Talk:Halo Wars/GA1

GA Review

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This article is under review. — Levi van Tine (t – c) 08:30, 22 March 2009 (UTC) GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

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This article is passed.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   See below

   B. MoS compliance:

   See below

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   See below

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

   See below

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

   Seems to be stable, despite a few disagreements in the past

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   See below

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Prose

Gameplay

• "The more UNSC supply pads or Covenant warehouses a player has, the more income for use." - May be better expressed as "...the more income is available for use."

• "While the Covenant have one less tech level..." - Should the "Covenant" be considered singular, thereby requiring "has one less tech level"? There are other examples in the article of the Covenant being referred to as "they". While the Covenant is certainly a collection of many different species, the word Covenant itself should probably be referred to in the singular.

Setting

• "The Covenant declared humanity an affront to their gods, the Forerunners, and have aggressively waged war against the humans, under the auspices of the United Nations Space Command." - The flow of this sentence makes it sound like the Covenant's war is under the auspices of the UNSC. Can it be reworded?

Characters

• "Cutter's lack of political ambition have kept him from climbing the ranks." - "Have" should be "has". Also, "prevented" may be better than "kept" in this sense.

• "No-nonsense" - Tone consideration—maybe "gruff" or another synonym would be better.

• "The Spirit of Fire is run with help from Serina, a super-intelligent and highly sarcastic artificial intelligence with a dry and sardonic sense of humor; the AI demonstrates a level of contempt for the humans she assists." - "The AI" is a little redundant; maybe it should be replaced with simply "she".

Plot

• "Forge defeats the Covenant forces before they can destroy the facility and the scientist Professor Anders arrives, determining the facility is some kind of map leading to another star system." - A little unclear, maybe it could be split into two sentences like this: "Forge manages to defeat the Covenant forces before they can destroy the facility. Shortly afterwards, the scientist Professor Anders arrives, and determines that the facility is some kind of map leading to another star system."

• "Accidentally, the Spirit of Fire activates a Forerunner "docking" station, and enters the planet, which is actually a form of Dyson Sphere, to find the Covenant ship they had been chasing, along with a huge fleet of dormant Forerunner ships." - "which is actually a form of Dyson Sphere" should be in parentheses to make this sentence flow better (if it needs to be included at all).

• "As the Forerunner ships are powered up, the Elites guarding Anders are distracted, and she makes a quick escape into a teleporter, at the other end of which Forge rescues her." - Run-on, consider changing to "As the Forerunner ships are powered up, the Elites guarding Anders are distracted. She takes the opportunity to make a quick escape into a teleporter, and is rescued by Forge upon arriving at the other end."

• "The crew of the Spirit of Fire, under Anders' advice, decide to destroy the hollow planet by detonating the ship's faster-than-light reactor in the planet's miniature "sun," causing a miniature supernova." - Redundancy with "miniature", consider replacing one with a synonym.

• "The Spirit of Fire is left drifting in space, and as Professor Anders asks to keep monitor of the ship, Captain Cutter disagrees and the ship and its crew begin entering their cryo-stasis units for long-term storage." - Also a run-on (and a little unclear), consider changing to "The Spirit of Fire, with its engine destroyed, is left drifting in space. Professor Anders asks to be allowed to monitor the ship while the rest of the crew enters cryo-stasis. Captain Cutter rejects her proposal and the entire crew begins preparing for long-term storage."

• "Though if the game is played on legendary, after the normal ending, Serina wakes up Captain Cutter, noting that "Something has happened" and the game ends." - "Though" isn't required here.

Design

• Killer app is computer jargon, and, though wikilinked, should probably also have quotation marks. Alternatively, consider replacing it with something like "a popular game and subsequent system-seller for the Xbox console."

• "Rather than have players juggle multiple resources—be it ore, wood, gold, or grain—at multiple locations (made simple using hotkeys on a PC,) Ensemble streamlined the mechanic to managing a single resource at the player's base; with production centralized at each base site, players could quickly cycle through their bases using the controller." - Big run-on, needs to be split up.

Audio

• "...from discarded Ensemble project..." - From a discarded project, or from discarded projects?

Downloadable content

• What's a "shuttering"? Maybe "closing" would be better.

Style

• "Units are trained, buildings upgraded, and special abilities utilized by using resources known as supplies." - Should this be italicized?

• Graeme Devine is wikilinked more than once.

• The Downloadable content section is tiny. Could it be a subsection somewhere else, like of Release for instance?

Focused coverage

Setting

• "Halo Wars opens on the colony world of Harvest, six years after the planet was invaded by the Covenant..." - Whose colony? The humans?

Announcements

• "Robot officially announced that it was partnering with Microsoft Game Studios to continue to provide support for Halo Wars and Age of Empires, while the studio began work on a new IP." - Which studio is working on a new IP? Robot, or MGS?

• The lead says that the game was released in Japan, but does not mention it later in the article (hence there's no source for it). There's no mention of an Australian release in the lead. The infobox doesn't have release information for either.

Sources

The following sentences should have an inline citation (unless it's covered by an inline in the following sentence):

• "The number of units and vehicles a player can bring to the field is constrained by a population limit; more powerful units cost more than one population unit."

• "Upgrades can increase the maximum population."

• The entire third paragraph in Gameplay has only one inline. Does this inline cover the whole paragraph?

• The last paragraph in Gameplay has no inlines.

• "The developer was bought by Microsoft, and the game became a first-person shooter and killer app for the Xbox console."

• There's a Kotaku reference. Is it reliable?

Images

• I'm not conviced that a picture of Prague adds anything to the article.

The article is generally very well-written, and as soon as the above issues are addressed, there's no reason I won't pass it as a GA. You can strike through my comments as you address them, or provide appropriate justification if you feel it doesn't need to be changed. The article will be placed on hold for seven days or until all issues are addressed. An extension may be considered if necessary. Good job! — Levi van Tine (t – c) 09:34, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I've gotten to everything. The Prague pic doesn't add much, true, but it doesn't take away either and breaks up the wall o' text. As for the stubby DLC section, it's a safe bet that it will be filled up with post-release info a la Halo 3 so I'm loathe to merge it when it will be spun out later anyhow. --Der Wohltempierte Fuchs ^(talk) 19:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough for both. Now it's just the Kotaku reference, and the possessive case of "Covenant". — Levi van Tine (t – c) 05:34, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I've gotten all the mentions I can find, are there still more? As for the Kotaku ref, it's written by senior editor Michael McWhertor, has appeared on Attack of the Show!, and has had his writing profiled on CMP Media Group's GameSetWatch, and is quoted as a source by publications such as Advertising Age. I'd say he meets WP:SPS. --Der Wohltempierte Fuchs ^(talk) 18:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I've made a few modifications myself. I'm satisfied! — Levi van Tine (t – c) 05:48, 26 March 2009 (UTC)