Console owners are already very familiar with Halo. Whether you’re a GameCube owner who’s too young for such violence, a Playstation owner saying to him/herself "No, Red Faction 2 rules. I’m serious." or an Xbox owner who’s known pleasure for nearly two years now, there’s little I have to tell you about the game. You either have it, have played it, or are dead and therefore couldn’t. PC Gamers also know of Halo, as they’re the ones who hate every Xbox owner because they had Halo when we didn’t. Well, as is well now, at least until the sequel comes out next year, since we PC gamers finally have a Halo to call our own, and in superior form.

Why is it superior? Simply because of the addition of a couple of new weapons, including a flamethrower? No, not entirely. Is it the addition of a proper online multiplayer mode, complete with 6 new maps and new modes? No, not completely. Is it just the fact that you can now play the game like a civilized human being, with a mouse and keyboard? Nope, it’s pretty much just all of those put together, although I’d be lying if I said that the flamethrower alone wasn’t a big part of it.

The single player game really isn’t what’s important here, so a brief synopsis for those of you who have forgotten: you, a space marine, having crash landed on some sort of strange circular space thing, where you go on to fight the same 5 or 6 enemies over and over again over the same three levels forward and backward. Ok, so there might be more than three levels, but like I said, it doesn’t matter. You’ll probably only play through the single player one time, and probably just to say that you did it, especially with the co-op mode missing from the PC version, which effectively stripped away most of the fun that the main game had.

However, like any good FPS, it’s all about the multiplayer. The best way to do it, of course, is to make 14 more friends than you have now and invite them over for a LAN session, and then kill yourself because you just had a LAN party. If that’s not your cup of tea, or if the making friends thing sounds like too much trouble, then just jump online and step into one of hundreds of games, none of which want you either, but a few of which might let you hang around. Slayer, King of the Hill, Oddball, Race, and Naked Halo are among the styles of games that you might find yourself joining.

Halo multiplayer is extremely simple, yet so, so well done. You’ll likely find yourself fitting into one of three catergories: the guy who can kill everyone in one head shot with the pistol, the guy who sucks and runs around with the assault rifle getting killed all of the time, and the sniper, who everyone will throw grenades at because they hate you, coward. If you get bored of simple weaponry, there are also many vehicles at your disposal with which to run your fellow man over, including a new version of the classic Warthog jeep with a mounted rocket launcher rather than a machine gun, similar to the one seen in the Halo 2 demo. As I said, it’s simple, but once you play it, you’ll never want to quit.

Now, the downside. Your computer won’t run Halo. Ok, that’s not entirely true, but unless you have an extremely good machine, you won’t be able to play it to its full potential. Turning up any of the graphic effects or textures is very demanding, although worth it. Anyone who’s seen the Xbox version would probably die to see how pretty Halo can look with everything turned up and on. Someone missed the boat though, since a two year old game should not require a system from two years in the future to run properly. Halo isn’t ugly running on low setting, but it is a disappointment; optimized for the PC it is not. Thankfully, the music and sound effects, some of the best ever created made it in full tact, right down to the famous Halo title music. Also, with an editing kit coming along in the near future that will allow you to create new maps and such, there’s tons of replay value to be had. This is all just the beginning.

So, if you haven’t figured it out yet, if you have a PC and you like games that involve shooting others, you really need to get Halo. The single player game isn’t fantastic, and your computer might run it very well on high settings, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and it’s Halo, which means that you shouldn’t be without it.

· · · AFX