout is a little more down-to-earth. We were shown a gun that had been modified with a makeshift bayonet consisting of a screwdriver tied to the barrel of the gun, as well as an ice pick bayonet and a stock made of bent wire. But the real king of the makeshift add-ons--or "homebrew parts, as EA Montreal calls them--was a gun that had been outfitted with a soda-can silencer.


Another area of focus for the development team has been making the action less black and white than it was previously. Whereas the firefights in the original game had a fairly obvious on-off switch--with players either in a big shoot-out or not in a big shoot-out and very little room in between--the sequel has added scenarios for you to sneak up on enemies and get a bit of a jump on them. In the zoo, we had a chance to walk up to a group of thugs relaxing on the other side of the hippo pen and snipe them from afar, and later in the demo we had the opportunity to crawl up behind a group of enemies and let one player take a guy hostage, while the other player held back and sniped them from afar. Other possibilities in these situations allow you to mock surrender to draw attention from guards and let the other player ambush them, or tag enemies using a special targeting screen to determine ahead of time which player goes after which guys. Combine those frequent opportunities for strategizing with similarly frequent miniboss battles against heavily armed super-enemies, and it looks like there should be a good amount of gameplay variety.

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Halo Wars Review [review]

The designs of many video games feel like simple extensions of the games we used to play as children. I’m not talking about board or card games, though those are fairly well represented in the digital realm. I’m talking about things like shooters, which are just extensions of the fake war games we used to play. You know, “pew pew, I shot you, you’re dead, no I shot you first!” All boys played “guns” at one point or another, which is undoubtedly where I learned my elite grenade spamming skills.

Real-time strategies also always reminded me of games we used to play as young boys. But usually when we played army men with our toys, it was with G.I. Joe, or Star Wars action figures or some unholy combination of the two. As long as the scale was correct, no one minded mixing the universes as we built huge battlefields on patches of dirt in our back yards, and had our toys fight to the death.

Since that’s what RTS’s have always felt like to me, Halo Wars feels like the ultimate backyard battle with my friends, provided we had action figure versions of every last vehicle and character in the Halo universe. Since that’s somewhat impossible, we have a video game to realize our adolescent dreams. One heck of a video game, I might add.

Gamers have been waiting a long time for a real time strategy on a console to get it truly right. I can say with some confidence, that Halo Wars is that game. The controls have always been the issue and in Halo Wars they are perfect. Navigating the map, building buildings and units, commanding your troops in the field; it’s all so easy, and yet allows you to do almost anything you need to do, that you’ll often be surprised that your hands are touching a gamepad and not a mouse and keyboard. The game is designed to make it easy for RTS newbs, yet it doesn’t back off from its core ideal: to be an awesome RTS, plain and simple.

Plenty of hard-core strategy fans are surely foaming at the mouth at what I just wrote. But it doesn’t have hotkey grouping! The tech tree is rather shallow! There’s no waypoint system! Let me say this in the kindest way possible: shut the hell up. You may have certain expectations of the genre if you’ve ever played another game like it on the PC. But seriously, let go of your expectations and accept what they’ve done here.

Halo Wars is easy; choose all your units in the world (useful when you’re throwing your all against an enemy base), only the ones you can see on screen, or hold down “A” for a paintbrush style tool. Either way, they all work in really intuitive ways. Second, isn’t not having to find a place to fit your factories and resource gatherers nice? Base building is reduced to a single, multi-unit space, often augmented by other spots on the maps to build secondary bases. Seriously, I’ve never felt less intimidated building a second base in an RTS, and that’s a good thing. That’s an awesome thing.

Halo Wars is the RTS genre stripped down to its roots. But it still has complexity. It still has a tech tree, and balances your ability to strategize production and warfare in the appropriate equation. In essence, it’s good, but some will find it bad. Or rather, less that good. To each his own, I say. The people you really need to worry about are hardcore Halo fans.

What about them? What if you’re one of those countless Halo fans who only plays the game on multiplayer and not the single player campaign? What if you’ve never played an RTS, have no idea what one is, and only bought the game because of the word “Halo” on the front? To you I say, you’re gonna love the cutscenes. But seriously, I think you might love the game too if you only give it a chance.

Because if you are a Halo fan, Halo Wars is essential. The aforementioned cut-scenes are nothing short of awesome, putting previous efforts in Halo to shame. Even though it takes place years before the events of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, the action in Halo Wars fleshes out a lot of the story, while being awesomely conceived in its own right. The story only gets richer. But the in-between, the actual game, is not to be missed.
What about them? What if you’re one of those countless Halo fans who only plays the game on multiplayer and not the single player campaign? What if you’ve never played an RTS, have no idea what one is, and only bought the game because of the word “Halo” on the front? To you I say, you’re gonna love the cutscenes. But seriously, I think you might love the game too if you only give it a chance.


Because if you are a Halo fan, Halo Wars is essential. The aforementioned cut-scenes are nothing short of awesome, putting previous efforts in Halo to shame. Even though it takes place years before the events of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, the action in Halo Wars fleshes out a lot of the story, while being awesomely conceived in its own right. The story only gets richer. But the in-between, the actual game, is not to be missed.

