Halo

Developer: Bungie Release Date: 11/01

List Price: $49.95

Pros: Superb game play, graphics, multiplayer, sound/score and replay value.

Cons: None.

ESRB Rated: M (Mature)

Halo--18 months of play and counting...

Yes, I've been playing Halo for 18 months. Solo. I don't have anybody to hook up with for multiplayer gaming, so I go it alone. Halo is loaded with plenty of strategy and replay value, even for the solo player so I haven't missed playing against friends. Even after all of this time, I still think Halo is the best game you can buy for the Xbox. The only thing I see giving it a run for the money will be the Brute Force, a squad based military versus aliens game scheduled for release later on 5/27/03. What follows is not so much a review as a commentary on the experience of playing this great game for almost a year and a half.

THE STORY
The story starts out on the UNSC cruiser The Pillar of Autumn. It's been heavily damaged by the Covenant and then boarded. Although not explained in the game, but in the official Halo novel by William C. Dietz, the ship is being boarded so the Covenant so they can capture Cortana the AI hologram and get the data it contains. But that is only a small part of the story as the missions evolve and the main conflict takes place on Halo.

You play Master Chief SPARTAN-117, a superhuman cyborg warrior, the last of his kind. Along the way you'll have various mission objectives to achieve. In the middle of it all you'll run across the Flood. These parasitic aliens infect everybody, human or alien turning them into hideous creatures to battle with. Finally, you'll discover the intended use of Halo and your final mission to destroy it.

REPLAY VALUE
The greatest asset of this game is the replay value. Really it's the greatest asset of any game. I wouldn't have played it this long if not for this simple feature. Strategy games brim with it. That's why I like them so much. Halo has that too-strategy. It comes from the enemy Artificial Intelligence. It makes the firefights different almost every time you play them. Sure, you'll know where a group of enemies are going to be in a certain area, your HUD will tell you that, but they move about in random ways and hide behind things in firefights. They generally do that. Duck when you fire. Sometimes there are the enemies you forget about, like the ones that show up with a M19 rocket launcher around the corner...

Sometimes you eat the bear; sometimes the bear eats you.

But there are AI quirks. There's no outflanking your position and no sneaking up from behind. Grunts throw grenades, but the Elites do not, although they carry them (with the exception of the Elite Blacks that do on the last mission). Although you'll see plenty of fragmentation grenades around the bad boys will never pick one up and throw it at you or use a dead Marine's gun to fire back at you.

There are plenty of times when your enemies don't hear you coming up. Apparently they don't have a HUD. Or you toss a grenade and they act like it's not there. Boom! They go paws up. Or you toss a grenade and they hit the deck right by it, which does them no good at all.

The bad boys never retreat from an area or call in reinforcements. But I hear that's all going to be different in Halo 2. It would certainly make the job of clearing out an area more challenging if they did a serious of strategic moves like that.

Overall, the AI is good enough for hours of solid game play. It makes you think about how you are going to deal with your enemies during firefights and there are a lot of decisions to make.

GRAPHICS
Even now at this writing, a year and a half later, the graphics of Halo stand up very well. Originally for the PC and Mac before being moved over to the Xbox after Microsoft's purchase of the publisher, Bungie, Halo was built for the Xbox from the ground up. It really is a fine looking game ascetically, than most of the games out on the market today and certainly nicer than many that I have played during this time. I would go as far as say it was ahead of its time for its release in the fall of 2001, graphically. I remember the first time I saw these graphics and I was blown away. It has, even now, that "next generation" look. The lighting and atmospheric effects are first rate. Sure there are various glitches, such as some clipping areas or an alien/marine stupidly jogging in place but overall, it's a gorgeous presentation.

There is no more beautiful site in all of gaming than the first view of Halo as you crash land on the ring and see that majestic waterfall falling off the cliff with the mist at its base, the landscape dotted with conifers (gently swaying in the breeze) and the very realistic grass texturing. Look over the cliff to see the sun glinting on the ocean below. Or check out the rushing river. Or walk up to the cliff wall and see the rock texturing get more detailed the closer you get. It's great to wander around and take this entire scene in before the Covenant arrives.

The graphical flourishes abound. For example when you destroy an enemy tank and you see the black smoke bellowing out of it after a while, you'll see it slowly dissipate, but the smoke will still be there, slowing coming out over time. The water lapping the beach on the Silent Cartographer mission and the sand texturing of the beach is outstanding. The thing about the sand is that varies in color, shade and graininess as you move up from the water's edge. The motions of the breakers are very realistic and smooth.

The texture mapping is the most precise you'll see in a game this side of Splinter Cell or Metroid Prime. The UNSC equipment and gear has a used look with dints and scratches and paint chips that reveal the metal underneath. You see the same in the interior structures and corridors of the Pillar of Autumn or the M808B Main Battle Tank.

