ring shape worlds=aliens, gun fights, and a whole lot of explosions.

I downloaded Halo on to my xbox 360 shortly after I got the console. I didn’t want to spend 60 bucks for Halo 3 and I wanted to know all the hype about the series. I have heard things like even better launch games then Mario 64 from xbox fan bots, well after playing it I decided the next time I hear it’s better then Mario 64 I am going to put a sticky bomb to the fan bot and run. Halo is not the worlds greatest game, it’s not even the best FPS I ever played, but it is a competent first person shooter that is still a load of fun to play.

Story.
Sometime in the future the human race gets in a war of aliens called the convenient. When the pillar of autumn finds a ring shaped world called Halo they wake up the master chief just in time for an alien attack. You play has the master chief and your role is to get to the bottom of the mystery of Halo. The convenient believe that it is a super weapon and you have to stop them but there are more mysterious that pop up has Master Chief and his computer AI buddy Crotona explore the planet.

Graphics.
Keeping in mind that this is a first generation xbox game the visuals in the game are pretty good. The frame rate stays solid with the exception of when the action gets hectic then the frame rate jumps around a bit. The only problem comes with the convenient and that there are only really 4 types of bad buy, your little buys, your little guys with shield, your big guys, and your huge hunters. They all get different colors depending on there rank so you know how tuff they are but I thought we got out of the changing color for different level of enemies during the SNES days.

Sound.
We have some nice dynamic music in the game and it fits the tense scenes in the game quite nicely. The convenient despite being an alien race does speak perfect English and listing to the grunts some times is funny. When you throw a grenade into a pack of them you will hear grenade has they all run away. When one of them got in a lucky shot and killed me I heard not so tough are you and fell down laughing. The voices in the game are not only good but they actually come in quite handy to give you heads up on enemy activity and that was actually a nice touch.

Gameplay.
Halo is like most FPS is a linear game were your whole point is to pretty much shoot the bad guys, complete your objective, get the heck out of the stage. But Halo differs in a lot of areas. First off unlike most FPS heroes Master Chief can’t stuff a whole weapons ware house in his back pocket. Only two weapons at a time, this gives you a sense of strategy do you want an all purpose weapon, a machine gun weapon, or a sniper weapon when your force to luck around a rocket launcher around to blow up large tanks.

The weapons in the game are quite unique. While the weapons you get from the human side are your typical FPS weapon, your shot gun, pistol, machine gun, etc. The convenient weapons you can pick up are nice, even if they do some of the same things. The convent version of the machine gun doesn’t need to be reloaded but can only be used in till it’s battery runs out, and if you shoot it to much it will over heat and you can’t fire in till it cools down. There pistol works in a similar way but you can charge up the pistol to do more damage to big enemies. And then finally the needler the only convenient weapon that can be reloaded and even though it is probably in most situations the most useless weapon in the game it’s a lot of fun to play around and use. The needles stick into enemies and blow up, if you stick a lot of needles into an enemy the explosion is big enough to take out a few enemies sticking around.

Halo has also has an interesting health system. When the chief gets hit it takes damage to his shield, if the chief stands in one place for a few moments the shield will recharge itself. If his shield falls then he will take damage to his life bar, about 3 or 4 to his life bar and the chief is dead. Of course huge explosions or falls will do more damage to the life bar and being at ground zero in a grenade explosion will instantly kill you regardless of your life bar.

And then there are the rides Halo has a nice set of ride. The humans have the warthog which is a 3 man ride if you can pick up some friendly marines they will help you clear out the area with the machine gun on back, and the scorpion which is only available in level 5 is a huge tank that can blow up everything it sees. The chief can jack covenant rides to like the ghost which is a hover motorcycle of sorts, and the Banshee which is an air craft fighter. Each have there own uses and balances and there all really fun to hitch a ride in.

Now for the enemies themselves, again there are only 4 types of them in till you meet some new enemies in the latter half of the game. But the enemy AI in Halo is top notch. These guys aren’t there to stand around and let you shoot them, they are there to kill you. When you start firing a lot of them will run for cover and maybe pop out in a different location if your not looking, some enemies even play possum and pop up and start firing at you has you reload your weapon. Of course has smart has it is the AI is also program like any real solders to make mistakes and manic. If you throw a plasma grenade or a needler on a grunt he will some times run towards his comrades yelling get it off of me and blow up the pack, of course sometimes they run towards you in a kamikaze style attack. The smart AI makes this game a fun to blast through because when you beat a whole lot of bad guys who feel like your really beat down a whole platoon of people and not some brain dead bots.

The game has a multiplayer but unfortunately I only have one xbox, and one xbox controller and since this game does not connect to xbox live I haven’t had a chance to play multiplayer on it.

On the bad side there is no map to each area, which wouldn’t be so bad but a lot of areas feature repeat rooms and almost identical hall ways so getting lost and finding yourself going circle was way to easy. Also sometimes the checkpoints would hit at the wrong time causing me to get stuck in an area with only one life bar on my health, meaning if my shield fell I was dead. Also the last 3 stages are repeats of areas you have all ready been through, different areas and different enemies but repeat stages.

Final Recommendation.
Is Halo the end all great game that a lot of people make it out to be, no. But it is worth the 15 bucks you will blow downloading the game from the market place or at your local game stop.