HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED (XBOX)


Console gaming like never before

By WILL BARKER

After finishing Halo for the second time, things were getting interesting. I was answering the phone, "Halo, William speaking."

My dreams were full of visions involving huge battles between a cyborg and the Covenant.

And let's try to forget the incident at the Seven-Eleven store. "Help me - I'm under attack - they're everywhere!!"

It would be fair to say I entertained many late-night shoppers, but sadly - it ended in tears. The impact Halo has on one's subconscious is tremendous. It really is quite scary. Perhaps it's too good?

Whatever the case, Halo is a sci-fi first-person shooter like no other. And that's not an easy task, either. The first-person shooter genre is one that is either going to make you or break you. Look at id and Doom - it shot them to fame and made them geek-hold names. Then think back to the $30 million dollar flop called Daikatana - it was supposed to be shit-hot, turned out to be plain old shit.

The end result could have ravaged Bungie if the team fluffed it. But no. The team did its homework, covered the hard yards and it has payed off handsomely. Without trying to sound like a tosser, this is the biggest thing in first-person shooters since Doom.

It's a little strange when I think about it. How can it be so playable, so deliciously enticing? It would be fair to say that Halo doesn't really innovate or offer fantastically original concepts - it just does everything perfectly.

Anyway, let's start with the story, which, like almost all aspects of the game, plays an integral part in making the game, as a whole, more engrossing. It gives you something to work towards.

In the future, man has created spaceships, which, oddly enough, can fly through space. Upon his sojourns, man encounters an alien race - the Covenant. These malevolence and technologically advanced freaks want to eradicate humans. Hey, don't we all?

As the Covenant get closer to Earth and the human battleships prove no match for the alien's technology, a confrontation occurs. Almost all human ships are involved, but alas, only one survives. The ship: Pillar of Autumn.

It's captain decides to try to lure the Covenant away from Earth and so warps off to a distant area of the universe. It just so happens that the nasty buggers have beaten the Pillar of Autumn. Arriving at a large star, the crew notices a huge ring, the size of which has never been seen before. The Pillar of Autumn is soon boarded by the enemy and this is where the game starts.

You play a special Cyborg soldier, called a Master Chief, who manages to evacuate the crippled Pillar of Autumn, only to land on the mysterious ring construct. The story is just part of the coolness that is Halo, and the way that Bungie allows the player to slowly peel away the layers of intrigue is more like a nail-biting thriller than a videogame.

Upon first picking up the pad, I looked at it and thought, "Crap!" Being a PC first-person junkie from the thirteenth century, using a keyboard and mouse has been the only way to go. Until now.

Strangely, Halo is amazingly playable with the Xbox controller. Just pretend the left stick is the keyboard, used for strafing and movement, with the right stick acting as the mouse. The right trigger shoots, the left trigger lobs grenades. Easy.

Playing the game is an utter joy. The game engine rocks. Hard. From emptying a full clip of assault rifle ammo into a Covenant Elite, to running over Grunts with the Warthog - it's all champagne gaming. The physics are spot on, the fact that other marines fight with you is ace and the enrapturing story all culminate in something very special.

But first, I'd like to touch on the artificial intelligence. Normally one would refer to it as 'scripting'. In a sense, it's all scripted - you do one thing, they react to it in a linear fashion. While this same principle works for Halo, it's very hard to spot it in motion. Rather, you get the feeling you are actually battling an alien race in an against-the-odds struggle for survival.

There are four main type of Covenant. The small, weak and easy to scare Grunts. The slightly bigger, harder to scare, shield-wearing Jackals. The scary force field-equipped, roaring, clawing Elites. The bloody scary, in-your-face, don't take nothing from no-one, bad-ass, mo-fo, Hunters.

Each type will have to be tackled in a different way if you want to survive with shields intact. The Jackals, for instance, can deflect any type of weapon's fire expect the Elite's plasma rifle, so running them over or popping a cap in an exposed limb is the way to go. Alternatively, a well-placed frag grenade would also do the trick.

As the game progresses, your foes will become tougher and this, in turn, slowly makes you a more efficient killing machine. At the start of the game, enemies will be fairly tame, but as time goes on, their aim and strength increases, and watch out for pin-point accurate grenades from the Elites. It's a freakishly good game.

It's also nice to have a shield-and-health based life span. This way, your shields can be somewhat depleted, but will always recharge given time, allowing for greater margins of error. This is very useful considering the amazing AI involved with the baddies. They can work as a team, will seldom fight in the open if there's cover and can also lob grenades. The later levels also provide your foes with vehicles - scary ones, to boot.

One of the fundamental aspects of any FPS is its weapons. Thankfully, Bungie has included some old favourites and a few new ones, just for good measure. But just to keep things balanced, you Master Chief cyborg player can only carry two weapons at a time.

• Pistol - good accuracy, average power and has 2x zoom function
  
• Assault rifle - awesome rate of fire, good accuracy when fired in bursts, packs a fair punch and comes with a funky compass device
  
• Shotgun - slow rate of fire made up for by devastating short-range power
  
• Sniper rifle - extremely powerful, has 2x and 10x zoom, plus groovy night vision
  
• Rocket Launcher - perhaps the most powerful weapon, let down by slow rocket speed
  
• Frag grenades - a brilliant tactical weapon - extremely powerful, too

You can also pick up a range of weapons from the Covenant you fell.