The architecture is another fine point in this game. There are a tremendous variety of structures from the outdoor buildings and interior constructions deep in Halo to the Human and Covenant cruisers. Textures, overlapping textures and multiple textures in strips and sections decorate the walls and pillars. Metal, glass, concrete and many more are all here and meshed together in a pleasing style. There's a lot of beautiful geometry here with every shape and angle imaginable.

FUN STUFF TO DO
The Silent Cartographer. This is mission three of Halo. Your mission is to find the holographic map of Halo and turn it on. But first you need to do a security override. If you've played Halo before you know where to go. There's a narrow entry point in the cliff wall. There's a tree in the middle. When I first started playing I would get on foot and clear this area out of Covenant troops. But I soon discovered you could get the Warthog (jeep) and if you aim it right shoot right through the cleft to the left of the tree trunk. Thanks to a clipping area you can pass right through a skinny tree to hit the spot. From there you can drive the Warthog up the incline to where the Hunters are and beyond. If you have a marine on the machine gun you can make mince meat of the bad boys you found in there. Just make sure you clear out the Covenant troops before you try this. After you complete your mission there, you can use the Warthog to jump off the cliff. You'll hit a tree limb and land safely on the ground.

Walking Around. Even been to the drop off in the water surrounding the central pillar on the Silent Cartographer island? Facing towards it the drop off is to the right. Just move over a bit and you sink down. It's the only one spot like this that I've found. Also, you can shoot the pistol underwater and see the bubbles come up. Nice touch!

The Warthog. No, I've never done the Warthog jump. But I have parked one at a 45-degree angle and climbed up on ledges and large tree stumps. You can get great views.

The Warthog's Machine Gun. Well, you can draw smiley faces in the snow… Actually you can do that with a multitude of weapons on a variety of surfaces.

Sniper Scope. Use it to examine things in closer detail. Like read the writing on the ammo boxes or the food dispensers on the Pillar of Autumn, or the see the details of the control panel in the Warthog. Look into a Marines face and watch him blinking his eyes randomly.

Find Extra Enemies. On the third mission, Assault on the Control Room, on the last leg of it where you come out on the bridge and race across to get the Banshee, take out everybody you find on it plus the other Banshee. You can then fly over to the pyramid and fight the final battle, but if you want more action, land the Banshee to the far side door (lighted area) and watch the horde come out. There will be two Hunters, some grunts and Jackals to take out. Then go down the hall. Lots of stuff to shoot in there and you'll get a cool music score not heard elsewhere in the game. After a while you'll be in a chamber that has a ramped chamber inside it. Go in there and you'll find plenty of ammo for everything and a health pack. When you are through there you'll be on the ground again and there will be more Covenant on the ground and up the walkways of the Pyramid. Lots of combat awaits you if you want to do this before the final battle with the Gold Elite and Grunts.

Another favorite is Keys. This is the rescue mission for Capt. Keys. Somewhere in the Covenant ship you'll find way to the landing bay, upper loft. Jump over some barricades and head straight down to find some winding hallways. I think about every enemy in the game is in these corridors. Shoot till your heart is complete or your shields are depleted.

On the way back you'll be in the upper loft of the landing bay again. You really need to leave at this point but if you want to spill some extra Covenant blood you can do it from here. Once you clear out your two sets of enemies (One set is the Purple Elite and a Grunt with a fuel rod gun-the second is the Black Elite and a Grunt with a fuel rod gun) you go down that corridor that the Purple Elite held and go through the door at the end. You'll find corridors filled with bad boys and you can take them out. Take my word though…it's really time to head out at this point.

Run Chief, Run! You can simulate making the Chief run by pressing the "A" button (used for making a jump) and keeping it down. So it's really a series of bunny hops but you sure seem to get there a lot faster.

Flying the Banshee in Truth and Betrayal. Once you fight your way down the long corridor and defeat the Wraith that you find outdoors, you get to do your first Banshee flying. Sometimes for fun I take it back down the corridor to the large, central chamber that features the large hologram of the Halo, planet and moon. This is an interesting area to fly in and inspect things. Although faint, you can see the texture seaming on the planet when you flight through it. On the Halo hologram you can see little markers. I haven't really made them out yet or discovered their purpose. There are various diagrams on them but it's hard to hold the Banshee steady to study them in further detail. You can fly into and land in the light wells. When you hop out, look up-you'll see a large black disk. Obviously this is a polygon used as a marker for the light beam. Once you fly through it, it's gone. You can fly to the bottom of the chamber and shoot a gun and listen to the echo…very well done for an area you aren't meant to go into. Really, it's interesting to see how much detail the designers went into for areas of the game where no important action takes place or where you really weren't supposed to enter.

CONCLUSION
So, will I be playing Halo for another year? Probably! I think there's still a lot of life left in Halo from the way it's designed. Now, Brute Force may turn out to be something special and if it does then I'll go to that game to hold me over till Halo 2's release. But till then Halo will live on my Xbox.

It gets a 5/5, of course.

This site and it contents (c) 2003 by George W. Bailey. All rights reserved. Optimized for 800x600 display. All other logos, brand names, graphics and product names listed are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.