"Game of the Year" accolades have already been
hurled at Halo like hand grenades into an Al
Qaeda bunker. Thanks in large part to
Microsoft’s Herculean marketing campaign and
excellent recognition from the press, the XBox
is more or less depending on Bungie’s flagship
first person shooter to give it a smooth, bump-
free ride into 2002. So after sifting through
all the hype and speculation, can Halo accept
its responsibility and bear the XBox’s weight on
its shoulders?
In a word, yes. Yes it can. Halo is all that
it’s been cracked up to be, and if you’ll stick
with me for a few paragraphs, I’d be more than
happy to show you why.
Halo puts you in the cybernetic boots of the
Master Chief, one of the last SPARTAN-II units
engineered specifically to do battle with the
Covenant, an alien species whose religion
commands them to eradicate the human race. In a
last ditch effort to lead the Covenant away from
Earth, the good ship Pillar of Autumn folds to
some random corner of space with the enemy in
hot pursuit. It is at this point that Master
Chief is awakened from cryogenic storage. In
other words, here’s where you come in.
Your first priority is to escape from the Pillar
of Autumn intact. After fighting your way to
the last remaining lifepod, you and a small band
of marines are rocketed to the nearby ring-world
of Halo. Here, your adventure begins in earnest.
From the moment you step off of the lifepod, the
mysterious, unsullied beauty of Halo is almost
overwhelming. Bungie have filled this game with
some of the most impressive texture work ever
seen. The grass and sand beneath Master Chief’s
feet look incredibly lifelike, and other
geographical features such as rocks are as rigid
and stony as they should be.
Halo also features second-to-none draw distances
that make the game feel absolutely monstrous.
As good as these surroundings look from up
close, there’s nothing that can quite duplicate
the feel of standing atop some high point,
looking out for what seems like miles and still
being able to discern enemies and structures
with the utmost clarity.
It gets better. The character models in Halo
are very well-done, with a surprising amount of
detail, especially when you consider the sheer
number of marines, Covenant baddies, and
assorted vehicles that appear onscreen at once
without so much as a hiccup in the framerate.
Add to this a huge collection of dazzling
effects, and what we have here is an eye candy
lover’s wet dream.
It’s almost shame that Halo is so pretty,
because it leaves you little to no room to
appreciate the visuals. True to its titular
promise of being "Combat Evolved," Halo is one
of the most viscerally and cerebrally
enthralling FPSes to come down the pike in a
long time. Best described as a marriage between
the twitchiness of Quake and the team-based
strategy of Rainbow Six, Halo is a big-brained
blastfest, a sci-fi epic that takes the old
concept of the ultimate soldier and makes it new
all over again.
The strategic qualities of Halo are apparent
from the outset. You quickly learn that you can
only carry two weapons at once, forcing you to
make fast yet logical decisions as to the kinds
of firepower to carry. Does that plasma pistol
have enough rounds left to sustain you until the
next checkpoint? Is that assault rifle powerful
enough to fend off the flock of Covenant
fighters waiting for you to round the next
corner? Questions like these are among the most
common that pop up throughout the duration of
the game.
Raising the bar even higher still, Halo pits you
against hordes of some of the most vicious AI
ever conceived. The Covenant are more than just
a species of ant-like soldiers. They’re a
collective of battle-minded warriors who know
how to adapt to different situations. Sit
inside of a stationary turret, for instance, and
Covenant Grunts will often toss grenades under
it with astonishing accuracy. Elites are quite
fond of taking cover in shootouts, and Jackals
almost never pop out from behind their pesky
energy shields. Covenant have teamwork on the
mind, as well. A lone grunt patrolling the
premises without any backup is something you
might want to take a picture of, because you
won’t see it very often.
Luckily, there’s an equally good AI on your
side. Sure, they can be a little too gung-ho
from time to time, but the marines are
remarkably accurate with their weapons, and can
hold their own impressively for a very long
time. This is definitely a nod in your favor,
because even with four or five marines watching
your back, the action gets almost unbearably
intense. In between shooting at Covenant
soldiers, watching your ammo, keeping an eye on
your health displays, maintaining the well-being
of your teammates, and taking out that Covenant-
manned turret firing at you from half a
kilometer away, there’s no such thing as a dull
moment in Halo.
