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GameSpy Grudge

 

Halo (Xbox)
It doesn't quite live up to the hype, but Halo is a great shooter and easily one of the best Xbox launch titles.
By - Sal "Sluggo" Accardo


Since finishing Halo a week ago, I've had a hard time deciding how to review it. On one hand, Halo is a darned good game -- it's ambitious, has some great action and an engaging story. If you pre-ordered an Xbox months ago, Halo should absolutely be in your shopping cart when you wheel your new Xbox out of the store.

At the same time, I can't help but feel a little disappointed -- Halo is hardly the revolutionary game it's been hyped up to be. It contains some truly brilliant moments, but along with feeling like a PC game trapped in a console's body, it also contains a frustrating amount of uninspired, repetitive gameplay that may well have you yelling at your TV.

In the Beginning


Our hero dispatches some of the Covenant's forces.
Halo was originally conceived a few years ago as a PC and Mac game, being developed by Bungie, creators of the classic Mac Marathon series. Along the way, Bungie was eventually bought out by Microsoft, and the game's development was shifted to the Xbox.

The story is set hundreds of years in the future, as Earth has begun to colonize various parts of the galaxy. You play a cyber-enhanced super-marine known simply as Master Chief, called into service to protect Earth forces from an alien threat known as the Covenant.

Most of the action takes place on an alien artifact called Halo - a massive planetary ring of unknown origin trapped in orbit between a planet and its moon, complete with its own atmosphere. You crash-land on Halo early on in the game, and spend a good deal of time fighting Covenant forces and trying to uncover the mysteries of the world... with many surprises to be had along the way.

The plot -- set up in the game manual, and presented both during gameplay and in between via some slick cutscenes -- is extremely engaging, albeit somewhat easy to lose track of if you're not paying attention.

I won't give away any spoilers, but Bungie and Microsoft have done an excellent job of keeping important plot twists secret and not giving anything away in screenshots or previews. While some may have issues with the direction the story eventually takes, it's far better than the plot you'd see in your run-of-the-mill shooter.

A Pretty Package

The Xbox does a fantastic job of showcasing the game, and vice versa -- Halo is undeniably pretty in almost every regard, and graphics may well be the game's strongest point. The game is loaded with all sorts of eye candy, and while the framerate isn't silky smooth 100% of the time, most gamers will probably never notice -- we only encountered a few rare occasions where the frame rate dropped drastically.


Master Chief carefully crosses a massive waterfall.
The game is spread out across 10 massive levels, set both indoors and out, and transitions from one area to another are nearly seamless. Many of the outdoor environments, especially the ones set out in the snowy mountains of Halo, are especially jaw-dropping.

One advantage of the Xbox's built-in hard drive is that each mission's smaller levels load on the fly. While each of the 10 large missions take about 45 seconds to get started, new areas constantly load on the fly and are barely noticeably above a slight stutter.

Next: Halo in action...




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