Din's Geek Reviews #1 - Halo: Combat Evolved

The Covenant, Cortana, the Flood, the Master Chief.

The universe of Halo is simply massive, spanning four games, six novels, two comics, tons of source material, and commanding one of the most loyal fanbases in modern gaming. Both Halo 2 and Halo 3 broke numerous sales records upon release, and, collectively, established the Xbox in the modern world of gaming.

But let’s take a look back, to the very beginning of this phenomena, to one lone super-solider in the depths of space, and a ringworld full of secrets.

Halo: Combat Evolved premiered on the Xbox in 2001, as a console exclusive. From there, it went on to become one of the best-selling games on the system, surpassed only by its own sequel. Eventually it was ported to the PC, where it received its first taste of the online multiplayer community that has now become Halo’s legacy.

Halo begins as the United Nations’ Space Command vessel Pillar of Autumn is shot down by the alien Covenant over a strange, uncharted construct simply titled “Halo.” The player takes on the role of Spartan John-117, more commonly known as the Master Chief, who must repel the boarding crews and safely escape the Autumn. Along the way, the Chief is charged by the Autumn’s captain, Jacob Keyes, with protecting the artificial intelligence named Cortana, and getting her off the ship in one piece.
The missions span a number of different objectives – finding other survivors, rescuing the Captain, locating Halo’s control center, and so on – eventually culminating in the accidental release of the Flood, a parasitic lifeform bent on consuming and assimilating all life in the galaxy.
The Chief soon runs into 343 Guilty Spark, a small, floating robot who leads him to activate Halo’s “containment protocols.” However, Cortana reveals that Halo is not designed to kill Flood, but their food, namely humans and Covenant. Together, the Chief and Cortana stop Guilty Spark, and cause the crashed Pillar of Autumn’s engines to explode with enough force to destroy Halo.

The plot has always been what Halo was about for me. I played Halo 2 before getting my hands on Halo: CE, so I was already familiar with the characters. For such a small cast list, the game really gets you attached to the characters involved. Cortana, with her smarmy advice and cutting wit; Sergeant Johnson, with his comedic one-liners and seemingly miraculous survival; Keyes, the ever-wily military man; and of course the Master Chief himself, your silent, practical window into the world of Halo.

Now, good story-telling aside, this is a video game, and that means gameplay and mechanics. Halo was remarkable in its day largely due to the fact that it revolutionized the First-Person Shooter genre. Rather than “slaughter everything” your missions actually felt like they had significance, and were part of a liner story. Rather than the tight, winding hallways of say, Doom, Duke Nukem, or Dark Forces, Halo takes place in a very grand, very large setting, allowing you to dodge from cover to cover. Which is good, because you die with remarkable ease. On any setting higher than “Easy” enemy weapons rip you to shreds. However, unlike similar games, you don’t actually have much of a health meter. Though it is present, your health is pretty much useless at absorbing bullets and plasma, leaving such heavy lifting to your energy shields, which, if knocked out, come back on-line in a matter of seconds. This means that you essentially have a recharging health bar, making it perfectly acceptable to get yourself struck by fire, hide behind a rock, wait a few seconds, and repeat the process.

The trouble is, some of your enemies also have shields, which can take a long time to bring down. To aid you in this quest, you get to use a number of weapons, both alien and human in origin.

Human weapons haven’t changed much by the year 2552 it seems, as you still have the basic rifle/pistol/shotgun/sniper/rocket-launcher line-up. However, the Covenant apparently don’t believe in such versatile weaponry, leaving you to choose between a plasma rifle, a plasma pistol, and the “Needler,” a sort of automatic purple dart-launcher that fills your foes with exploding crystal shards.

Human weapons are certainly the most versatile, and sticking to the standard rifle/pistol combo can get you through most things, but the Covenant weapons remain much better at taking down individual, higher-grade enemies, particularly those with shields. The Flood, however, seem only mildly annoyed by hot-as-the-sun firebolts, so you generally have to keep switching your weapons around, as you can only carry two at once.

Fortunately, the game seems prepared for this. Rather than allowing you to stock-pile ammo for your favorite guns, Halo simply provides you with a massive number of chances to swap out for different ones. In fact, the plasma weapons can’t reload at all, meaning you must constantly be on the lookout for replacements. This works largely in Halo’s favor – since ammo isn’t hard to come by, you don’t feel pressured to save it all for a theoretical end boss. Likewise, since ammo for individual weapons is generally scarce, you can't get away with using your favorites all the time. Certain enemies are more resistant to different weapons, so swapping on the fly is both natural and necessary.

Oh, and there’s also grenades, both fragmentation- and plasma-based. You can also hit people with your gun.

So, let’s look at our Hit-Game checklist thus far, shall we?

Epic story? ✓
Memorable characters? ✓
Revolutionary gameplay? ✓
Fast-paced action? ✓
Kick-ass weapons? ✓
Je ne se qua? ✓

The fact is, Halo is simply immersive. It throws you into a new world, and doesn’t even pause to explain itself. Within minutes, you know about AI and MAC-guns and powered-battle-armor. The brief tutorial is all you need to get set in the action, and before long you’re blasting the brains out of Covenant baddies with ease. The four difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary) even ensure that there’s a ton of replay value. Some levels that you thought were frustrating on Normal become intensely more evil on Heroic, finally becoming downright malevolent on Legendary (I’m looking at you “Two Betrayals”!).

Halo was also one of the first games to offer extensive vehicle-based sections. Your selection is pretty limited – essentially car, hovercraft, tank, and aircraft – but each vehicle has its advantages, and are a must for navigating Halo’s immense environments.
The only major drawback to Halo is that a lot of the levels are very repetitive. In fact, certain levels later in the game are simply the earlier ones in reverse, but with harder enemies. Believe me, if you thought fighting your way to the top of the giant alien pyramid was hard, fighting your way back down is a nightmare.

With the exclusion of different ranks/designs, you also only have four types of Covenant enemies, and three types of Flood. Although realistic, this can get a little boring after a while. You begin to fall into patterns: bullets for Flood, grenades for Jackals, Needler for Elites, etc. However, unit placement goes a fair way at smoothing this over – you might know how to fight a Hunter, but how do you deal with one being attacked by Flood? – and the fact that not all weapons are available on all stages means you have to learn to cope.

Over-all, Halo is a strong, playable, and (most importantly) immersive game that really gets you pulled into the mythos. The weapons are varied, the environments are interesting, and, though it has one of the weirdest learning curves I’ve ever seen (“Two Betrayaaaaaals!!!!”) it can be enjoyed by n00b and veteran gamer alike. Each level is pretty long, and can easily run you over an hour or more, but checkpoints are pretty common, so there’re plenty of places to drop out for a while.

I’m not going to address the multiplayer functionality here, (mostly because I’m not that big of a fan of MP in general) but suffice it to say the series is now famous for this function.

In conclusion, Halo has a strong, if somewhat repetitive, single-player campaign, and makes up for its shortcomings with its strengths. Over-all, I would say it is the strongest of the Halo Trilogy, and my personal favorite of the FPS genre. It’s no wonder this game is so popular – it really does deserve it.