**Halo: Beginning Review **

When you get past all of the chatter about the potential of Halo looking better on a PC, and all of the yip-yap about Halo being "just another" first person shooter, and all of the lip-flapping about Halo not being able to compete with the very best games on PS2 or GameCube and you actually sit down and play the game on your Xbox...you're in for one hell of a game.

The only thing people need to be concerned about when it comes to Halo is how soon they're going to get it and where they're going to find the time to play. With a story good enough for a full length novel, audio and visual elements as detailed as any you've ever seen and excellent pacing, Halo is the reason for Xbox and vice versa. Bungie has brought to the Xbox the game that will prove hundreds of thousands of naysayers wrong (about the system and thegame) and bring sweet relief and joy to those who've been biting their nails and pacing in circles waiting for Microsoft's machine to arrive. Hype is one thing; reality is another; Halo on Xbox is one of the best things to happen in videogames.

Features:

* Situational First and Third Person perspectives.
* Role-based, cooperative multiplayer team game
* Play story mode as a single player or cooperatively with another player.
* Choose from a variety of conventional human and powerful alien weaponry
* Vehicles include marine jeeps and tanks to alien flyers and hovercrafts.
* Squad based combat.
* Enjoy the action with 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound and Widescreen playback features.

The Story

Halo takes place in the far future where mankind is locked into a brutal war against a race of aliens known as the Covenant. These dudes are seriously evil. They wipe out entire planets at a time, and they are so fast at doing so that we poor humans are unable to get much information on them before they nuke us into oblivion.

The horde of aliens is getting closer and closer to Earth with the clock quickly ticking down before they completely annihilate our race. Finally the line is drawn. In a massive battle near a human planet, only one ship survives: Pillar of Autumn. The commander of the ship decides to lure the Covenant as far away from Earth as possible so she programs the ship's AI to jump to some random location in the opposite direction of the home system.

Eventually the ship arrives at a distant area or space where they find both a gas giant called Threshold and its small moon known as Basis. This wouldn't be so strange except for the fact that they find a giant ring construct floating between the two objects, which is about 10,000 miles in diameter. Unfortunately for the small ship, the entire Covenant battle fleet had followed them and arrived in the system shortly before.

When you boot up the game, you're knee deep in the middle of the Autumn being evacuated. That giant ring construct is Halo and the secret that it holds is the part of the story that will be up to you to discover.

Gameplay
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how Halo plays, I'd like to share a few of the quotes blurted out in and around the IGN offices and other places as passers-by were enraptured by a glimpse of Bungie's first person superstar.

"Are those guys fighting with you?"

"Drive the Jeep! I wanna see the Jeep!"

"Damn, this feels like a movie!"

"I thought the fun part happened already."

"How come the enemies speak English?"

Lol it's pretty funny and entertaining.
Overall Rating- 10/10

Hell of a Halo

I never had any idea how good this game was. I'd heard about it. Downloaded the free demo. But I never really tried that hard to beat the demo. I finally beat the demo but at the "easy" level of difficulty which is hard enough. Most of the other levels of difficulty are for masochistic suicidals. Anyway, I finally beat the whole game, played it straight through, at the easy level of difficulty, and encountered only one disappointment. The Sergeant takes the Lord's name in vain when they reach the mothership. Was that really necessary. Shame on you Microsoft. I wish there were some add-on or hack that would eliminate any cursing from the game. This might not bother anyone else but it does bother people more sensitive to this sort of thing. I cannot move on to other releases like Halo 2 or Halo 3 for this reason, I know I'll only get more of the same. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. So, now that that is said, I'll discuss the game itself. The music is truly great. When the action is about to pick up you'll hear it thundering getting you psyched up for an wild encounter. There are so many levels I wondered when it would end. Just when I thought the game was over it went in a whole new direction, taking me by surprise. And I never ever expected to be "flooded" by creatures beyond description. Well done, boys, great story-telling. You have convinced me that yes, movies are now over, and the future is indeed gaming. I can see now why games are making more money than films. I would never have understood the ending of the film "Doom" if I had no played the game. Fatalistic to perfection. When you reach the last level of the Doom game, the ultimate surprise -- surrounded by more demons that you can possibly beat. And I learned that about Doom by playing it at its easiest level of difficulty (of course). Leave me alone. Anyway, in Halo, you get to shoot creatures off their flying vehicles and fly the vehicle yourself, you get to ride hogs, which are super-duper military jeep with gun turrets, you can grab alien weapons and use them against the alien enemy. The sets are excellently designed, the creatures are fantastic, some cute others scary. There are creatures that run around like Predators using invisibility shields, you can see their edges if you're not moving too fast. But don't worry, you'll know they are there when they try to kill you. The trick is to sweep the area in front of you until you hear them scream with pain, or their invisibility shield flickers a bit, or they just shut off and you see them drop dead in front of you. Man you won't believe the wild ride ahead of you. When you get to that final tunnel at the end, it's almost impossible to figure out how to traverse it. You'll get a surprise right out of the movie "Aliens", I won't say what it is, but it'll make your heart sink like the Titanic and your hope will fail, taking a nose dive right into hell. But don't give up hope. Keep trying. You can beat it. It's possible. At the easy level of difficulty that is. You'll love the quips, the wisecracks your comrades in battle speak. Some even speak with Spanish accents. They are both clever and funny and remind one of things said in Aliens. "A one way roller coaster to hell!" "You want some more of this?" "Marines, we are out of here!" It's lines like that last line that really creep me out, and get my nervous energy rolling. I don't like being told I don't have much time left. Don't rush me. It's not polite.

