|  Finally, the moment many gamers have been waiting for! Halo the way it was meant to be played- as a real-time strategy game. On Thursday we got a taste of what's to come on March 3 with the game's demo, which can be found on the Xbox Live Marketplace. For those of you who have not played the demo yet, I'll start with a quick overview of it.
The demo comes with two Campaign missions as well as a tutorial mission to learn the simple and well-mapped controls. The missions are set in the final game's setting, the human colony Harvest twenty years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. These two particular missions are reminiscent, if not completely based off of, the trailer for the game released back in '08. The normal cutscenes for the Campaign are as visually stunning as that trailer.
The demo also comes with the game's Skirmish mode, pitting th player against an AI. The player can pick from the two major faction in the Halo franchise, the UNSC or Covenant. Under map selection option when setting up the game can be found a complete list of multiplayer maps which include an incarnation of the fan favorite Blood Gulch. However, only one map is selectable. This map mirrors the terrain of Harvest played in the Campaign. Skirmish allows players to get used to the tech trees of the two factions that contain familiar units such as Grunts, Elites, Prophets, Jackals, Ghosts, Wraiths, Scarabs, and Banshees ifor the Covenant. For the UNSC, players will notice Marines, ODSTs, Spartans, Warthogs, Scorpions, and Hornets.
As discussed before, the controls are incredibly well-mapped, making of the smoothest console RTSes this writer has ever played. Graphics outside of the cutscenes are stunning, namely the environments. The music, while not composed by Martin O'Donnell, fits the game and the Halo environment very well and includes a couple renditions of the famous Halo Theme. All in all, it looks like Ensemble might hit out of the park with this one. But what do you think?
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