HALO -- Reinventing the First Person Shooter on the Xbox
Written: Dec 01 '01
Product Rating:
Pros: Beautifully done, smooth, intelligent aliens, takes full advantage of the Xbox capabilities
Cons: "Mature" rating well deserved for violence - but isn't that the fun of it?
The Bottom Line: A must have game for Xbox fans of the FPS genre. The alien AI, the vehicles, the detail, and the multiplayer modes leave me with few suggestions for improvement.
kchin's Full Review: Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox
I must admit that I was lured to purchase HALO by numerous game previews in the press... and despite not being the biggest fan of first-person shooters -- I was floored!!
Let me start off by saying that early in my PC gaming career I loved playing First Person Shooters (FPS). I'd sit for hours and play Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, etc. -- eyes glazed over and sore fingers. Then I got bored. All these FPS games were more or less the same, the big difference being the intelligence of the game and the graphical beauty. Halo has gotten me reinterested in the genre!!
AREN'T ALL FPS GAMES THE SAME??
A month ago I'd probably have to agree with you. You are some sort of character that runs through a maze (of sorts) and shoots anything that moves. You pick up weapons and ammunition along the way, and when injured you look for the suspiciously convenient health/medical kit. Yes, HALO has all of this. But the game goes well beyond this simple functionality.
WHAT'S THE STORYLINE?
I haven't completely finished the game yet, but I'm a significant amount of the way through it (I think). You are a powerful cyborg marine called "Master Chief". You are part of the force that is defending the Earth from the evil aliens (the Covenant). You are on their turf now -- in space, and on a "planet" called Halo. Your mission changes at each stage of the story, so it's not easy to tell you the objective of the game -- you'll have to see how it unfolds. It's nothing terribly unusual though... Escape from the ship and get to an escape pod... Find the other surviving marines... Find the map room... etc. It all makes perfect sense in the game.
SO WHAT'S SO COOL ABOUT HALO?
First of all, the game has a great deal of horsepower at its disposal because it was developed for the Xbox (see my epinion on the console at http://www.epinions.com/content_47938375300). The developers have certainly taken full advantage of it too.
You move around the Halo world and everything you see is photo-realistic. Look at the rocks, the tree and the ground. You'll see grass, pebbles, actual tree bark, etc. It certainly doesn't look like it's a big flat 2D wall with a fancy texture graphic on top of it... it's much more realistic. Depending on your distance to the object, and the angle at which you are looking at the object you see varying levels of detail. When you shoot a wall or the Covenant shoots a wall you see residual bullet-holes and damage to the wall -- and it stays there! When you shoot through a glass window, the window shatters into a million pieces. When you throw a grenade at a wall it bounces in a semi-realistic way (as opposed to dropping straight down against the wall) -- and it sends its victims flying across the room. When you kill an alien or get shot yourself you see blood splattered on the walls and floors... WOW!
The aliens are kind of annoying, but worthy advisaries. There are about four different kinds. The "grunts" which are easy to kill individually, but like to gang up on you. The Jackals which have shields and like to do summersaults. The Elites which have full body shields and do a lot of duck-and-hide fighting. Then there are the Hunters which are heavily armored and difficult to kill. Overall the Covenant aliens are semi-intelligent. They don't just rush you in a blind attack. They actually seek cover and fight you in a guerilla warfare fashion.
These aliens also talk -- in fact, they seem to speak English -- saying things like "The Enemies are Here!" or "They're Everywhere!!". You'd think this gets annoying afterawhile, but it actually really helps to immerse you in the game environment.
One of the most fun aspects of the game is that there are several different vehicles you can drive. There's a dune-buggy-like jeep and a tank, in addition to several alien craft. Just hop on in to one of them, and you can even have one of the computer generated marines be a co-pilot/gunner. I have to admit that it's a lot of fun driving around and shooting alien ground troops or even running them over.
As I just mentioned there are numerous parts of the game where you are joined up with fellow human marines. They help you achieve your goals and kill aliens, but unlike other FPS games you can almost rely on these guys to be productive alien killers. The game's developer, Bungie, has added a significant amount of intelligence into the marines and the aliens, which makes the game that much more fun.
What's a good first person shooter without a variety of weapons to kick some butt with? Halo has everything from a standard issue assault rifle to pistols to grenades to sniper rifles (with a night vision scope) to rocket launchers and shotguns, and you can even pick up alien weapons -- some of which can be highly effective against the enemy. One aspect of the game is that it's semi-realistic. There's no ability to carry 15 weapons and still maneuver the corridors. You can carry exactly 2 weapons at any given time, plus four grenades -- and even a limited amount of ammo. This isn't really an issue, but it does cause you to think carefully about which weapons you want to pick up and use at any given time.
So what happens if you run out of ammo or want to try and move in silently? You can actually do melee atacks against the aliens (ie, hit them with your gun). In fact if you come up to them from behind and hit them in the head it's almost always fatal. You can even go up to sleeping grunts and whack them with the butt of your gun to kill them silently.
WHAT ABOUT THE CONTROLS?
I find the Xbox controller to be not only very comfortable but also very intuitive. You use both finger triggers (one for your weapon, the other for grenades), the two analog sticks (one for movement, the other to turn your head and look/aim), and then the various buttons at your right thumb to do things like reload, jump, melee attacks, or turn on the flashlight.
On the screen you see things such as a motion tracker (to see where the enemy is), status indicators for your health, shield, and ammunition. One complaint I've read from others is that there's no automapping ability -- but I don't think it's really all that necessary. The mazes are fairly simple and the direction you need to go is somewhat obvious (there are usually signs on the ground and walls).
Gameplay is very smooth, and there are ample checkpoints for saving the game at. You can not save the game at just any location, if you choose to save the game (or happen to die) it will send you back to the last checkpoint you were at.
HOW ABOUT MULTIPLAYER?
This is so much fun. Halo has several multiplayer modes. You can play cooperatively with a buddy so that two people can run through the story together. You can also play up to 4 players on a single TV screen against each other... OR for the ultimate experience you can link up to 4 Xbox's together and get up to 16 of your closest buddies playing in the same environment. Multiplayer games are reminiscent of games of paintball, where you play capture the flag, king of the hill, slayer, oddball, or race games.
To connect up multiple Xbox's today you need to all be in the same area and connect the Xbox's with a basic network hub and ethernet cables. With the online capabilities of the Xbox, I doubt that it will be a stretch to see games like this played across the Internet... we'll find out for sure in Summer 2002.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Halo has definitely gotten my interest again for first person shooters!! There are so many new aspects to this game that keep it interesting: the alien AI, the detailed environment, the vehicles, the multiplayer modes... If you are at all interested in this genre of video games this is the current must have title -- and is easily one of the definitive games for the new Xbox!!
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