Nameless Gaming - Halo Review
Halo Review
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Halo, Halo, Halo. Honestly, where the hell do I begin? Should I cover its impressive co-op,
theatrical storyline, great voice acting, or superb graphics? Yeah your right. I should
prolly stop pretending I dont know what to write and cut to the chase. Sucky introparagraph? Your damn right it is.
Halo's gameplay is really good. Now if your one of those people, who has the attitude that the xbox controller is "too big" or thinks that "Microsoft must be on crack" or "Mike leave me alone I dont want to talk now", then I have one place to send you. Click Here. The control scheme reall isnt that hard to get, (click here for control diagram), and the way it requires you to hold the controller, you wont even notice it. Unless of course you have the hands of an 8 year old and will be like my brother, constantly saying "oww" and "it hurts.." because you'll have to stretch your hands
around the controller. The force feedback is something Im gonna note, not to make it sound like we've heard this all before because I know most of you get what force feedback is. I just think it enhances the feel of the game how the slightest things jostle the controller at different levels. Different shots/melee attacks have different impacts and kicks, and you really notice how it makes the vehicles harder to drive (mainly when someones shooting either at you, or from the vehicles gun - only exception is the tank) but it really adds to the gameplay.
The actual gameplay is really good, the enemies exercise intelligent AI, and get involved in hand-to-hand with you if you get way too close, and they'll even run away when you single them out. Your enemies also react to your attacks by swearing, screaming, etc. One other thing I appreciated about the in-game was the realism in Melee attacks. When you sneak up behind people, and hit them in the back of the head they pass out, as opposed to an attack from the front where they are able to get ready and know you are attacking. Your allies also team up around you and defend each other (despite the fact that your allies are generally pretty weak and cant sustain a lot of damage - but then again so doesnt the enemy, so what can I say?) and they can help you on to your next waypoint (when applicable) which is really cool, especially on the Pillar of Autumn, because its incredibley easy to get lost. As far as your inventory goes, you can only carry 2 weapons at a time, and four grenades. That might seem kind of cheap for a first person shooter, but really its all part of the fun. Especially in co-op because your team will need to make use of more then one of what I consider to be "novelty weapons" such as the rocket launcher, and the sniper rifle.
Theres about 6 vehicles in Halo, the Warthog Jeep, the Tank, and the Covenant's Ghost and Banshee. Now, I included the Tank, and I dont doubt that those of you who have already played Halo will not believe it. It is in the game, and you can drive it. You just need to slow down on one of the levels, otherwise its easy to race by and miss it. The Jeep is actually the most common vehicle, I'd say between it and the ghost, you can find either ready and waiting for you about 50% of the time in the outdoor levels. I think part of this is because the outdoor levels really are quite vast, such as the first one when your actually ON Halo. You can go basically everywhere, but the map is directed so you hit all the objectives, and without the Warthog crashing through streams and over rocks and hills, I'd say its fair to assume it would have taken me an hour or so to beat the level, as opposed to the 20 minutes I can do it in now. The only real disadvantage of the jeep is that when your driving it, your essentially unprotected. Unless you've got a buddy playing co-op with you, or two of the AI controlled marines ridin shotgun, you can die really fast. But thats not to say the jeep is unsafe by any means because you can still use it to run over covenant (who dive out of the way using animations very much like that of GTA3's, I might add). Another note about the jeep (and all the vehicles for that matter) is that it can pull off some really amazing things due to Halo's physics. Whenever you hit a rock (generally at high speed) you can fly through the air and the jeep will either land on its wheels, or right on top of you, which can succesfully kill you. Likewise, when trying to drive on a narrow road it is far to easy to slip off and land sideways on a rock, whats strange about this is you dont fall out, but you'll instead stay in the sideways Jeep while your marine riding shotgun freaks out on you.
Speaking of the marines, the AI for that of your team mates is very good, although you'll have to kill roughly 80% of them for them to think your a traitor, but its all in the eye of the beholder. They also react to the enviroment around them, when in the jeep and you make a jump the different soldiers of different ethnicities (most noticable are English, American Southern, and Latino) all react with some sort of "Yee-haw!". They also compliment you and the other marines on good kills.
