Halo Wars 2 Blitz mode beta available now

Wes Fenlon seemed to enjoy his time with Halo Wars 2 at a preview event the other week, and before you proceed you should probably check out his video impressions of the Halo-but-an-RTS?! sequel. Actually, before that it might be best to get the beta downloading, as it's just shy of 12GB and, for most of us, that's still a hefty chunk of data to usher down our inter-pipes.

Halo Wars 2's long-teased beta is finally available for all, but only until January 30. It allows you to play on the game's newly fangled Blitz mode, which mixes trad. real-time-strategy with collectible-card-game stuff—an interesting combination and, yep, one with card packs and microtransactions to optionally spend your money on.

You'll find the system specs over at the download page, and at the very least you'll need Windows 10 and an Intel i5-2500/AMD FX-4350 to be able to run it. The full game will be out on February 21, and as The Creative Assembly is developing it, it might actually be one to keep an eye on.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.