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Halo: Combat Evolved, is probably the best FPS I have ever played in my life. This was one of the games that convinced me to buy the XBOX in the first place, and let me tell you something, I didn’t regret it for one second. Halo: Combat Evolved, is probably the best FPS I have ever played in my life. This was one of the games that convinced me to buy the XBOX in the first place, and let me tell you something, I didn’t regret it for one second.
Halo takes place in 2552 on a mysterious ring-world built by the Forerunners. A bunch of alien races held together by a religious bond known as The Covenant, are effortlessly annihilating human forces. You are a bio-engineered cyborg who is humanities last hope. You leave your ship in an escape pod. Both crash-land on Halo, and that’s when your journey begins.
The gameplay is so good in Halo that I sometimes even forget that I am playing a video game. The controls are easy to get used to, and once you start a game, you’ll have a short introduction to the controls. The controller feels natural, as if it were made for Halo. The two triggers used as fire and throw grenade buttons, are very easy to use, and are very convenient. The storyline unveils during the game, and it’s really great to watch a cinematic in the middle of a level, which explains a bit about what has happened. There are cinematics at the end and in the beginning of every level.
If you haven’t played Halo without Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, you haven’t played Halo! I was playing on a big screen TV with speakers all around me, and I swear, I could hear a plasma charge leave a Plasma Rifle, and fly from the left to the right, just to see it pass right in front of me when it was centered. I was amazed at it. The gunfire and the explosions of the grenades sound a bit too realistic, and it sometimes scares me. In “343 Guilty Spark” (swamp level), when you run on water, the splashes you hear sound exactly like they should, and like they do in real life.
The actors did a great job on the voicing part of the game. I especially love the grunts. The screams, the shrieks, the cries for help from the aliens, interspersing with your marines calling for back-up, or laughing at the corpses, make up for an amazing presentation of the game.
I went to a site once and read the following: “…you might get the urge to stop and smell the roses, but not for too long, or you might end up buried 6 feet under them”. I laughed it off, because first of all, it’s funny, and second of all, I didn’t believe that anything could be that good…until I played it. I am pretty sure I got killed 2 or 3 times while staring at the grass on the level “Halo”. You can seriously make out every blade of grass while looking at the ground. I was amazed. Although Halo doesn’t have too many roses, it has so much more! The aliens’/marines’ mouths move when they talk, they grab their foot if you shoot them in it (marines only, I think), and they WILL bash you in the back of the head if you let them get close enough. What really amazed me was the skeleton system. I am not sure about other characters, but yours is designed with a virtual skeleton inside. This allowed the programmers to make the body move realistically. When you jump into a Warthog, he will first put one foot in, then grab onto something, pull the other foot in and then pull his body inside. Then (if sitting in the passenger seat) you will actually see him put in the keys and start the engine. The attention to detail blew me away. The graphics are beyond anything I imagined.
This game is awesome fun, and has great replay-value. I’ve beaten it on every difficulty setting, and I am still playing some of the missions that I found very interesting and fun (Silent Cartographer, The Truth and Reconciliation, 343 Guilty Spark). I haven’t tried playing online, but I am sure it will be way better and way more fun than 4-player split screen. -- Anonym. Contributor, PGNx Media
---- May 23, 2002
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