Halo Wars is probably the best RTS game, all things considered, to come out for a console to this point. While it does not have all of the depth and micromanaging, and lacks some more advanced control options that the PC has, it still succeeds at being a fun RTS game.
Gameplay -
The gameplay is pretty solid in Halo Wars. Battles flow well, there are plenty of hidden and optional objectives to go after in every mission, some of which even uncover more storyline. The easier difficulties will be insultingly easy to anyone that has played a RTS game before, Heroic is perfect, and Legendary is a pain in the ass. For the bit of the game I've played so far, I haven't particularly noticed that I'm playing a RTS game on a console, which is a first for me.
The one big negative for me is the cap on how many units you can have (cap = 30). This limits the strategy and ways you can approach a mission. Generally in RTS type games I will amass a huge army and just go wipe everything out, but you can't really get that feeling or effect here.
They wanted to make this RTS game accessible to all the Halo fans, and being as a good number of said fans are in the 12-16 year old age range, they wanted to make it simple and able to hold their attention, so they dumbed a lot of it down. I can understand this, they are out to make money just like everyone else, but I would have liked if they had kept the backbone of the game true to the RTS genre instead of selling copies being their number 1.
Another thing that would be nice would be a campaign for the Covnant, or even the flood.
Story -
Story is well put together and will give Halo fans plenty more information to process. The events in Halo Wars take place before the first Halo game, with some references between the at points. The AI girl that is on the ship in this game isn't as good a character as Cortana, so that could be a downside to character development I guess.
By finding secret black books throughout the game, you can also unlock pieces of a Halo timeline which gives a bunch more info on the Halo universe, something that's sure to be a big bonus to Halo fans.
Graphics -
The visuals are pretty nice, they are nothing Earth-shattering, but they are definitely nice to look at. There are lots of details in the actions your troops will take, from things like tossing grenades to your spartans jumping on vehicles and highjacking them. I have noticed no stuttering at all even when big battles take place, but given the low cap on troops, this isn't too surprising.
Sound -
The sounds are good, again there is nothing Earth shattering in this dept, but the voice acting is well done, the sounds all the characters make in battle and the sounds of all the vehicles and weapons are pretty good too.
There hasn't been much of the humorous conversations from Halo games taking place, but there has been a touch of it here and there.
Controls -
For a console RTS game, and considering they wanted this to be a easy game accessible to a large crowd, I think they did a good job in the controls dept. You can select all units, or all units on the screen with the press of a bumper button, and the menus are laid out in easy "control rings" which are all relatively intuitive.
The one issue I have with the controls is not being able to drag and select a certain group of people, as opposed to only being able to select by unit, all on screen or all characters. If I want to select half of a troop of spartans or marines and a variety of other guys, I would like to be able to do that, but again simplicity won.
Multiplayer -
There are a few ways you can do multiplayer, and again this is where some more depth would have been nice, but didn't happen.
You can play the campaign co op, which is nice. Particularly because in typical Halo tradition, playing the game on Legendary without a friend is obnoxious and almost unenjoyable.
You can also play skirmish games against other players, but there are only two factions to play which ends up making the combinations and options for matches here limited. The flood is in the game again, and as much as I hate the flood, it would have been easy to make them a playable race to add much more depth to this aspect of the game.
That being said the skirmish games are fun, but short. The maps are pretty cool and the gameplay in these matches is pretty fun.
Overall, it's a fun game. There are lots of fun achievements to keep you trying things over and beating levels a different way, and the co op options is a lot of fun. If you are looking for a decent RTS console game or love Halo, you should probably pick this up.
7.5/10