You can now stomp on Xbox One players in RTS Halo Wars 2 thanks to crossplay support, which was added this week. But you won't be able to rank up while doing it: crossplay is only available in unranked game modes for now "for the sake of fairness and parity", developer 343 Industries said. The exception is a new game mode called Ranked 3v3 X War, which has been introduced specifically for this update.
You can also play cooperatively in Blitz Firefight (a hoard mode), Terminus Firefight (build a base and survive against waves of enemies), and the campaign. Custom matches are fair game, too.
343 says it will roll out crossplay to other playlists providing all goes well. It's currently working on balance updates to enable that alongside "under-the-hood preparation for future ranked multiplayer", which is promising. How you level the playing field between players on different systems I have no idea, but I'm intrigued to find out.
The update also squashes some bugs, fixes game crashes and removes a potential progression block in the campaign. The full notes are here.
Read Leif's review of the game here (he thought it was a mixed bag), and go here to read about the updates to the game post release, including September's Awakening the Nightmare expansion pack.
It's $39.99 in the Windows Store.
