Halo is an example of a game that I was personally determined not to review, not today, not tomorrow and not any time within my own life. Afterall, no matter how good it could have been I was sure that it would have been little more than a customary First Person Shooter with a few bells added on for good measure. I had heard of no
Rainbow Six type stealth missions, no real new features beyond the vehicles, which had already been on display in
Red Faction, back in the PS2's early days, and so was certainly nothing to warrant the game with it's position as the flagship title on the X-Box console. I was perfectly fair with the game, even going into Toys-R-Us and giving it a courtesy 20 seconds of play time so that I could confirm what it was, and then never gave it a second thought. Yet when I actually got an X-Box
Halo came packaged with it, and so I could no longer flee from trying out the most popular FPS currently on the market. Now let me get one thing out of the way first,
Halo is the best action based FPS that I've ever played, but that is not the reason for me to break my no reviewing policy on the game since there's a new
Best Action Based FPS game released nearly every other week, and without some form of advancement to push the genre forward it wouldn't be worth my effort to write the 180th review of an excellent, but hackneyed game. Yet while
Halo lacks the advancements of a game like
Goldeneye it still has something that makes it stand out from the rest. I'll get to that later, but first things first, how is
Halo on a traditional level?
The story takes place in the year 2552, a time when the human race has been forced to colonize other planets, but that have found themselves in a holy war with a species of aliens known as
Covenant. It opens with your character, named Master Chief (
don't think that's actually his name, but it is what people call him) being woken from suspended animation in the midst of a
Covenant attack on the ship. You manage to reach an escape pod at the last minute and reach the safety of another planet. Regrouping the humans, you then lead an attack on the
Covenant ship in order to rescue your captain, who reveals that he overheard the
Covenant forces discussing something known as
Halo. Your computer, who has hacked into their computer, then tells you that
Halo is supposedly some giant ring in space, a weapon of mass destruction that holds an almost religious significance to the
Covenant. Your captain then gives you new orders to find
Halo first, and the games begins proper.
As far as playing through this story though,
Halo manages to play like a dream. The controls were designed for the X-Box first and as such it works better when played on the X-Box than it does on the PC, which, as I understand it, suffers for it's controls. Yet on the X-Box the control system becomes second nature withing your first thirty seconds, making the brief training intro a little unnecessary. The left analogue stick is used to control master chief, who moves with a surprising speed throughout the gaming environment, with the right stick controlling his point of view, but press these down and you will crouch (
Left) or toggle your weapon's scope on and off (
Right). On the button pad, pressing A enables your character to jump, B performs a physical attack that comes in very useful against shielded enemies, Y will toggle you between the 2 weapons you are carrying and X reloads, or swaps your equipped weapon with one on the floor if held down. The 2 extra buttons on the X Box pad enable you to toggle between human and Covenant grenades, and the white button switches your flashlight on. Yet it's the 2 trigger buttons that you'll be using the most, being, as always, the trigger buttons. The right trigger button is used to fire your primary weapon while the left is used to throw your grenades whenever necessary. These controls work perfectly though, due simply to the fact that the new X-Box pad is a designers dream, comfortable in the hands and with the perfect button placements for this very control system.
It's a good thing that the game controls so well to because
Halo definitely comes in at the action end of the FPS spectrum. There is literally no time to sit back and really learn the controls, as you can in some of the stealthier games out there, because right from the first level the
Covenant forces attack en-mass, forcing you to shoot first and ask questions later. These forces range from the small to the very large, Grunts who make up most of the mobile infantry and are mercifully easy to kill, Jackals that are fairly weak but hide behind shields, Elites that are big , strong and have a powerful shield similar to your own, and Hunters who are the games biggest hombres, big strong and dumb these bead boys can eat away at your ammo, unless of course you learn that correct tactic that kills them with a single pistol shot. However later in the game, around the halfway point, you do meet another 2 species neither of which are too fond of either of you.
The Flood are some kind of genetic experiment gone horribly wrong and attack in hive formation, making them a worthy adversary. Then these mechanical life forms that guard
The Flood end up trying to kill everyone, causing a massive 4 way Royal Rumble that is impossible to escape. Throughout all of this mayhem both checkpoints and fresh ammo are mercifully abundant, so being forced to redo long sections of a level will only happen if you forget to save your game before finishing.
I'm going to stay on the subject of ammo for a second, because I really should explain why there's such an abundance of ammo. There is thankfully a wide variety of weapons spread throughout the game, again both Human and
Covenant. Human weapons are located on the floor, in the hands of fallen comrades, and offer a good balance between brute force and accuracy. There's the typical pistol that you start with, not too powerful but very accurate, then there's the machine gun that features single rounds as powerful as a pistol, but fires them so fast that you can shoot vehicles out of the air, but unfortunately that speed makes accuracy harder. Then there's the classic Shot gun, ridiculously powerful and can kill most enemies in a single shot at close range, but at a distance accuracy is impossible due to dispersing bullets. There's the Rocket launcher with is capable of muchos damage when aimed correctly, but lacks ammo, and the classic sniper rifle that is accurate and powerful, but a very slow weapon with a lack of ammo. Luckily with the basic weapons, pistols, machine guns and shot guns, you will normally find an ammo dump just as you are nearing you final shots.
Even if you do run out though, you can pick up the
Covenant guns once you have killed them and they too range in their effectiveness. My favorite fires these green plasma shots and is as accurate and powerful as a pistol, but hold down fire and you can charge it up to a power that can take down any shield, though it's accuracy comes down as the weapon shakes. Others include a weapon that fires these pink plasma beams that home in on an enemy, but didn't seem to powerful, and of course your choice of human or
Covenant grenades for all your destructive needs.
Graphically
Halo is absolutely superb! There's no real stylistic touches to these graphics, as with the last FPS that I played
XIII, and so it's unlikely to be remembered for this area in a few years time. Yet for the moment the game features some of the best console graphics that I've seen to date, certainly in this genre. Outdoor locations are extremely detailed, recreating the lush off world landscapes perfectly. Character models are rendered using a very high polygon count, and as such look more human than ever before, and surprisingly enough have also been animated as well to boot. Yet the area that impressed me the most was the lighting effects, the sun coming through the clouds, the realistic shadows of you're enemies, and even a believable illuminating effect from the plasma weapons, it all looks absolutely superb.
Of course, all of this is the traditional areas taken to a slightly higher level, as I said before. Yet as I also said before, there is something that made this game stand out, and will ensure that I will always remember
Halo as a classic. It's all in the games atmospheric use of sound, from the slow angelic humming of the title sequence, to the excellent voice acting of the lead characters and the pulse pounding in game soundtrack, it all helps to make the game more enjoyable. Yet for me the best area was the sounds of the enemies, and not the primal grunting of the big guys either. For me, the thing that tied the knot was the hysterical screams of the little
Grunts who seem to have a deficit in their courage. The moment where I opened a door to be greeted by at least 50 enemies, bearing in mind that I am on my own here, and the
Grunts started screaming "
They're everywhere!!!" was an inspired moment among many such occurrences, and surprisingly enough, it helped to make the games frequent battles that much more absorbing.
I did have a problem with one aspect of the game though, namely the use of vehicles, specifically the control system on the human vehicles. When using the
Covenant vehicles which hover above the ground they worked well, in fact they were likely the only way to control the flying ship later in the game, but unfortunately the control system took a little getting used to when using Human vehicles. You had to move the vehicles by pressing either forward or back on the left analogue stick, but if you wanted to turn you had to use the right stick to adjust your view. I did eventually get the hang of it, but even then still found it difficult to use in the heat of battle, something which made the games final level infuriating.
