Halo Wars was first announced at the X06 Xbox show in 2006 and was released in early 2009. It's the first Halo game not made by Bungie and the first to completely break the FPS mold. Halo Wars is a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game developed by Ensemble Studios, who previously made the Age of Empires games. This game takes many recognizable elements from the main games and presents them in an entirely new way, and it works pretty damn well!
Halo Wars was developed specifically and exclusively for the Xbox 360 and was actually designed to be played with a controller. As such, the controls and gameplay features are simpler and more streamlined compared to other RTS games. It still contains all the base building, resource management, and army commanding that you'd expect, but at a smaller scale and with some restrictions.
Halo Wars is a prequel story in the Halo universe. It takes place a full 20 years before the events of Halo and deals with some of the earliest battles in the Human-Covenant war. We play as the crew of the Spirit of Fire, a fleet support ship tasked with trying to maintain control over the planet Harvest. Harvest is where first contact was made with the Covenant and where the war started. The UNSC concentrated a lot of resources to push back the Covenant and retake the colony, but it remains hotly contested.
