A defining achievment for the console FPS genre
When Halo first arrived, it was hailed as a revolution for the console first-person shooter genre. Seven years later, this game still holds up as one of the best console FPS's ever made.
What makes Halo great is not one particular factor, but a convergence of different qualities that add up to a remarkable experience. From a presentation point of view, Halo is a gorgeous game, with huge sweeping vistas that invite open-ended gameplay and evoke a sense of freedom absent from your normal run-of-the-mill corridor shooter.
Halo's setting, combined with its unique sci-fi art style, delivers a convincing glimpse of a future world in which mankind is in a dire struggle against the Covenant alien race to maintain its survival. Within this backdrop, the player is let loose as the super soldier Master Chief to take the Covenant head on and carve out a path of subsistence for mankind with an assault rifle in one hand and a frag nade in the other.
The combat in Halo is extremely well-designed and polished. Controls feel smooth and natural, and strike the perfect balance between accessibility and depth. Halo captures that "15 minutes" of intense action and spreads it across the entire game. Part of the excitement comes from the intelligent and adaptable AI, which never hesitates to flank you or hop in and out of cover in effort to disrupt your rhythm. But this hide-and-seek, unpredictable enemy behavior is exactly what makes the game so fun to play.
Master Chief has a wide range of weapons at his disposal, including assault rifles, grenades, sniper rifles, pistols (my personal favorite), shotguns, rocket launchers, and a plethora of alien guns to experiment with. With such a wide variety of tools, it's surprising that the game is so well balanced, especially during multiplayer.
And speaking of multiplayer--multiplayer is what turned this game from a hit into a phenomenon. Both co-op and death match gameplay styles offer endless playtime, and add tremendous value to an already superb single-player experience.
It would be a crime if I did not mention Halo's music. From the Himalayan a capellas to the violin riffs of the theme song, the music is powerful and makes a big impact during story sequences and comes in at just the right time during the heat of battle.
Ultimately, what makes Halo shine is that it took an existing formula for console FPS's and polished it so much that it was able to lift the genre to a new level of excellence. That accomplishment, combined with Halo's stellar production values, allowed Halo to make its mark on gaming history.
But Halo is not a perfect game. There is one level (and everyone who's finished the game knows which one) that is the epitome of poor game design in terms of repetitiveness, and I did not at all enjoy fighting the Flood enemies, who were stale and uninteresting to fight compared with the clever Covenant.
However, these blemishes don't cancel out the innovations that Halo brought to its genre nor the overall quality of the game. Halo is a defining achievement for the console FPS genre that will be emulated by other designers for years to come.