If all of this sounds a little heady, you’ve no
need to worry. An intuitive interface and the
best control scheme ever seen in a console FPS
make all of the aforementioned gameplay staples
completely manageable. The XBox controller is
probably the most lambasted input device since
the Power Glove, but Bungie’s designers took
that bulky eyesore and gave it as much of the
functionality of a keyboard and mouse as was
humanly possible. Halo on the XBox is the
closest you’ll get to replicating the PC gaming
experience without the luxury of a traditional
keyboard and mouse setup.
Halo also puts a great spin on what was
previously one of the most ignored aspects of
FPSes, the melee attack. Whereas melee attacks
in other games are usually reserved for when all
your ammo reserves are depleted, here they are
given more than their fair share of usefulness
and charm. Giving your adversaries a rude
awakening with the butt of a shotgun has never
been so satisfying as it is in Halo.
Among Halo’s most touted attributes are its
vehicles, which comprise a very large portion of
the game. Bungie obviously took great pains to
ensure that these features are far more than
mini-games that the player is treated to every
so often. Wherever there’s an empty Warthog
jeep, Ghost hovercraft, or any one of the game’s
four vehicles, you’re free to commandeer it at
your own leisure, switching back and forth
between several different play modes in real
time. Sparing no expense to offer the best
experience possible, Bungie so superbly
pronounced the mechanics of each vehicle that at
times Halo could almost be considered five
different games strung seamlessly together, and
with some scant exceptions where the control is
admittedly a little awkward, every vehicle is a
pure joy to drive.
But you can’t call it a killer app without the
presentation to match, and Halo features the
kind of presentation that screams, "Play me!"
with a fittingly ominous soundtrack and a well-
written storyline that unfurls rather deftly
through cutscenes and dialogue spoken during
missions. A big kudos should go to Bungie for
keeping the game free of overlong cinemas and
mind-numbing chatter, unlike a certain other
long-awaited stealth-based game for a certain
other 128-bit system. There’s also something to
be said for the way the story is told through
the game’s environments, which by their
superiority of design evoke both awe and
wonder. Taking pause to look up at the immense
ring that emerges from the horizon never fails
to make one curious about what could be
happening on the other side.
Such an impressive package belies the notion
that it should be stuffed with secrets and
unlockable extras, right? Unfortunately, this
is one of those areas where Halo falls short.
That isn’t to say that you won’t find incentive
to play the game again. Halo is packed to the
gills with multiplayer options. With thirteen
maps and twenty-six different deathmatch modes
that can be altered in any number of ways, XBox
LAN parties could become a respected institution
at offices and college dorms very quickly. Not
to be overlooked is the deliriously fun
cooperative mode, wherein two players fight side
by side through the game’s 10-level campaign.
If you’re feeling lonely, Halo’s four difficulty
settings offer more than just an increased
number of things to shoot at. Chances are
you’ll be pleasantly (or perhaps unpleasantly)
surprised at the difference between the "Easy"
setting’s pushover enemies and the unrelenting
ferocity of the Covenant armada that awaits you
in "Legendary."
It’s hard to find a blemish on Halo’s rosy
complexion, but those willing to look for them
won’t necessarily come up empty-handed.
Although it may sound like asking too much,
there’s a somewhat disappointing lack of AI-
controlled bots for the multiplayer modes, which
would have added months of replay value to
Halo’s already stellar single player features.
Additionally, some of Halo’s levels turn into
the same ol’ same ol’ after a while, leading you
through areas that you’d swear you’ve beaten
already.
Oh, and it only runs at thirty frames per
second. Deal.
But Halo just happens to be so good that it
simply steamrolls over quibbles like these
without any trouble whatsoever. It’s the kind
of game that you’ll remember playing when your
nieces and nephews are busy toying with Kraft
Foods’ 1024-bit DVD-changing solar-powered
virtual reality system suitable for up to 16
players. It’s just that memorable.
Since the days leading up to the XBox’s launch,
it’s become quite stylish to heckle the big
black behemoth of a console for what is
perceived to be a void of support from Japanese
third parties. If it can manage to crank out
enough titles with the polish and overall
quality of Halo, however, acquiring more help
from the Far East will be the least of
Microsoft’s worries.
· · · Soakrates