| Publisher: |
Developer: |
Genre: |
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| Microsoft |
Bungie Software |
Action |
1 - 4 |
Mature |
Halo: Combat Evolved
Reviewed by: Bagel
Halo is a launch title for the Microsoft Xbox, a very good one at that. Halo takes place in the future on another planet. The covenant are trying to take over the world and you must stop them... before it is too late.
Gameplay: You play the role of Master Chief, and in this role of Master Chief you will blast more covenant then you will ever even dream of blasting.
The game starts off in your ship, it has been taken over by the covenant forces. You must get off of the ship safely with Cortana in order to win the mission. Reason being because the ship has been taken over by the covenant if the covenant capture Cortana they could take over the world. With the knowledge that she knows, things wouldn't be good. So you must get her off. Once Captain Keyes gives you this command when you leave him you finally get your first weapon. Where you can finally start blasting some covenant.
Speaking of Weapons, Halo has many nice weapons. Ranging from Machine Guns, to Pistols, to Rocket Launchers, and Snipers to the covenants Needlers. In Halo, you can only carry 2 weapons. This is a good thing, but can also be a bad thing. I would have preferred more but this is definitely a lot more realistic. No doubt about that, how can someone carry 10 weapons anyways. One thing that's pretty cool about Halo is that you can use your own weapons or you can use the enemies weapons that you find on the ground.
When it comes to the enemies, covenant, that you will encounter in your role as Master Chief. There is 4 different enemies: Grunts, Elites, Jackals, and Hunters. The Grunts are the easiest, just pump their guts with lead and they're gone. They also only attack in groups and it's pretty cool throwing a grenade at them and watch them fly. The elites have a shield but they're fun to walk up to them and hit them with the gun, because shooting them does no more then nothing since they have shields. The jackals can be pretty tough up close, but if your at a distance and give them a grenade and also blast them with whatever weapon you have you can take them. Now the Hunters are another story. They are really tough, the best way to take care of them is by shooting a little orange thing you will see on them. There also the flood, which I personally don't like. I could definitely go without them. They are tiny and crawl on you and eat you, and get really annoying, but they're not hard at all. They have a really cool killing effect also. They like pop when you shoot them so it's really cool shooting massive amounts of them. Then there's also like flood holders, those guys carry a few flood in them, if you don't kill them quickly they will explode.
The enemy AI is very smart too. They rarely reuse lines, and when they do it's always in the right spot. All of the lines they use are funny too. The enemies will duck, or run, whatever they need to do in order to avoid you. Now that is smart AI.
There are many different vehicles that you will come across, like Jeeps, Ghosts and Banshees. And yup, you get to ride them all. Those are pretty fun to just ride around for a little bit and not worry about the enemies. The weapons on the vehicles are pretty cool as well. The jeep can be pretty hard to control at first but you get the hang out of it eventually. Same with some of the flying vehicles.
There is also multiplayer modes available for you to have even more fun. Whether your doing death match or coop, it's all good. You can also tie up more then one Xbox and have some very fun Halo LAN Party's.
Graphics: The graphics in Halo are stunning. Just absolutely stunning. All of the environments just look amazing, they player models are realistic. The enemies all look great. The lighting is really nice too, when you look up into the sky you can see glare. Everything in Halo is just very nicely detailed. The animation is perfect too. I don't see anything I could possibly complain about. The game runs fine with virtually no slow-downs, even when there are massive amounts of people on the screen and yet with explosions going on.
Controls: The controls in the game are very easy to maintain. The game plays very good with the original Xbox controller. In my opinion it's even better with the S Controller. Of course you all already know how the controls are by now, so I won't even get into that. Lets just say they're good.
Replay: There is plenty of replay value in store for you with Halo. You can literally play this game for hours. You can have an all nighter with this game. It's just that good. Plus, with the multiplayer modes, and ways of getting Halo online this game is just about endless. I would love to see some kind of expansion appear soon and get this game on Xbox Live would be sweet.
Sound: The sound in Halo is superior. The voice acting is top notch, all of the weapons sound very realistic and nice. The soundtrack is where it is all at too, sounds very nice (good enough to release on cd). The sound picks up when the action picks up, and it calms down when the action calms down... All in all Halo just has some very awesome sounds to it.
Overall Presentation: Halo is just a great, great game. Definitely the best shooter on the Xbox, and one of the best on any platform. If you don't already have Halo and own Xbox (which is very slim) then you probably have some kind of mental issues!
Scores:
Gameplay:  10
Graphics: 10
Controls: 10
Replay:  9
Sound: 10
Total Score: 9.8
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