Halo: Combat Evolved

The Good
Halo probably has one of the most easily recognizable characters in the Master Chief. Show any gamer a picture of the Chief and ask who he is and they will say "that's Master Chief from the Halo games", whether they have played it or not. Another of halo's stand out characters is Cortana, the Pillar of autumns sparky, well humoured and very likeable AI. I think it forms a very good 'your brawn and my brain' partnership.

A particular delight for me was the Covenant weapons. They were pretty well designed and unique in that no two weapons were very alike, and with there own advantages. The needler fired needles that would explode if you got enough rounds into an enemy, the carbine with with handles a bit like a scope less sniper rifle and the plasma rifle were all stand out favorites for me.

The vehicles the covenant use were also particularly well done. For me, the two best were the ghost which is a fast hovering bike like number with a plasma machine gun on the nose and the wraith, a neat combination of a hover tank and a mortar.

The Bad
The repetitiveness. Halo:CE has flaws, and the single major flaw is its repetitiveness. And it is manifested in two ways. First off, and most significantly, is the repetitiveness of the level design, which is a bit like trying to tell the difference between Porches, 90% of the time you have to look very hard to be able to tell the difference between two indoor sections. It is so bad, that there are three different types if interiors that i can distinctly recall. Pillar of Autumn, covenant ship and Halo. Now, for me, that is not a good thing. Granted, the most of the game pretty much takes place on two of them, but you can't help go around each interior level thinking "errr, hav'nt i already been through here". I certainly did. The interiors are also note worthy because it's mostly corridor's. Only one or two rooms anywhere, and the rooms or corridor's never contain much, if anything. All they ever contain is wall displays or tables. No consoles, tools, not many chairs. Its all very bare. The second way the repetitiveness creeks in is the combat, in that it is mostly run and gun. More run and gun. And more run and gun. The only time your not running and gunning is when your not, is when your blowing up the Pillar of Autumn's engines. And that's IT. Combine it with the generic level design mentioned above, you become more acutely aware of both.

On a similar vein to the level design is that of the design when it come to the UNSC weapons and vehicles. Once again, they suffer from a lack of imagination. OK, the assault rifle has an electronic ammo counter on it, there is no particularly sci-fi-ish weapons in the UNSC armory, with is weird when you consider that the game takes place in 150 years time and your fighting with what is, pretty much, weaponry that woud'nt look out of place in current times. This is made stranger when you consider the effort Bungie put into the design of the Covenant weapons. It's the exact same with the the UNSC vehicles, its as if some one at Bungie said to there boss "boss, i've designed the Covenant stuff, but i can't be asked to do the UNSC stuff" and the boss replied "that's OK, don't bother, it's not like it matters, or anyone would notice" and at the last minute, cobbled together a couple of vehicles based on current vehicles. Just sheer laziness to me. And speaking of weapons, one of the little irritations that made it into most of the halo games is the severe lack of substantial amounts of ammo. It's alway's kill a few enemies, run out of ammo, switch to secondary weapon, kill a few more aliens, run out of ammo, run around looking for a new weapon whilst being shot at, find one, kill them, move on, rinse and repeat. Wait till your up against the hunter pair, you'll know then what it's like.

Halo does'nt get many points for story either. OK, were not exactly swamped in similar stories, but it is far from original or creative. I mean come on, religious aliens hell bent on wiping us out, and you single handily stop them. I could think of a few games in which 1) aliens want to wipe us out, 2) there using religion as an excuse to be crappy to humans and 3) you save the day all on your lonesome. Even outside of gaming, it's not very original. And to add insult to story telling injury, the characters don't, save for Cortana, shine to stand out. The Master Chief does'nt say enough to really stand out, Sergeant Johnson and Foehammer are just plain cliched and Captain Keyes is'nt around enough to make much of an impact. For me, Cortana is the ONLY stand out character.

I think i'll end this section off with a minor niggle. Objectives. Maybe it's just me, but going through the game, and the main trilogy for that matter, i got the feeling, that whilst your overall objective was pretty clear, some of the time is spent on objectives that either have no major point, get's switched to something else or scrapped all together. Could just be me.

The Bottom Line
If this came out now (2010), instead of in 2001, i would say not to expect a sequel. It does'nt have that much variety, some lazy design work and does'nt blow you away. But in spite of that, you can still have a bit of fun playing it. For me, Halo is a like a Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It's got a shallow plot, chances are Schwarzenegger's dialogue is being very mono syllable or dones'nt say much and is doing a cardboard character performance, but as long as you don't expect much from it, you can kind of enjoy it.

The Good
The graphics are phenomenal, at or above the level of any other game on the market at the time I'm writing this. But it's the details that really make this my number one vote. Every leaf on every tree is individually rendered. Individual blades of grass actually tuft up from the ground - kneel in this grass and you'll get the sound of your knee depressing foliage, as opposed to the sound of your knee impacting any of the other surfaces in the game. The rushing water in streams is glorious to look at and listen to, the mist thrown from waterfalls, the dirt spray of a bullet hitting ground, or that cast up by a grenade detonation. (I served for four years in the infantry, and the grenade detonations in particular rang true to me). There is a level which occurs in a swamp, and the gently rippling water there looks incredible - not to mention the rain, and the bobbing lily pads. Trees actually sway in the breeze. When weapons strike rocks or trees, corresponding showers of stone or bark ensue. There were individual, 3d mushrooms growing at the edge of that swamp - adds nothing to game play, and some players might never notice it. But it builds realism, and that is something this game has in greater abundance than any other I've encountered.