Some of the stuff I really dont care for, are the way the game forces you to watch its cutscenes (no skip button) depending wether you've beaten the mission already. Im pretty sure I know every one of Cortana's lines, due to this. I also dont like how there is no clear progression in the difficulty of the enemies - you just go from fairly hard, to whoop-your-ass difficulty, in a matter of minutes. Case in point: you have to head to a waypoint, on your way their you attack guys with mild damage, and then you get to the waypoint to find too Hunters (kinda like gargs from Half-Life) there waiting for you with bazookas. Now, considering at some points early in the game you still wont even be all that used to playing, and having to fight these guys wont be any easier, but as I said to Orc when I showed him how to drive the jeep in the last level, "Theres no better time then the present".
The other aspects of the game that tend to lack, come about half way through, when the storyline seemingly hits a huge depression with a lot of action, but not much reason to back it up. It becomes the same level over and over for about 2 hours, and believe me you'll be ripping your hair out. But it soon picks up again, and the end of the game is really worth it. Halo = good begining + bad middle + good end. Get it?
Now, lets move into the graphics. I think the screen shots speak for themselves, but what you arent seeing is one of my favorite parts of the game - the grass. I mean, Im not trying to sound boring or anything, and I promise, this will be the only time that I ever, ever post a screen shot of grass, but this stuff is amazing, and the fact that you can never really see an end to the texture shows that bungie put an unhealthy amount of effort in. Hell, it even transitions to stone or gravel when theres a hill or cave.
The models for the humans (I'll use as examples because Covenant are far to creative for you to have to compare) are really nice. They blink, and their mouths move when they talk. Their animations are also really smooth, and while glitches are possible, they dont often occur.
The sound is nice, its just overall nice, it really doesnt matter wether your playing it on a 19 inch mono TV, or a 27 inch TV with Dolby 5.1 digital surround. The surround is impressive but it by no means makes the game (noticabley)better.
The voice acting is no less then superb, everything is all up to par. The in combat speech from Covenant, and human can be quite comical at times, too. When singled out the covenant tends to scream "there everywhere" and compensates for how many people there are in the attacking party, so when its just you, and they scream "Hes everywhere" it can be no less then hysterical. This is also aided by the amazingly shrill, high-pitched voices of the covenant grunts.
Likewise, the voice in cutscenes is very good. It also proves to be strange however when Cortana's voice is so emotionally charged, and cheif..how shall I say..sounds less then enthusiastic. But he is the only character that does that, everyone else has good voices, and equally good lines.
The music, is also something to be truly noted. It has very smooth transitions, because you can go from some really serene conditions to some truly hellish ones, the game moves from slight air music, into battle drum type music. If you stay engaged in combat long enough you can realize how truly involved the battle score was as it transitions from this African drum sound into a Heavy Metal guitar variation.
Halo's replayability factors, are not really off the chart. The missions may keep you coming back but their divided up so that often times the part you'll want to play again will be sandwhiched between to really irritating parts. I often times want to fly the banshee but I just dont have the time to sit through a half hour of the first part of that mission. Its annoying. The multiplayer and co-op however, are really what sells Halo's replayability. The multiplayer isn't to be sold short, as it gives access to really large maps, all the weapons in the actual game (which can be handy for practice), and even access to the Jeep. Not just that in the Jeep maps, theres two jeeps so you and a buddy can go off-road before fragging each other to peices. I must say I look foward to playing Halo online when I get my broadband connection, and thats going to have to be somethin I add to this review when the time comes. The Xbox also offers the opportunity for people with more then one xbox (and tv for that matter) to network their consoles, and play with up to sixteen people (four per console, with four consoles). I'm not sure how the game would react under these conditions because at times in the game when your surrounded by enemies you can feel the FPS drop, but all in all the capability of the multiplayer is certainly a revolution for a console game.
Air's Score: 9 out of 10
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