Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox, 2001)

When you get past all of the chatter about the potential of Halo looking better on a PC, and all of the yip-yap about Halo being "just another" first person shooter, and all of the lip-flapping about Halo not being able to compete with the very best games on PS2 or GameCube and you actually sit down and play the game on your Xbox...you're in for one hell of a game.

The only thing people need to be concerned about when it comes to Halo is how soon they're going to get it and where they're going to find the time to play. With a story good enough for a full length novel, audio and visual elements as detailed as any you've ever seen and excellent pacing, Halo is the reason for Xbox and vice versa. Bungie has brought to the Xbox the game that will prove hundreds of thousands of naysayers wrong (about the system and thegame) and bring sweet relief and joy to those who've been biting their nails and pacing in circles waiting for Microsoft's machine to arrive. Hype is one thing; reality is another; Halo on Xbox is one of the best things to happen in videogames.

Features:

* Situational First and Third Person perspectives.
* Role-based, cooperative multiplayer team game
* Play story mode as a single player or cooperatively with another player.
* Choose from a variety of conventional human and powerful alien weaponry
* Vehicles include marine jeeps and tanks to alien flyers and hovercrafts.
* Squad based combat.
* Enjoy the action with 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound and Widescreen playback features.

The Story

Halo takes place in the far future where mankind is locked into a brutal war against a race of aliens known as the Covenant. These dudes are seriously evil. They wipe out entire planets at a time, and they are so fast at doing so that we poor humans are unable to get much information on them before they nuke us into oblivion.

The horde of aliens is getting closer and closer to Earth with the clock quickly ticking down before they completely annihilate our race. Finally the line is drawn. In a massive battle near a human planet, only one ship survives: Pillar of Autumn. The commander of the ship decides to lure the Covenant as far away from Earth as possible so she programs the ship's AI to jump to some random location in the opposite direction of the home system.

Eventually the ship arrives at a distant area or space where they find both a gas giant called Threshold and its small moon known as Basis. This wouldn't be so strange except for the fact that they find a giant ring construct floating between the two objects, which is about 10,000 miles in diameter. Unfortunately for the small ship, the entire Covenant battle fleet had followed them and arrived in the system shortly before.

When you boot up the game, you're knee deep in the middle of the Autumn being evacuated. That giant ring construct is Halo and the secret that it holds is the part of the story that will be up to you to discover.

Gameplay
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how Halo plays, I'd like to share a few of the quotes blurted out in and around the IGN offices and other places as passers-by were enraptured by a glimpse of Bungie's first person superstar.

"Are those guys fighting with you?"

"Drive the Jeep! I wanna see the Jeep!"

"Damn, this feels like a movie!"

"I thought the fun part happened already."

"How come the enemies speak English?"

Lol it's pretty funny and entertaining.
Overall Rating- 10/10

To tell you the truth, when I was waiting in line for over seven hours to get an Xbox when it was first released so long ago, I wasn't even planning on getting Halo. I had never heard of Halo and was chatting with a fellow gamer about the lack of multiplayer support in Airforce Delta Storm, when he mentioned "Well why don't you just get Halo, that's a good multiplayer game?" From then on, my life was changed. My eyes had been opened to the wondrous foreign world that Halo would provide me that would fuel my FPS rage for the next few years.

With that being said, let me proceed to introduce the game that needs no introduction. Halo has been acclaimed by more than one reputable gaming magazine to be one of the best shooters ever. Though we all know the story, I will use a few lines to explain it. You play the part of Master Chief, who wakes up from cryogenic storage to find that his starship is under attack from Covenant forces. The Covenant is a mixture of alien races that are bent on destroying mankind. As Master Chief, you are part a group of super human elite who have been trained since birth for military combat. Upon evacuation of the ship on a mysterious halo world, you proceed to kick Covenant butt as you try to find survivors and the secret of Halo.

Now with formality out of the way, I can explain to you the wonders of this game and why it is so great. To start out with, the graphics are absolutely wonderful. Normally when a system is launched you will find glitches and bugs in some of the earlier launch titles, but you find none in Halo. The plush environments almost come to life along with the spartan massive underground rooms you seem to find yourself in more than once. The sound is great, even though there is no custom soundtrack feature. You'll find that the background music fits the situation you're in, from upbeat combat to calm and cool sounds of nature.

The replay ability of this game is not much after you beat it on single player, however I gave it an "A" because of its superb multiplayer features. The game never ceases to be fun on multiplayer because you just have so many options to choose from. You can play straight out combat, capture the flag, etc. It's a wonderful experience. I only wish this could have been Xbox Live compatible, but since there was no Xbox Live when it was released, I guess I can't complain too much.

Last, but not least, the only minor complaint I had about the game was the learning curve. I gave it an "A-" because it takes you a bit to get used to the controls. I didn't give it lower because this could have been, for me at least, just because Xbox was a new console the day I played Halo for the first time and I could not have been used to the controls. Never the less, you eventually learn them by trial and error, and once you learn them, it is like riding a bike...it never goes away.

