Graphics

Fair is fair, Halo's graphics are not the best but they are certainly not bad either. The lush outdoor world of Halo is brought to life by a robust engine which renders the environment far into the distance. Above you the Halo curves dramatically into the sky. Simple yet effective.

Indoors, Halo's graphics let us all down. Through no fault of the engine but rather poor, linear and bland level design Halo's indoor environments are a huge fallback and can end up making the game repetative. There is almost never an alternate route and every passage, corridoor, bridge and room is another incarnation of a very small library of generic facility interiors.

Sound

When it comes to sound I just can't go without mentioning Halo's humourous alien dialogue and behaviour. From screams of fear as a grenade rams home, and sticks, to sleeping on the job and waking up with a jolt. The aliens truly feel alive and the sound, combined with the AI, makes them a believable opponent.

Weapon and vehicle sounds are all there and good enough, but there's nothing special here. Halo has a reasonable musical score, changing pace with the action and letting you know when to let those bullets fly.

Gameplay

Sorely let down by the aforementioned mediocre level design Halo's gameplay is at worse a linear gun-fest and at best a deep, atmospheric campaign against aliens you almost believe are real. You will discover a whole new meaning to Deja-Vu whilst trudging through Halo's later levels including a level which sports no less than ten almost identical security doors linked by identical passages, do I sense a touch of laziness here?

I had some, albeit few, great experiences with Halo. The biggest impression made on me was when I casually tossed a grenade around the corner to hear screams, a bang, a flash and a few of those pesky little aliens fly around the corner. It was truly comical. My worst experience came in the ridiculous ten security door level, it felt like playing the same ten feet of a Half-Life map over and over whilst being chased by every alien in the entire game and then some.

Story

The story is no great achievement, but it beats that of Unreal 2003 despite being based around the same 'superweapon' principal. It was fairly original and involving but wasn't too impressive.

Summary

Don't pick up a pen yet, because Halo certainly isn't something to write home about. I've heard the multiplayer is excellent but I doubt anyone playing Halo on an X-Box really knows what multiplayer is. Yes, I played Halo on the PC and briefly tried out multiplayer, don't buy it; wait for Unreal Tournament 2004. Halo sports too few weapons none of which are particularly creative, and the array of vehicles is far from vast and easily surpassed by PC oldies such as Mobile Forces. It's worth a play through, but make sure you rent it.

The Fans
After a year of fanboy responses I have decided it is time to revise this review. Conseqently the "stupid douche" fanboy base make even liking Halo hard to stomach- a little re-scoring is in order. Because the real fans are such arrogant, ignorant morons with nothing better to do than write carefully worded comments on this review by mashing their heads on their keyboards Halo has been given an overall score of zero to represent the lameness of owning, playing or even daring to look at a copy. If you want to play a game the developers actually bothered to finish rather than copying and pasting the last level and giving up entirely on creating new enemies then try Halo 2.. it's good, but it is still far from the best game ever made.

Conratulations idiots, you just crushed what little dignity Halo had left.

PH