Halo is the greatest First-Person Shooter ever made.
Halo: Combat Evolved is a Frist-Person Shooter developed by Bungie for the XBox, and it's the first installment in the Halo series. Halo is regarded by many as one of the best First-Person Shooters to ever be released. Many gaming websites lauded the games visuals, sound, plot and gameplay. It's also regarded as possibly the best release title of all time and it's won legions of fans.
The game is set in the future, in the year 2552, where there is a huge war raging on between the Covenant (an alien group) and the Humans. Earth ends up getting invaded, so the flagship of the human's fleet, the Pillar of Autumn, flees to try to attract Covenant ships to follow it. Eventually the Pillar of Autumn runs out of places to escape to, but the ship comes upon a ring in space. Desperate to escape the oncoming ships as it too will soon be overrun by aliens, the humans escape to the ring unaware of the dangers. One man is in charge of taking Cortana, a digitalised person who has vital information considering the Covenant, and getting to the ring... this man is called Master Chief.
Master Chief is the last of the Spartans, a breed of humans that are bred solely to fight, and he has no fears. In Master Chief, you have one of the coolest playable characters to ever appear in a videogame. He runs twice as fast as an ordinary human and can jump twice as high and is twice as strong, so he is the ideal man to protect Cortana and to fight the bigger, more powerful covenant.
The ring the humans land on, as they soon found out is Halo. A sacred ring with the power to wipe a planets entire civilisation. The Covenant use these rings and they are sacred. After learning this, Master Chief goes on a mission to destroy Halo to stop its misuse.
During the game, Master Chief will encounter hundreds of covenant aliens as he fights to save the Human race. There are 4 different types of Covenant aliens you'll come across in your adventure, Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Hunters. Hunters are physically the strongest of the lot but are seen less than the rest of them. Elites are the main ones and they are very intelligent and plan the attacks. A horde of Covenant is usually made up on 1 Elite, 3 Jackals and up to 10 Grunts. Grunts use all sorts of weapons because they are physically weak, the Needler been the most common one used though. Jackals use Plasma Pistols and carry an energy shield. When a Plasma Pistol is fully charged and shot at you it will take your shield down so beware. And the Elites use Plasma Rifles. All these weapons can be picked up off dead bodies, but Master Chief can only carry two guns at one time, so choose your combination wisely. The hunters guns cannot be picked up because they are physically stuck to there arms.
You can also carry 4 of each grenade type. The Frag grenades are the human's choice and they explode after 3 seconds. The plasma grenades are the Covenants choice and there miles better. If they hit an enemy they stick, and then the enemies will rum around trying to get it off them, and true to life all the other aliens run away so there not caught in the explosion. There is nothing better than sticking a Grunt and watching them screaming ''HELP!!!'' as they try to get it off them before the inevitable boom!
The levels on this game are designed fantastically. There are only 10 levels, but if you play this game on Legendary, which is the games hardest difficulty, you could be on a single level for up to and sometimes over 2 hours, so the levels don't lack exploration. In 2002 when this game was released, the graphics and visual effects were possibly, well almost certainly, the best ever seen on a videogame console. From blood splatters when bullets hit the enemies, to the games fantastic environments, this game was visually perfect. Bungie put so much effort into making this game... they even went to the effort of making blood splatter out of the Covenant's dead bodies if you melee them.
Also the sound on the game is fantastic. There is calm music most of the time, but that soon changes and when you're under attack the music changes into a more frantic rhythm to coincide with Master Chief's current situation. Also the sounds the Aliens make are fantastic. If you sneak up behind them without them knowing, you can listen to a bunch of aliens talking to each other, although you can't understand there language. The A.I in Halo is so good it even rivals Half-Life, one of the smartest games ever made.
There are also some brilliant multiplayer games too for up to 16 players. When this game was released, Xbox live was unavailable so you can't play it online on the XBox, but, still, what you get is one of the best Multiplayer experiences I've ever played. On one console you can have upto 4 players against each other at once (16 players requires 4 XBox's to be system linked) and the ammount of fun you can have on it is endless. There are many games modes from Slayer (Deathmatch) to Capture the Flag or Oddball, the latter of which requires the players to find and hold a human skull for the longest ammount of time. And Bungie have made the multiplayer modes totally customisable. You can choose your game type, how many kills to win, what grenades you're allowed to use, what guns you're allowed to use, it's like the ultimate split-screen multiplayer experience. You can also play the main game co-operatively, which is also a great addition and adds replay value to the game as Co-Op does warrants a play through, with it been so good.
Halo: Combat Evolved is an absolute masterpiece. For me, it's the greatest First-Person Shooter of all time. While it may not be as revolutionary as previous First-Person Shooters, like Goldeneye and Half-Life, it certainly takes all the influences those games offer and builts off them to make a shooter that is near flawless. If you're a fan of First-Person Shooters, or just a fan of videogames in general, this is a must play and a must own as it is certainly one of the greatest videogames ever made.
Review by: James Widdowson
