Master Chief, an elite marine with a badass suit
A game that penetrates the mainstream audience like Halo did only happens once in a blue moon, did Halo deserve the praise or was it a fluke?
Starting out, Halo was a curious game. It originated as a third-person shooter for the Mac and PC. It looked to be a good standard sci-fi game. In June of 2000 Microsoft announced that they had acquired Bungie Studios, the developer of Halo. They also announced it becoming a first person shooter.
When it was released as a launch title for Microsoft's new Xbox, it shocked and awed people everywhere. Where do I start, the graphics are simply mind blowing. Even by today's standards these graphics look good. The lighting works perfectly with the textures to blend and create a realistic looking pattern. The game's giant set-pieces really make it stand out compared to other first person shooters for the Xbox. The frame rate can get a little iffy at times but its nothing major. The animations all look simply fantastic. The weapons all reload uniquely and they never get tedious to watch.
When it comes to sound though nothing even compares to Halo. The music in the game is overall a joy to listen to. Each piece fits the situation perfectly. All of the voice acting sounds good besides for the occasional random marine shouting a horrible death scream. Every sound effect in the game sounds so realistic, I have know clue what a plasma grenade would sound like but my best guess would be the sound from Halo.
After I had begun playing Halo I remembered that Halo was the first mainstream game to have recharging health, without Halo we might of never have had recharging health in games. It is innovative in the fact that no other game has really brought dual joystick shooters into the previous generation like Halo did. It incorporates vehicles so fluently and gently. All of the vehicles drive differently. The ghost is the only annoying vehicle in the game, with it, if you slightly bump into a wall you do a 180 degree spin, regardless of the speed your going.
The main weapon you will be using is the standard Assault rifle, It has a 60 round clip, and packs a nasty punch. Another gun you will be using is the magnum, a powerful pistol that headshots grunts like nothing else. Both of these guns are both extremely satisfying to kill with. You can tell a game has a lot of polish when it allows you to handle a situation any way you want too. With all of the game's vehicles, guns and grenades the situations have almost infinite solutions.
Finally we come to the games story, the story exceeds all expectations here. This game's story has expanded into a huge universe beyond the three games. If that is not enough to tell you if the story is good I don't know what is. You start off as Master Chief, an elite marine with a badass suit that makes you 50 times more powerful then all the other marines. The space ship you are on is under attack by the Covenant, a powerful army of aliens. You escape in a pod and crash land on a giant ring called Halo. You find out that Halo is a mystical super weapon, that the Covenant are using to destroy the human race. You have to stop them.
I found that the difficulty is a little rough in spots. I was playing on heroic difficulty but got stuck at level 4. I lowered it to normal difficulty and beat it but still had some problems along the way. Also even though the forerunners, the people who built Halo were a super intelligent race of aliens, they obviously were not good interior designers, as the indoors places of Halo all look identical to each other, probably an excuse to re-paste textures everywhere.
Overall Halo is a magnificent game with great graphics, sound and a phenomenal story. It has flaws that can easily be overlooked and unless I get over obsessive there really isn't anything to complain about. Halo is one of those games that deserves to break into the mainstream. So go buy it and get ready to kick some Covenant ass!
