Halo Wars 2 review – exciting revival of the real-time strategy game

Halo returns to the world of RTS with a challenging yet instinctively playable take on the once-mighty genre, and one that is full of new ideas

Few genres have fallen from grace quite as fast as the real-time strategy (RTS). It's now nearly a decade since Starcraft, Command & Conquer and Age of Empires regularly duked it out at the top of the charts. Today, two of those mighty names are no more and even 2009's Halo Wars, which tried to re-think the whole experience from the ground up, proved to be developer Ensemble Studios' final game. So all credit to Microsoft for having another go at taking its most treasured IP in this most difficult of directions.

Luckily, Halo Wars 2 arrives with plenty of shock and awe in its arsenal - not just a rollicking 13-level campaign but a flurry of multiplayer modes and a whole new game type called Blitz. Development duties have switched to strategy specialist Creative Assembly (the Total War series) and Halo specialist 343 Industries, but otherwise this is instantly familiar stuff to fans of the original.