Say Halo To My Little Friend

Halo is great first-person shooter madness at your fingertips. In fact, it goes to the hear to the genre from the moment the disc tray slides into the Xbox…that’s right, the Xbox. You’ve been considering getting one of the Microsoft behemoths (which, to a few, resembles some kind of intricate sci-fi movie bomb) but you’ve lacked reasoning to do so. Well, strap in, Marine, because you’ve got your wish.
Slap on the helmet of a cyborg super-soldier in an interplanetary war 500 years into the future. Pick up an assault rifle and get ready to step straight into Aliens and Starship Troopers. There’s no lack of things to blast, blow up, snipe, bash, and squash in this massive game. It’ll definitely feel like you’re being overwhelmed more often than not, but fear not: there are plenty of AI marines to back you up…most of the time.

This is an action shooting game that rivals anything else on the market—including the god-like Goldeneye 007 of five years ago. Halo packs it in for not just one player, not just four players, but up to (get this) sixteen simultaneous players. How’s it possible? Why, you can link your Xbox to other Xboxes, my dear Watson, and create four-player mayhem on four different television sets, all playing in the same massive level.

Which brings us to the next point; Halo is immense. The greatest graphics in an FPS, bar none, make Halo beautiful and quite realistic, as well as a quick, steady frame rate (read: the game doesn’t lag when you start firing at other players) and speedy loading times. Everything plays seamlessly from indoors to outdoors, and with a hearty compliment of human and alien weapons, you’ve got plenty to do and no slowdown of action. Ever.

And going above and beyond most every other combat game out there, Halo takes things a couple of steps further by trying to make the whole shebang a little more realistic. No longer can your soldier carry all kinds of huge weapons in his skin-tight battle armor; in Halo, you get two weapons at a time. Sick of that really lame assault rifle you picked up earlier? Toss it aside for something more powerful, like an alien plasma rifle. Provided, that is, that the alien is dead first.

But even cooler and more innovative is the ability to pilot vehicles. That’s right. You get to drive, fly, and shoot while parked behind the wheel of five different human and alien vehicles, including a tank, a marine ATV and alien aerial fighters. The controls are comprehensive and you can even pick up a couple of your buddy marines to man the ATV’s mounted machine gun or ride on the sides of your tank to provide cover fire.

Halo does it all, and does it well. The single player mode is awesome but the multiplayer modes are phenomenal. The only problem is that there aren’t enough multiplayer levels that support vehicles; but maybe with the Xbox’s Ethernet support and built-in hard drive, updates will be easy to grab to extend the playing power of what is sure to be a classic.