Master Chief’s first-person shooting trilogy has come to a close, but the real-time strategy battle for the universe won’t begin until this Xbox 360 exclusive hits the ground. The events of this overhead tactical epic occur over 20 years before John-117’s video game adventures get rolling, but you’ll command lots of familiar UNSC and Covenant assets, including crowds of Warthog-driving Spartans, who haven’t yet had their numbers decimated, and fleets of Banshees and Wraiths. There are also brand new units that you’ve never seen before, like the airborne UNSC Vulture missile fortress, and you can recruit a friend to help you double-team the crafty A.I. crowds.
RTS console games are often viewed with caution, thanks to the lack of a mouse, but Halo War’s entire command system is built from the ground up, with the Xbox 360 controller in mind. Whether you send ground troops to take control of Forerunner outposts, carpet bomb a line of invaders, or blast enemies from orbit, the streamlined handling should make all those hours of living room command as intuitive as possible.
Aliens Colonial Marines
The Aliens gaming franchise has gone down the tube much like Sigourney Weaver’s acting career. There is hope, however, as the upcoming first-person shooter release Aliens: Colonial Marines should give the series the jolt it needs to once again rise to prominence. Here’s why.
4. Marine Tough
The marines that you’ll be using throughout the game aren’t just random, cookie cutter soldiers. They all have their own unique skills and personalities and react to different situations just like a real soldier would. Out of the 12 you can comprise your team of four; some are more likely to panic than others but may wield more powerful guns.
3. Not Your Average FPS
Aliens: Colonial Marines takes a different approach than other first-person shooters in how it plays out. Instead of being one long, continuous story, Aliens is broken down into three different acts with each one containing a certain amount of levels.
2. Blowing off Face-huggers
Sega’s new Aliens game will be bringing back many of the standard weapons from earlier installments in the series as well as adding new guns, too. Players will have flamethrowers, mounted guns, pulse rifles, grenade launchers, and more at their disposal.
1. Allies in Alien-killing
The online version of Colonial Marines will allow people to play through the campaign with their friends in teams of four. What’s cool about this is that players can enter the game or leave it without disrupting anything or forcing the team to go back into some type of lobby.
Alpha Protocol
When Jason Bourne came along, he showed that the world of espionage isn’t all about sipping martinis, sleeping with tons of women, and Judo-chopping your enemies, which rules out three of James Bond’s favorite hobbies. But Sega seems to think there can be a link between the two and has cooked up their own secret agent in Michael Thorton, who is refined enough to attend dinner parties yet brutal enough to take down entire crime syndicates.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Alpha Protocol is that it’s billed as a role-playing game. One might expect this since Obsidian is the developer and they’ve been responsible for such hits as Knights of the Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights II. The obvious twist in Alpha Protocol is that it’s pretty much the first of its kind as a modern day, espionage RPG. Players will take Thorton from a novice spy to one capable of outsmarting his former CIA employers and uncovering the truth behind why he’s being hunted.
Even though this is an RPG, there will still be plenty of action involved. Players can make Thorton beat on his enemies with close combat moves or they can also blow them away with guns and other cool gadgets. But they’ll want to be careful as different actions will affect the ending of the game. If you’re sick of your dialogue-heavy RPGs always set in space, this game will be well worth the wait.
version of the 
Killzone 2 is an upcoming science fiction first-person shooter for the PlayStation 3, currently in development by Guerrilla Games and to be published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the third installment in the Killzone franchise that began on the PlayStation 2 with Killzone and was continued with Killzone: Liberation on the PlayStation Portable. First announced at E3, 2005 in Los Angeles, California, Killzone 2 is set to be released on 25 February 2009 in mainland Europe excluding the UK and Ireland. For the UK, Ireland and the rest of the world the release date is 27 February 2009.