Bungie Studios has spent the last decade refining its winning formula for first-person shooter success with the Halo series. The epic sci-fi saga about humanity’s battle for survival against the alien Covenant collective has now spanned three games on Microsoft’s Xbox consoles, and that number will only grow in the years to come.

For the first time, a non-Bungie development studio has tried its hand at expanding the series in the form of Halo Wars, a real-time strategy game set in the universe popularized by the enigmatic Master Chief. And although Spartan warrior John-117 doesn’t appear in the game, developer Ensemble Studios has otherwise closely followed Bungie’s formula for success.

Halo has always been about intense bursts of run-and-gun gameplay with pretty graphics and a robust and addictive multiplayer component, all wrapped up in a compelling story. Rather than strike out on its own with an approach more akin to its wide-open Age of Empires series of real-time strategy games, Ensemble has stuck to the Bungie formula in Halo Wars. Missions are tightly designed, the action moves constantly forward, and momentum isn’t bogged down with complex technology trees, multiple buildings and resource gathering operations. Because of this, Halo Wars serves almost as a “my-first-RTS” rather than as a Halo-ization of more traditional strategy offerings like AoE, Starcraft and Command & Conquer.