Halo Wars sees players taking control of the armies of the UNSC warship “Spirit of Fire,” using familiar and new UNSC units while battling the alien coalition, the Covenant. You will also be able to command Covenant forces in multiplayer skirmishes.

Halo Wars is in development at Ensemble Studios, creators of the immensely popular Age of Empires series. This particular game is being headed up by Graeme Devine, creator of one of the first CD-ROM based games, 7th Guest, while he also enjoyed a stint as lead designer at id Software before moving to Ensemble. The focus is on trying to deliver a quality real-time strategy game experience on the console, maximising the accessibility of a controller.

Halo Wars, the strategy game based on the colossal Halo franchise, is only being released next year exclusively to Xbox 360, so here are some screens to keep you amused.