Quite possibly one of the greatest games of our time!

To tell you the truth, when I was waiting in line for over seven hours to get an Xbox when it was first released so long ago, I wasn't even planning on getting Halo. I had never heard of Halo and was chatting with a fellow gamer about the lack of multiplayer support in Airforce Delta Storm, when he mentioned "Well why don't you just get Halo, that's a good multiplayer game?" From then on, my life was changed. My eyes had been opened to the wondrous foreign world that Halo would provide me that would fuel my FPS rage for the next few years.

With that being said, let me proceed to introduce the game that needs no introduction. Halo has been acclaimed by more than one reputable gaming magazine to be one of the best shooters ever. Though we all know the story, I will use a few lines to explain it. You play the part of Master Chief, who wakes up from cryogenic storage to find that his starship is under attack from Covenant forces. The Covenant is a mixture of alien races that are bent on destroying mankind. As Master Chief, you are part a group of super human elite who have been trained since birth for military combat. Upon evacuation of the ship on a mysterious halo world, you proceed to kick Covenant butt as you try to find survivors and the secret of Halo.

Now with formality out of the way, I can explain to you the wonders of this game and why it is so great. To start out with, the graphics are absolutely wonderful. Normally when a system is launched you will find glitches and bugs in some of the earlier launch titles, but you find none in Halo. The plush environments almost come to life along with the spartan massive underground rooms you seem to find yourself in more than once. The sound is great, even though there is no custom soundtrack feature. You'll find that the background music fits the situation you're in, from upbeat combat to calm and cool sounds of nature.

The replay ability of this game is not much after you beat it on single player, however I gave it an "A" because of its superb multiplayer features. The game never ceases to be fun on multiplayer because you just have so many options to choose from. You can play straight out combat, capture the flag, etc. It's a wonderful experience. I only wish this could have been Xbox Live compatible, but since there was no Xbox Live when it was released, I guess I can't complain too much.

Last, but not least, the only minor complaint I had about the game was the learning curve. I gave it an "A-" because it takes you a bit to get used to the controls. I didn't give it lower because this could have been, for me at least, just because Xbox was a new console the day I played Halo for the first time and I could not have been used to the controls. Never the less, you eventually learn them by trial and error, and once you learn them, it is like riding a bike...it never goes away.

So to wrap things up, Halo is a MUST for almost everybody's collection. It is the pinnacle of the Xbox fleet and the second one is due out later this year. Plus, there was a price drop of Halo to $29.99 and also a Halo edition Xbox that came out for $169.99 which came with Halo, a nice green Xbox, and a controller w/special box. If you even wanted to get into more detail about the game, there is even a group of novels out about Halo as well as side story DVD's such as Red vs. Blue. I loved this game personally and it will always have a special place in my collection.

Great Game!

The interface is great. The in the action feel makes for some intense game play. I really enjoy the fact that each level provides a new setting and new experience. The controls are easy enough for my kids yet provide full control over the weapons and vehicles. The PC interface is actually better than the XBOX controls.

a classic and still holding its own

well this is a re buy for me i wore out my first copy!! the fact that i bought it twice says a lot for this this game! just cant be without a copy when i need to go replay the original, it was a masterpiece for its time and even today its well worth playing, the campaign is great with a rich story line and exciting game play! the online is also a blast i highly recommend you buy this in particular if you have not yet played it, and on the pc you get the extra precision of mouse and keyboard, but halo ce did bring shooters to a controller better than ever before, also it will run nicely on even a modest pc buy today's standard
and the price is dirt cheap for what you get! if you like shooters and halo2 & 3
your not going to be dissapointed snag a copy see you online!!!