READ MORE - Halo Wars Review [review]

Turn and Burn in H.A.W.X [review]

It was only a matter of time before the Tom Clancy series broke free from land and took to the skies with deadly intent in a military, jet-powered dogfighting game. In Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X, you'll settle inside the cockpit of a series of custom outfitted fighter jets to test your dogfighting wits and tactics against air, ground, and sea forces.

PMC Squadron
Your training and initial mission finds you in the comfortably familiar confines of the U.S. Air Force, but it's not long before your squadron is decommissioned, a casualty of the Air Force's increased reliance on unmanned fighter planes. While Uncle Sam might have moved on to cold, calculating computer-powered fighters, the Private Military Corporation (PMC) Artemis Global Security is only too eager to snap you up and make use of you and your squad's elite skill set.
Players want to shred entire platoons of enemy tanks, gunboats, and attack choppers while turning, burning, and juking their way through the skies.

This shift from the government to private sector sets off a chain reaction of political and military intrigue, as the game explores the muddy and morally ambiguous world of PMC forces. In terms of gameplay, Artemis accepts contracts from all over the world, so you will rain down support and death across South America, Central Asia, and even the United States of America, among many other exotic and familiar locations.

Arcade Realism
While grounded in Tom Clancy-approved reality, H.A.W.X treads the fine line between simulation and arcade shooters. After all, no one wants to fly with a realistic payload, only able to tackle a small handful of targets and enemy fighters for an entire mission.

Instead, players want to shred entire platoons of enemy tanks, gunboats, and attack choppers while turning, burning, and juking their way through the skies to create the perfect intercept angle and line up missile-locks and gunfire on enemy planes. H.A.W.X allows you to do precisely this as you take on epic, tense engagements at every turn.

Dogfighting Mechanics
While your plane's payloads are stretched beyond realism, the handling and capabilities of your fighters are firmly grounded in realistic physics. Planes pitch (Left Thumbstick), yaw (LB, RB), accelerate and decelerate (Left Trigger, Right Trigger) much as you would expect, allowing you to combine your own internal sense of logic and the game's well refined mechanics to inform your quick-witted strategies.

Perhaps most interesting though in terms of the controls are the Assistance On/Off and ERS mechanics. Here's how they work:
Assistance On/Off: In keeping with the arcade/realism balance, Assistance On curtails your control of the plane in favor of keeping you from endangering the aircraft with ill-conceived maneuvers. Or, you can enable Assistance Off to gain more subtle control of the jet to pull off daring and precise maneuvers. This puts the plane at greater risk; for example, stalling is a very real danger with Assistance Off.
ERS:This remarkable addition to fighter-jet UI takes the form of virtual, glowing gates showcasing an easy path for both evasion and interception. If an enemy fires off a missile at you, enabling ERS will show you how best to dodge the missile without having to employ flares.

Hands Free
Also worthy of special consideration is Ubisoft's use of voice commands during gameplay. Don your Xbox 360 Headset and use your voice for greater combat efficiency. Want to let loose a missile? Say "Fire." Likewise, "double" fires two missiles, "radar" brings up your TACMAP, and "decoy" launches flairs.

Level Up
Every kill you notch and special objective you complete earns experience points toward increasing your level from lowly Private First Class all the way to General. New levels unlock access to new fighter jets and even different weapon payloads with which to outfit your fighter. Kitting your jet properly is particularly important as each pre-mission briefing breaks down the percentage of air, ground, air defense, or naval forces you'll likely encounter.

Cooperative Aces
Your A.I. squad mates are valuable commodities, and they can and will outperform you if you're not on the ball. But nothing quite replaces the thrill and camaraderie found when playing cooperatively with a friend or fellow gamer. When you're focusing on ground targets only to have a bogey tuck in on your six and start lining you up for missile lock, there are few things as satisfying as having your wingman light them up before they let one fly. Every single mission can be played cooperatively in the game.

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X for Xbox 360® brings to bear one of gaming's most powerful and respected franchises on a genre that has seen too little fanfare in recent years. Daring air combat awaits, so buckle up, soldier.

READ MORE - Turn and Burn in H.A.W.X [review]

Battle-Tested Strategies [review]

The beauty of the real-time strategy (RTS) genre is the almost limitless well of tactics you can draw from for success. Every strategy has a counter strategy, and so even an entire guide book could hardly hope to provide every useful tip for a game like Halo Wars™.

That being said, we have a few battle-tested tips that should help. They should give you an edge as you begin your Halo Wars career, and set the wheels in motion for creating your own unique strategies as well.
Peek-a-boo!

Gathering intel on your opponent is a must when deciding among what units to build and upgrade. Give your opponent a few minutes to prep and then send a lone throwaway unit (such as the Warthog or Ghost you begin with) to drive through your opponent's base.

Look closely at what kinds of units are milling about, and what structures they've built. If their primary base boasts a single Barracks, with nothing but Supply Pads and Reactors filling out the rest of the slots, you know they're powering up for a tech heavy army. And that's a perfect time to strike with a rush attack.