So to wrap things up, Halo is a MUST for almost everybody's collection. It is the pinnacle of the Xbox fleet and the second one is due out later this year. Plus, there was a price drop of Halo to $29.99 and also a Halo edition Xbox that came out for $169.99 which came with Halo, a nice green Xbox, and a controller w/special box. If you even wanted to get into more detail about the game, there is even a group of novels out about Halo as well as side story DVD's such as Red vs. Blue. I loved this game personally and it will always have a special place in my collection.

Well, first and foremost I would like to say that the Halo Series is most likely one of the best out there in competition to Metroid, Zelda, Mario, And the Final Fantasy Series.

When "Buy it now" is one of those options GO FOR IT WILL is worth it. Believe me. So the Game…

Halo starts off with the Reincarnation of Master Chief (Main Character) you fight many levels with a weapon, artificial intelligence and Cortana (HUGE CHARACTER) by your side...I guess you can't forget Sgt. Johnson (OMG HUGE CHARACTER).

Although the cut scenes can last as long as 10 Minutes it brings you deep into the Colossal/Epic Story of Master Chief and CO. When first into the Game most of the controls are very similar to the Halo 2 for 1st GEN Xbox (non-360).

One of the most ANNOYING THINGS:
-Ghost is EXTREMLY Undeveloped and Under Matched in this game
-Warthog has no Horn nor does it have a Brake
-Fuel Rod Cannon explodes when taken from enemy (Like when you kill them)
-Energy Sword Vanishes when taken from enemy (Same as above)
-It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to beat the Campaign on Hard let alone Legendary!!! (I did say almost ;)
-When in-between levels it must load instead of the cut scene loading it WHILE you’re watching it (Like in Halo 2)
-NON-XBOX LIVE ENABLED!!! TSK TSK (It was made when the Xbox came out I guess)
-Game tends to lag ALOT when you have many enemies
-No Arbiter/Covenant Game play :'(

Some things that ROCK about the Game:
-Long Campaign for HOURS I mean LONG HOURS of Game play
-Easy to find Controls
-THE PISTOL!!!!
-Marine CPUS aren't as STUPID like in Halo 2/3 (Like getting in your Range of Fire/driving...By themselves/Getting in a Passenger-Type Vehicle with the Chief)
-Commander Keyes lives for the.....I won't spoil it for you.....
-Enemies seem to die faster than the other Halo series Games. For each level.
-Levels are detailed very well.... But the graphics are still bright and cheesy. IGNORE THAT IN YOUR PERSUASION TO PURCHASE! Well, that’s my opinion....

Well, there you have it. You can most likely find this at your local Oldies Game Shop/Stop or you can find it MOST likely here on eBay.

Halo Combat Evolves is truly one of the best games of all time, the game play is great and the story is awsome. I was awed by the way Bungie presented both of the major plot points of the game. The single player is awesome and the multi player is even better I could spend hours at Blood Glutch and Sidewinder. I also like the way Bungie portrays Master Chief as this bigger then life hero that save the entire human race even while being out numbered and having less superior weapons to the Covenant. The story begins on the battleship Pillar of Autumn. You are the last of the legendary group of highly advanced super soldiers known as the Spartan IIs Earth's colonies have been at war against a superior alien alliance known as the Covenant. The Pillar of Autumn made a blind jump to avoid capture and giving up the location of Earth. Soon after they come across a huge ring known as Halo. The rest of the Game is about finding out the mysteries of halo and what hidden dangers it might hold

Halo: Combat Evolved (frequently referred to as simply Halo) is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo series, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system,[1] and is considered the platform's "killer app".[8] With more than five million copies sold worldwide as of November 9, 2005,[9] Microsoft released versions of the game for Microsoft Windows (ported by Gearbox Software) and Mac OS X in 2003, and the surrounding storyline was adapted and elaborated into a series of novels and comic books. The game was later released as an Xbox Original for download onto an Xbox 360 HDD.

In Halo's twenty-sixth century setting, the player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced super-soldier. The player is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence who occupies the Master Chief's neural interface. Players battle various aliens on foot and in vehicles as they attempt to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo, a ring-shaped artificial planet. The game has been called "easy to learn",[10] and has been praised for its "engaging story".[11]

Many game magazines have praised Halo as one of the best[12] and most important[13] games of all time. The game's popularity has led to labels such as "Halo clone"[14] and "Halo killer", applied respectively to games either similar to or anticipated to be better than it.[15][16] In addition, the game inspired and was used in the fan-created Red vs. Blue video series, which is credited as the "first big success" of machinima[17]—the technique of using real-time 3D engines, often from video games, to create animated films. A prequel to the game, Halo: Reach, was released on September 14, 2010.