Fight through a challenging single-player campaign consisting of 10 action-packed levels as the iconic Master Chief. The main story takes a solid 12 hours to beat on standard difficulty settings. The dynamic nature of fights, besides well-balanced difficulty modes and a basic, yet fun multiplayer component gives players excellent replay value. Both human and alien units have their unique cars, hovercraft, and different weaponry.
Experiment and try different combinations as each one of them has its strengths and weaknesses, making enemy encounters always exciting. Following its success, more studios started producing games with similar themes and game mechanics like Half-Life 2, Call of Duty: Advanced and Future Warfare, etc. The AI supports these differences brilliantly, and got much praise for it.
It goes beyond tactics and teamwork a la Half-Life and into really making each alien type its own character. The AI knows its own role and that alien's limitations - it knows when to retreat and when to press an attack. Many a time the AI knew I was weakened and correctly rushed my cover to knock me out before my shields recharged. The AI can be caught unaware and hit with a surprise attack such as a sticky plasma grenade , but also responds to gunfire and the shouts of other aliens.
They have great situational awareness without psychically knowing where you are - they'll shoot through windows to hit you, or wait at the corner you disappeared around, rather than blindly following you. They're a tough, maddeningly patient, and worthy opponent - and extremely hard to trick or exploit which, admittedly, is half of beating any FPS at the highest difficulty. The nuances don't end there. Human weapons can be reloaded, but Covenant weapons in the plot, still a mystery to scientists can only be dropped or replaced when their charge runs out.
Low level grunts shout their states 'Coming! Elites, however, are quiet, stealthy and communicate in alien gibberish so you don't know their next move. Covenant weapons are great at dropping shields, while human guns nicely shred armor or alien hides.
An advanced tactic involves nuking shields with a Covenant gun and finishing them off with a bullet weapon. This is also the game where the toughest brutes can be killed in one shot with a pistol, simply by knowing where and when to hit them. There really is a lot of depth to the mechanics, and a lot to discover. Which brings us to the complaints you've surely heard before - level design and the Flood.
Saying that sections of Halo are some of the worst-designed levels in modern FPS history is not hyperbole. These levels are terrible, monotonous, and tedious to the extreme. They are only made manageable through the thoughtful combat.
Each level becomes something like a challenge room, with a different twist through enemy makeup, pillar placement, or available weapons. Even that stretches out far past its welcome, and navigating these rooms is both confusing and dreary. It's like Bungie learned nothing about level design and decoration since Marathon. As for the Flood, they are a parasitic race introduced about halfway into the story.
They take all of the amazing advancements to AI and combat and pitch them right into in the bin. The Flood reanimates dead soldiers and sends them sprinting right at you, flailing appendages or spastically firing weapons. That means they'll need to use tactics against you.
And use tactics they will. As you notch up the difficulty settings, from Easy to Normal, Heroic, and finally Legendary, you won't notice your enemies becoming incredibly damage resistant. The difficulty settings generally increase the number of opponents, give them a little bit more armor, tougher energy shields, and significantly increase their tactical abilities.
You'll see the enemies make better use of their weaponry, talk to one another, flank you, and eventually kick your ass. It's intriguing to see a game make such use of tactics, as I've never seen a FPS approach this level of thought.
The enemies can talk to one another, make battle plans, and while they are a little predictable, they'll actually outthink you if you give them the chance. The first weapon you'll get is the Pistol and, for my money, it's one of the best weapons in the game. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but all of them are effective against the enemy. Use a rocket launcher if you're attacking a fortified structure, a gun emplacement, or a vehicle.
The Shotgun is a good close up weapon and, unlike other games, maintains the lethality of a real shotgun out to good distances. You shouldn't need to ask what the Sniper Rifle does and the Assault Rifle has a great high rate of fire attack against unshielded opponents.
The Pistol has a zoom feature and is one of the largest caliber shots the Marines have, making it perfect for one-shot kills with a headshot. Although they're all good weapons, most of these aren't good at dropping the energy shields packed by an Elite or a Jackal.
They can finish off an unshielded opponent like no one's business, but against shields, you'll see lots of ricochets. Marines also get Fragmentation grenades, which are timed high explosives that can be bounced around corners for a nice surprise. Covenant weapons are another matter. The Plasma Pistol fires a steady stream of plasma shots and the trigger can be held down to generate an overcharge.
An overcharge shot, aside from being more powerful, can drop enemy shields in one hit, making it extremely useful for taking on Elites and Jackals.
Plasma Rifles are slightly better than the pistol, losing the ability to overcharge for a higher damage and overall rate of fire. Needlers fire shards of charged glass, which not only seek the opponent, but also explode shortly after contact, for extra damage. Enough of those in an opponent and he'll disappear in a pillar of purple plasma, but you'll want to be careful, as not only will the explosion damage you, but the needles bounce off of certain surfaces, rendering them inert.
The Covenant also use Plasma Grenades, which are slightly more powerful than their frag counterparts, but they don't bounce, have a longer fuse, and tend to stick to things. It's pretty funny when you manage to score a plasma grenade hit on someone's head, as you can then point and laugh as they run around screaming until detonation. Last, you've got a series of vehicles you can use in the game. The Warthog, the first vehicle you'll use, might end up being your favorite.
It's certainly mine. An all purpose jeep, the Warthog has room for a driver, a gunner, and a passenger. The weapon on the Warthog is a large anti-aircraft gun with unlimited ammunition. This one is fast and easy to use, so it'll be good to rely on. After that comes the Scorpion, a giant tank packing a mortar launcher and a coaxial machine gun.
Heavy and slow, it's great for taking out big targets, but suffers from its lack of speed and still leaves the driver partially exposed to enemy fire.