• Plasma pistol - one of the most versatile weapons in the game. Can be used as a rapid(ish) fire, medium power pistol, or can be charged up to unleash a massive green ball of death, tends to overheat
  
• Plasma rifle - the alien counterpart of the assault rifle. More powerful and can eat through Jackal shields, tends to overheat
  
• Needler - another versatile weapon - it fires small pink shards which home in on enemies. If you can manage to offload an entire clip (20 shards) into a foe, the resulting explosion is enough to kill almost any enemy and surrounding bogeys
  
• Plasma grenades - similar to the frag variant in power, these little toys will stick to an enemy if well-placed

Indeed, there's nothing quite as cool as sticking a couple of plasma grenades a to Grunt, only to watch him retreat into a pack of Covenant. Dropped grenades, which can be collected, will also detonate if an explosion occurs nearby, creating another tactical plus - chain reactions!

All the weapons have a time and a place, but my favourite would have to be the needler. It's just so funky! There are also the vehicles to talk about, which add yet another element of strategy to the game. The first vehicle you'll get to use, and one of the best, is the Warthog - a very nice set of wheels if I ever saw one. It takes three crew - the driver, the passenger (who can shoot his weapons and lob grenades) plus it's got a massive chain-gun in the back, with unlimited ammo. There's nothing like parking the 'Hog near a troupe of baddies (dug in like Alabama ticks) and letting rip with the chaingun. Poetry in motion.

Next up is the Covenant turret, which isn't so much a vehicle, but it's still cool. Then there's the Scorpion Tank. With a crew of five and a main-gun to put the Zentradi to shame, it's a tip-top ride. It's also huge. Covenant vehicles include the Ghost, which is a funky hovercraft contraption with a couple of plasmsa blasters. The fact that it hovers means strafing is also possible, making it great for moving down oncoming forces.

And then there's the Banshee. Halo is called a first-person shooter, but the third-person dogfights you can have in these puppies are astonishing. It has similar weapons to the Ghost, but also has a much stronger torpedo weapon, great to taking out other vehicles.

Graphically, I can't complain. There's no denying this couldn't be done on a PC, but there's no way that such visual splendour could be replicated on either the Sony or Nintendo consoles. The frame-rate dropped perhaps twice, which is amazing considering the complexity of the indoor/outdoor levels. That said, the same textures are often used over and over on the indoor missions, but it's a minor blemish on an otherwise perfect game.

The dynamic lighting creates some really cool scenes. When you charge up the plasma pistol, the green light glows all around you, and gradually spills over onto the walls and floor. The in game cut-scenes look superb and add plenty of charm to whole package. Texture detail also derserves a mention thanks to it's, err, detail. The GeForce 4 equivalent inside the Xbox is one helluva piece of hardware.

The sound is also great and helps create an atmosphere so thick, you could cut it with a blunt knife. The eerie twitters you hear in the background, to the screaming of fallen comrades - it's all very impressive stuff. The weapons sound really meaty and crack of a rifle butt when it lands on a Grunt's head is spine-tinglingly painful. At many points in the game, you'll have computer-controlled allies with you, who not only jump in vehicles and shoot what you shoot, but they talk the talk, too. The different accents add character and together with a dynamic soundtrack, which picks up the tempo when the shits about to hit the fan really gets your heart beating.

While many may scoff at the prospect of only 10 missions, the shortest of which probably takes about an hour to complete. On the harder difficulty settings some missions can take up to three hours - and that was in co-op mode. Oh yeah, co-op rocks the house. It's almost better than single player because you can truly out-flank your foes or create strategic diversions while your team-mate attaches some plasma grenades to the back of an unsuspecting foe.

However, despite all the game's goodness, there was one point which left this reviewer a bit sour. It finished. Now while the 10 missions on offer are huge, and most will want to play them through several times, I just feel that it wouldn't have been hard to include a few more levels. At least there's a sequel on the way.

Multiplayer games take the sting away from having such a lavish and engrossing single-player experience dry up, and with more modes than you can poke a stick at (rally, capture the flag, king of the hill etc.), most gamers will be satisfied with what's on offer. Four player split screen is awesome, but if you want the ultimate, try getting four TVs and linking up four Xbox consoles for a 16 player blood bath. What can I say? This is combat evolved.

From the choice of kick-ass weapons, to the rumbling feedback in the control pads, Halo is an absolute winner. It succeeds on so many levels, but perhaps the most impressive is the inspiring way the story unfolds as you play. With unforseen twists and truly exciting predicaments, the way in which the plot weaves its intricate pattern is alone worth the price of admission.

Halo is a great game. It's compelling enought to warrant purchasing the new novel, even. I only wish it was longer, because it really is an involving experience that you really don't want to end. Reiterating what was said earlier, Halo isn't so much a ground-breaking game. Instead, all elements of the game have been chiselled away until nothing remains but complete and utter perfection.

ORIGINALITY 95%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 90%
PLAYABILITY 95%
ADDICTION 90%
ENJOYMENT 95%