14 DAY TRIAL // In the gaming industry, as in a lot of entertainment branches, a few franchises have really stood out from the crowd. Thanks to either the great gameplay or the big number of fans, some things propelled these series to new heights and critical acclaim. Such is the case with the Halo franchise, developed by Bungie and recently acquired by Microsoft, which has made history in the genre of console First Person Shooters.
Set in a distant future, where genetically-enhanced soldiers fight an alliance of hostile aliens, called the Covenant, the series attracted a lot of fans due to its intense single-player campaign, but really blew them away with the top-notch multiplayer mode, which guaranteed a lot of fun with friends. But, as the series made history with FPS games, it will now make its entry into a whole new genre, the strategy one, as an RTS (Real Time Strategy) title will soon be launched, made by the Age of Empires creator, Ensemble Studios.
The game, entitled Halo Wars, will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 and will feature a lot of units from the shooter series. Promising to deliver a great strategy experience, the game has now gone gold, meaning that it has reached the end of the development process and all that's left is for manufacturing plants to start copying the master disc and shipping it to retail stores where it will await its official launch on February 26 in Asia, February 27 in Europe and, last but not least, March 3 in North America.
As a special treat, a demo of the game will be released on the Xbox Live Marketplace starting on February 5. Of course it will receive Microsoft's treatment of Gold members first and Silver Live users after a week, but it seems that Major League Gaming has launched a contest at the end of which 25 lucky members of the website's forum will get a token to download the demo early from Xbox Live.
The competition requires people to register at the Major League Gaming forum and post in a special thread. Only one post is allowed per user, and on Wednesday, January 28, the winners will be chosen and they will receive a special code with which they can download the demo from Xbox Live the next day. Those who want to enter the competition can check out the MLG website here.
Until the demo launches all we can do is hope that the Ensemble team did a great job and that strategy fans will finally be able to get into the Halo universe with this game.