History VideoGame / HaloWars

* HarderThanHard:
** Legendary difficulty, which features endless respawns of Covenant dropships every minute and dropping a dozen Hunters outside your base.
** Gold medals require you to lose none of your units.

* CripplingOverspecialization: Hellbringers, who wield flamethrowers. They're fantastic against infantry but since VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck and most players prefer to pump out vehicles instead of infantry, Hellbringers tend to be too short range to be of any help. Compare that to the Covenant anti-infantry unit, Jackals, whose beam rifles give them very long range. Hellbringers are best used against ODST and Hunter rushes but against aircraft and tanks they're useless.

* BadassBoast: Delivered by Forge after [[spoiler:offing the Arbiter]].

* CatharsisFactor: "Dome of Light" is a very hard mission, especially on Legendary, but the very end of it gives you the satisfaction of [[OrbitalBombardment bombing the Covenant base from orbit]] with a whopping '''40''' MAC shots, 10 times more than what's normally allowed even with a fully upgraded MAC cannon.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The ''Spirit of Fire''[='s=] crew manage to destroy the Shield World and prevent the Covenant from acquiring the Forerunner ships on the planet, but they had to sacrifice Sgt. Forge and their slipspace drive to do so, meaning that they have to go into cryostasis without anyway of getting home. At least, not anytime soon.]]

** Sergeant Forge. Not just any marine can face an Arbiter one-on-one and [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome WIN]]. And that's not all. One of the game's unlockables hints he got into fight with a Spartan and ''held his own''.

* BadassBoast: Delivered by Forge after offing the Arbiter.

* DeathByIrony: [[spoiler:After the Arbiter almost beats Forge to a pulp, he gets ready to run Forge through with an energy sword, when Forge tells him to look him in the eye. The Arbiter grabs Forge by his head, lifts him up, and says, "My face will be the last thing your pathetic eyes ever see." Forge promptly stabs the Arbiter in the face with a knife, steals the energy sword, and runs the Arbiter through with it, not only killing the Arbiter the same way the Arbiter intended to kill him, but making his face the last thing the Arbiter sees.]]

* XMeetsY: ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' meets ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires'' [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE]].

An UpdatedRerelease was released on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}, Windows 10 and Xbox One in April 2017, titled ''Halo Wars: Definitive Edition'', which will include all the DLC, improved graphics and new achievements.

A {{Remaster}} was released on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}, Windows 10 and Xbox One in April 2017, titled ''Halo Wars: Definitive Edition'', which will include all the DLC, improved graphics and new achievements.

A {{Remaster}} is set to be released on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}, Windows 10 and Xbox One in April 2017, titled ''Halo Wars: Definitive Edition'', which will include all the DLC, improved graphics and new achievements.

* OrphanedSeries: Or game, at least. For six years, as soon as Robot Entertainment left, Creator/ThreeFourThreeIndustries treated it as a distraction at best. However, a sequel was ultimately announced for a Winter 2017 release on Xbox One and Windows, bringing back hope that the series might continue even beyond that. Notably, ''VideoGame/HaloWars2'' will be employing a TimeSkip in order to bring the ''Halo Wars'' characters into the ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'' era.

* DualWielding: Spartans Alice and Douglas both dual-wield [=SMGs=] while defending the Apex in the "Monsters" cutscene.

A sequel, ''VideoGame/HaloWars2'', is slated to be released on UsefulNotes/XboxOne and Windows 10 in 2017.

** ''ComicBook/HaloEscalation'' initially seemed to [[spoiler:turn this into a downer ending, as the final panel of issue six shows empty cryotubes on the ''Spirit of Fire'' while Flood infection forms are floating around, with the ship itself flying into a planet]]. However, ''VideoGame/HaloWars2'', which takes place ''after VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'', seems to indicate that the ''Spirit'' and its crew survived that incident mostly intact.