The gameplay itself is wonderful. I know it's been done before (first in Goldeneye, I think, but possibly before that) but the zoom scopes on the weapons are a great deal of fun to use.

The plot is very original and engaging. It may seem a stereotypical mankind vs. alien fight at first, but as the tale progresses you learn that something a lot more sinister is going on behind the scenes.

The vocal acting is of great quality. Can't say that about a lot of games.

Wing Commander was the first game I remember to supply you with A.I. allies. This game gives you tons. Running onto the field of battle with 12 other marines, each with their own individual faces, voices, expressions and attitudes is intense. The detail here is incredible. There are different accents ringing out all over the battlefield.

The different vehicles are a lot of fun to drive. Spinning out in the warthog is a blast. Nice too, that your fellow soldiers will hop on back of the warthog to fire its machine gun, or take the passenger seat to snipe at enemies.

A co-operative mode is something many FPS games overlook. It's my favourite way to play, though, and this one has it.

You can carry only a maximum of 2 weapons and limited ammo. Nice change from the strange characters of other games who are presumably toting their arsenals around in invisible bags of holding.

The Bad
Most of this is trivial, but if Xbox designers ever read this, here's how to make the game EVEN BETTER.

Firstly, there's only 10 missions. Now, I'm getting a lot of gameplay out of these missions, since if I die, I start over. But I'm on the 7th now and not looking forward to ending. The first release of DOOM had 24 missions. Heed.

In such a wonderful, dramatic, serious game, I thought the attempts at comic relief were unnecessary. Hollywood does this all the time (witness those two miniature punks in Willow, for instance). What I'm referring to here is the high-pitched voices of the grunts, and more to the point, the things they say. It does spoil the intensity of the action somewhat for me to see this tiny being running away screaming "Little people first!" Half of me takes pity and the other half wants to gun him down for saying something so stupid. If it's a serious game, keep it serious. Comedy should never be forced.

Minor thing, but the assault rifle is my favourite weapon to fire (with the force feedback in the controller it both feels and sounds quite authentic), but the rulebook tells you that the Covenant forces are more susceptible to plasma weapons. And since as soon as you kill a single Covenant member you have access to plasma weapons, I don't get to fire the ultra-cool assault rifle very often. (I could, but then I would be deliberately hindering my own progress).

The game is done from a 1st person perspective, but when you mount a vehicle, suddenly you're in third person perspective. Forcing a change in perspective like that really attacks the reality base the game has laboured so hard and successfully to build. If I AM the main character I see out of the main character's eyes - to suddenly be looking at the back of my own head is confusing and only reminds me I'm playing a game. VERY BAD.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that while you can play with up to 4 players (16 with multiple consoles) in a deathmatch, you can only play with 2 in co-op mode. Why the differentiation? Maybe it has to do with processor speed and reading that many input sources while simultaneously controlling so many A.I.s, but if not, what were the makers thinking? I would love to have a go at the enemy with 3 of my closest friends along for the ride.

When I look at a reflective surface (water, some of the more highly polished surfaces indoors), I don't see my own reflection. What am I, a frickin' vampire? With so much attention to detail, how was this overlooked? Likewise that beautiful water in the swamp I so praised earlier, does not accurately reflect the surrounding trees. It still looks great, but if you pause to compare the water's reflection with the overhangs, it doesn't match up.

While it is great that, in multi-player, when you look at another player you can see what weapon he has in his hand, you can't see what other weapon he's carrying. If he has a plasma rifle in-hand, but also has access to a rocket launcher, shouldn't that rocket launcher be slung over his shoulder? Minor details, but worthy details.

In the cutscenes the Master Chief is always displayed carrying an assault rifle, whether or not you still even possess an assault rifle.

I would have loved to have seen even more attention paid to the crazy sort of bullshit that occurs in battle. It would be nice if your fellow soldiers would just panic occasionally and fall down weeping. Or if an ammo clip you just inserted was occasionally inserted incorrectly and fell out of the weapon after firing a single round. Sadly, that sort of thing happens a lot more often than you would believe. (The ammo box on my old C9 used to fall off every 100 metres. Not fun). Or if grenades were occasionally duds. Combat is fraught with pathetic bullshit accidents. I would love to see some of them here.

While bark does fly from a tree when hit by a weapon, if you later examine that tree you will find it undamaged. Not even chipped. Again, defeats realism. Put enough damage onto that tree and I would love to see it collapse.

While I like that your fellow soldiers will fire the warthog's guns, why won't they drive it? These are trained marines.

The Bottom Line
As of the start of 2002, the most impressive first person shooter, if not the most impressive computer game, I have ever seen.

The Good
The sound was okay.

The Bad
The graphic is really poor. Uphoted DX8 isn't enough. The porting from Xbox didn't go well.. The game seems to be made for gamepad, not keyboard and mouse.

The Bottom Line
Why not use state-of-the-art technology to make a good looking game.. It doesn't even use DX9!

If you want to play the game, play it on Xbox instead...