Four of your allies can also climb onto the exterior of the tank to provide you with fire support. Next is the Ghost, a small Covenant speeder. It's fast, maneuverable, and packs a pair of plasma guns. Since it hovers, it has a tendency to bounce around at higher speeds, but still has the ability to kill an opponent by running over him.
Finally, later in the game, you'll use a Banshee, the Covenant flying vehicle named for the screaming sound it makes during turns. It doesn't obey the laws of physics like other vehicles, thanks to the Covenant technology, and while easily destroyed with a Rocket Launcher, packs a mean punch with its plasma guns. Halo 's single player campaign is laid out over a series of ten chapters, all of which are pretty large. I found, when all was said and done, that I'd spent about ten hours or so running through the game on Normal mode.
Inside each chapter are a series of small missions that are assigned to you as you're running through the game. Thanks to the Xbox internal hard drive, the large chapters are the only thing that slows down the loading process. It takes a few seconds, up to a minute to load a chapter and then, inside that chapter, switching between missions and the automatic checkpoint save occur on the fly, and they're so close to seamless that you'll think they're framerate skips at first.
The storyline is integrated with each mission and, while it isn't as detailed as I'd hoped, it gives you the impression that you're doing something other than running between areas, hunting for bad guys. Once again, Bungie proves that it's got the right stuff. Taking advantage of the Xbox's multiplayer features, you can play a versus game with up to four players on the same TV, sixteen players through a System Link game, using four TV's and Xbox units, and even a cooperative mode, that lets you play through the single player storyline with your good friend.
The only multiplayer mode that suffers from framerate loss is the System Link mode, as with sixteen players, the performance can sometimes jitter.
On top of this, playing against other people means that you get to use Bungie's many different multiplayer modes. They've got five different modes: deathmatch, capture the flag, king of the hill, oddball, and rally. Each mode has different settings you can adjust for a different performance.
My favorite so far is Rally, where you race one of your friends in the Warthog. With so many options, it's easy to enjoy a multiplayer game. Halo is the Xbox's killer app for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the graphics.
Every texture in the game is amazingly beautiful and has so much detail that your eyes may just pop out of your head. Look down at the grass and you'll see the individual blades. Approach a rock and you'll see rock striations. The Marines even have scuffs in their armor. These overly detailed textures are really satisfying when you get to see the alien artifacts inside Halo, and you find control panels with these strange rune-like symbols and panels.
They haven't skimped on the background either, as you can look into the distance and see the curve of Halo, as well as the weather effects in the distance and the ripple of water in the river as it curves up towards the horizon. There's one mission where you jump onto a troop transport and as it takes off out of the area, you're treated to an in-game picture that looks like you could frame it and put it on your wall. Much like its visuals, Halo 's soundtrack is like aural candy.
An awesome and inspiring score, designed by Total Audio run by Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori , the music behind Halo is perhaps as amazing as any other part of the game itself.
Epic and very dramatic, it picks up action perfectly during battle, and when the storyline takes a slightly sickening twist later in the game, it ramps up the creepiness with music I can only describe as 'ooky.
It perfectly accents the tragic fate of Humanity, and is a perfect frame to the important role that your character plays in the events of the game. While I've never been able to say much about sound effects for any game, I still know when I'm hearing good ones. Everything that you listen to in this game sounds good. You'll hear the difference between marble and dirt underfoot as you run, and the satisfying rat-tat-tat of the Assault Rifle is something I can still hear if I think about it.
The sound work for Halo is simple amazing. Although you can rave about Halo 's amazing visuals, its rapacious enemies, or the realistic physics modeling, kudos must be given to Bungie for the work they did on the AI in this game. Starting on Easy means that you'll face opponents who can be broken in combat, don't communicate well, and don't always take advantage of their terrain or weaponry.
You'll rarely see a grunt toss a grenade in this mode, and you're more than a match for any Covenant troops. Notch the difficulty setting up to Legendary and the Covenant become crack troops, breaking only under the most unnerving circumstances.
The Elites form the backbone of their forces and can direct the Grunts and Jackals to perform flanking maneuvers, or even just deliver more force at a given location. You'll need to be aware of the weaponry they're packing as well, as Grunts are grenade tossing freaks in this difficulty and the Jackals like to use their Plasma Pistol overcharge to drop your shields in one hit.
This AI isn't exclusive to the Covenant however, as your allies, the Marines, can also deliver indispensable assistance in a pinch. While they're only lightly armored, and carry an Assault Rifle, they're good at covering an area for you and picking up the slack in a battle you can't win by yourself. All together, these elements make your enemies and allies respond more realistically than I've ever seen elsewhere. It might take a minute for me to explain it all. First off, Halo was originally intended as a PC and Mac title, something that I think would've made it much better.
Playing through the single player campaign, I got the distinct impression that a lot of things had been left out for sake of making the game work well on the Xbox or to save some extras for a PC and Mac release. The storyline, anticipated to be a detailed sci-fi plot, is dumbed down to the point where you don't get much exposition, and are left in the role of grunt following Cortana's orders. The physics engine and inverse kinematics are everything they were promised to be, realistically handling shadow, fog, falling, and the Warthog suspension.
I only saw it break down a couple of times, and I think that's just because I put it into a strange situation like laying down three active plasma grenades at my feet.
If you haven't heard about it before, Halo has a global physics model. Instead of animating each different thing in the game with its own physics, there's a single model that affects everything in the game equally, which can be altered based on what kind of technology you're using. The Warthog, being a UNSC jeep, has suspension that responds completely realistically, hugging the terrain and bouncing appropriately.
Fly one of the Covenant Banshee aircraft and you'll feel how different the physics are, as the Banshee uses special technology to break the laws of physics to perform slick maneuvers.
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