Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox)

Reviewed by Joe Fielder
Review date: 11/09/01
Release date: 11/14/01

Even if you bear in mind the company's well-earned reputation for creating excellent games for the Mac and PC, Bungie's epic Xbox first-person shooter is of such a staggeringly high level of quality that you can't help but be surprised. Halo is a complete thrill ride from beginning to end, an experience perhaps best described as a 16-hour-plus version of the siege scene from the film Terminator 2. Those who've spent the last few years looking for a first-person shooter as good as Rare's GoldenEye 007 or Valve's Half-Life will be happy to hear they need look no longer.

You play Halo through the eyes of a character known as the Master Chief, an enigmatic cyborg commando whom you don't know much about but whom everyone in the game seems to have heard of and talks about reverentially ("He's taller than I thought." "Glad you're here, sir." "We were worried before you showed up, sir."). Halo takes place in a space-faring future, where Earth's forces have come into conflict with an alien race known as The Covenant. In the beginning of the game, you're awakened out of a cryo sleep and learn that The Covenant are trying to obtain a mysterious artifact--perhaps a weapon--on an artificial ring-shaped world known as Halo, and it's up to you to prevent that from happening.

Before you arrive on the planet, your ship is boarded by Covenant troops, whom your marine allies engage while your commander briefs and arms you. As you attempt to sweep the ship clean of enemies, you come across numerous instances of marines and Covenant forces engaged in firefights from behind hastily erected barricades. The first time you enter a scene like this, Covenant soldiers attempt to flank you by sneaking up from a passageway to the side, but you can repel them and turn their technique against them, attacking the main nest of them from the right while your allies keep their front line busy. This sort of combat is par for the course in Halo, making the simple days of running and gunning down enemies down the center of a corridor seem like a thing of the past. The Covenant know how to work together as a team and will send in point men to hunt for you in the last place you were seen if you back off to momentarily lick your wounds and let your shields recharge.

You quickly discover that you can carry only two weapons at a time in Halo--a realistic touch that many game players assumed for years would detract from first-person shooters but that lends a nice strategic element to this one. This forces you to choose wisely which weapons you pick up from fallen foes and allies and to learn each weapon well. You have to go into each situation knowing that if you, say, pick up that rocket launcher, you might be able to take out a large unit like a tank with it, but if you don't have a weapon that carries multiple, rapidly fired rounds, you might get overtaken by hordes of oncoming ground troops. Necessity will eventually cause you to realize that the weapons in Halo are very well balanced. Each one has positive and negative traits that might not be apparent at first. The pistol is very basic, but its scope can help you fire on troops who are hiding behind rocks in the distance. The rifle carries many rounds but isn't as effective as energy weapons against foes whose suits possess force fields. The appropriately named needler shoots explosive glass shards that home in on targets, but they often miss their mark if your enemy hides behind an object or runs far enough away. There aren't an enormous number of weapons in the game, but there isn't one that you won't find useful in some way.