Trigger Happy

The moment you engage in battle with an enemy, you should already be plying the Right Trigger to highlight specific units to employ their special attacks and focus on the units they're best matched against.

It's not enough to build a well balanced army. You must also use them efficiently in battle. For example, if you're sporting Spartans and your opponent rolls in with Scorpions, send your troops to jack the Scorpions. Use your Flamethrower units to take out enemy infantry and your Marines to shoot down enemy aircraft. If you're not focusing on what you're best against, a skilled enemy will make short work of your army.
Rarely Scroll

Halo Wars is designed with the D-Pad in mind for almost all of your quick navigation needs. Use it in lieu of scrolling across the map whenever possible. If your base is attacked, don't scroll. Instead, tap right on the D-Pad to instantly warp to that location. Tap left to quick-travel to your bases and down to cycle through your armies. Precious seconds are wasted when scrolling, and you'll need every one of them against a skilled opponent or Heroic or Legendary A.I.
Leader Forte

Each of the six leaders (three per faction) offers a very unique set of abilities and special units. Always focus heavily on at least one of these abilities. For example, Commander Cutter is the only UNSC leader that can train ODST units, an exceptionally potent variation on the standard Marine unit. So focus your resources and research priorities around unlocking access to these units. The Prophet of Regret's Cleansing Beam can tear through buildings in a hurry, making him an ideal choice for rushing an enemy base. Always err on the side of your leader's strengths.

Leader Counter

While it's hard to go wrong using your Leader's special units and abilities, don't forget to take your opponent's Leader into account when devising your strategy. For example, if you're facing off against Sgt. Forge, it's a fair bet he'll focus on vehicles, particularly his super-unit Grizzly tanks, in which case, you might consider investing heavily in anti-vehicle units such as Cobras.
Spare the Jacked

The UNSC Spartan's most potent weapon is the ability to take control of an enemy vehicle. Not only does the enemy lose a unit when you successfully jack a vehicle, but the Spartan immediately makes that unit more powerful.

When you enter a battle with Spartans at your control, be careful to pick out the enemy vehicle you want to jack and make certain none of your units are attacking that vehicle. This way, you won't be wielding an already damaged unit when you take control.
Battle Heal

Whenever you enter battle as the UNSC, don't forget to make instant use of the Spirit of Fire's Heal and Repair ability (press up on the D-Pad). Drop it immediately once your units are set up (you don't want them running out of the area of effect). This will make them substantially more difficult to bring down and tip the advantage heavily in your favor.

Structure Destruction

While the ultimate goal should be to annihilate an enemy base, try taking aim at individual structures if you find yourself in a losing battle. Wreak havoc with your opponent's infrastructure by destroying Supply Pads, Barracks, and the like, forcing them to rebuild their losses rather than build up their army.
Environment Use

Whether in Campaign or Skirmish, the game's maps are teeming with environmental advantages. Look to make use of these as often as possible. In short, never leave sniper towers unmanned or cover unused. Units protected in these structures can take many times more damage than normal. If there's a neutral Reactor or Supply Pad to be taken over, storm it as soon as possible. The player that controls most of the environment's map-specific features will have a tangible advantage.


Don't underestimate the importance of the supply crates scattered across the map either. Taking the time to search these out and farming them can make an enormous difference in your early preparations.
Specialized

When making your initial battle preparation, try focusing heavily on one or two types of units. While a well balanced army is important, you don't want a hodgepodge of random, basic units wandering about. Instead, build a strong foundation centered on two unit types and then augment them with additional units afterward.

If, say, you're playing Professor Anders, you might want to invest in anti-vehicle Gremlins and her super-unit Hornet variant, the HAWK. Then, once those units are established, try adding a trio of Spartans and other units handpicked to counter your opponent's strategy.
Expand!

Even a fully upgraded base can't hope to accommodate every structure you need for a successful match, so make it an early priority to take over an expansion base location. Remember that many of these expansion sites are defended by a neutral faction, so take at least four units with you to ensure you don't fail in your attempt.

Try ignoring the turrets on these neutral bases as well. Instead, attack the base itself. Once destroyed, the turrets will self-destruct, leaving just a few basic infantry units to mop up.


Also, if your second base stands between you and the likely approach of your enemy, consider using your first base as a hub for mining resources and researching technology. Then, use your second base for your unit building structures.

Covenant Rush

While either faction can "rush" an enemy effectively, the Covenant has a rare advantage in the form of their Gravity Lift. Place any Covenant unit in the Grav Lift and they'll be teleported instantly to the Covenant Leader's location. Use this to your advantage by stealthily approaching an enemy base with your Leader. Then, send your army onto the Grav Lift and employ an immediate stealth attack.

Every Campaign level and every round of Skirmish should teach you something new. Play to win, sure, but also play to learn. Pay close attention to your opponent's tactics and how your own strategies play out and you can't help but improve with every session. Good luck on the battlefield!

READ MORE - Battle-Tested Strategies [review]