Halo: Combat Evolved has an interesting history behind it. It's developed by the publishing studio Bungie, best known for their Myth series of real time strategy games, but much beloved amongst Mac gamers thanks to the Marathon first person shooter trilogy. In 1999, Bungie officially announced development of their newest first person shooter, Halo, for PC and Mac; there was even speculation of a PS2 port (based on the release of Bungie's PC action game, Oni, on PS2). Screenshots and hype abounded, and gamers started drooling.
Suddenly, during the first half of 2000, Bungie was purchased by Microsoft. Development from Halo was immediately switched from the PC and Mac platforms to Microsoft's upcoming Xbox console (the "Xbox Only" stamp put the kybosh on any PS2 port), with release on PC and Mac promised for sometime in the future. When the Xbox launched in the US in November of 2001, Halo - now Halo: Combat Evolved - was its flagship title. Many credit the initial strong sales of the Xbox to Halo: Combat Evolved, and without a doubt, the title has almost become synonymous with Microsoft's console; in citing the Xbox as the world's most powerful gaming console in their 2003 Book of Records, Guinness used a half-page picture of Halo's lead character, the Master Chief. PC and Mac development has since been out-sourced to third-party port developers Gearbox Software (PC) and Westlake Interactive (Mac) in order to free Bungie up to work on the Xbox sequel, Halo 2.
With all this colourful history, you couldn't be faulted for thinking that Halo: Combat Evolved has suffered as a result. Make no mistake, Halo: Combat Evolved could have benefitted from a bit more development time - but the Xbox's most popular launch title is still deserving of its accolades. After playing through the Campaign mode twice and indulging in some multiplayer action with friends, I can definitely say that Halo: Combat Evolved is a spectacular action title - but not without some rather unfortunate and glaring drawbacks.
As with many games, the actual story is told through a series of cutscenes. These cutscenes, rather than being full-motion video (made famous, if not popular, by the Wing Commander and Command & Conquer games) or pre-rendered computer graphics (favoured by the makers of the later Final Fantasy games), are rendered entirely by the in-game engine. This is not only an excellent immersive tool, but also shows off the game's technology right from the start of the Campaign; the Halo engine, combined with the Xbox's graphical power, is easily capable of creating scenes that could come out of a high-budget Hollywood SF flick (even if the motions are a little stilted and the faces rarely stray from one general expression).
The Campaign mode of Halo: Combat Evolved immerses itself in the trappings of space opera science fiction. If you read the manual, you learn the back-story, although it isn't vital to your appreciation of the game. At the commencement of the Campaign, you're treated to a five minute cutscene, telling how the spaceship Pillar of Autumn has emerged from a blind jump from the planet Reach to find itself in the vicinity of a massive, ring-like structure (the Halo of the title), which turns out to be an artificial space habitat with continents and seas on the inside surface. The enemy of the game - a coalition of alien races known as the Covenant - show up in force after following the Autumn from Reach and board her. In response, the ship's captain gives the order to thaw out your game avatar: the Master Chief, an armoured super soldier whom all the crew and Marines of the Pillar of Autumn look up to, and not just because you're tall - when you arrive on the scene (usually by yourself), any Marines already there make comments like "The cavalry has arrived!" and "... until you showed up, I thought we were cooked!"
After a brief but effective tutorial (which is worked seamlessly into the game world as a post-cryosleep systems check), you're dumped into the action. The captain downloads the ship's AI, Cortana, into your battle armour and orders you to safeguard her against capture - if she falls into enemy hands, the Covenant will learn the secret that must be protected at all costs, the location of Earth. Once Cortana is inserted into your armour, she becomes your adviser and briefing officer, monitoring Covenant comm-channels, keeping in touch with friendly units and formulating mission objectives. Suddenly, you're fighting your way through short Covenant Grunts and menacing Elite troopers to a lifeboat that takes you to the ring's surface, where the action and mystery unfold. It seems that Halo has some sort of purpose, and it's up to you to find out what that purpose is before the Covenant do...
Of course, this is a video game, not a movie, and the cutscenes, while fantastic, occur infrequently enough that they don't interrupt gameplay. Thankfully, you also don't find yourself playing the game and wishing you were watching another cutscene instead. The graphics are superb, and the system is capable of detailing the environment and other characters with nary a drop in frame rate (fixed at a nice, pleasant, non-nausea-inducing thirty frames per second). Gameplay is broken down into ten levels, with a significant load-time between each, but each area contains several hours of gameplay, with split-second loading times at regular, but widely-spaced, intervals. Most of the levels are designed gorgeously, both internally and externally, with huge shafts and chasms, sweeping vistas, seas that stretch to the horizon and, whenever you're outside, the ever-present loop of the rest of the Halo, stretching away, up, over, down and back again. If you switch on your suit's torch light or use the scope of your sniper rifle, you can pick out all sorts of bump mapped detail in every internal surface. And, of course, there's cover enough for you to intelligently take advantage of it, but not so much that the levels feel needlessly cluttered with obstacles.
The action is fast and smooth. As stated before, the Xbox is capable of rendering lots of both allies and enemies on screen simultaneuosly with little or no drop in frame rate (drops will usually happen if you lob a grenade in an already crowded screen; modelling the explosion and fragments therein tends to strain the graphics processor a little). Not only that, but the enemy intelligence is stunning - they will make use of cover, wait for backup, try to flank you and even get driven berserk when taking damage and try to charge you (the Elites will, anyway). They'll even attempt to dodge your grenades, sometimes to their detriment (I remember an incident on a bridge when I lobbed a grenade at an Elite; it tried to leap clear and went over the side of the bridge, falling to its doom). On top of that, your friendly Marines (whom you cannot command, either directly or indirectly) will often use intelligent tactics against the Covenant as well; I was very surprised when I performed a leapfrog-overwatch with a Marine (he stayed still, I moved ahead of him and stopped) and he did the same thing!
All the enemy and ally models exhibit the same attention to detail as the environments; they look great and move realistically (even though a certain amount of "ice skating", turning on the spot without moving your feet, is inevitable). Although there's not much variety in enemy or ally models, there's enough that you won't get bored with them.
The Xbox controller surprisingly allows for solid FPS action without making you wish you were using the familiar PC keyboard-mouse setup. The left thumbstick controls movement (forward, backward and strafing; press inward to crouch) while the right thumbstick controls your point-of-view (click to use the telescopic sight of any so-equipped weapon). The right trigger fires your weapon, while the left throws grenades. The four primary face buttons are used for jumping (A), hand-to-hand (B), switching weapons (X) and picking up/swapping out weapons (Y). The white face button activates your torch light (on a limited but recharging battery), while the black switches between available grenade types (fragmentation or plasma). It does make allowances for the decreased precision of the thumbsticks as compared to a mouse, such as a larger aiming reticle (and therefore a more forgiving targeting system). The control system for vehicles is quite similar - while the left thumbstick controls the throttle (and even allows for strafing on one of the drivable vehicles, the Covenant Ghost), the right stick changes the camera viewpoint, and the vehicle then steers in that direction. I found controlling vehicles easy to pick up.
Halo: Combat Evolved takes an interesting departure from standard first-person shooters, in that you're limited to carrying only two weapons (each weapon must be different from the other, i.e. you can't carry two rocket launchers), and you can only use one at a time (so no John Woo-esque double pistol attack). Each weapon has its own idiosyncrasies and tactical worth; whilst not strictly having "left-mouse-button" alternate firing modes, at least half of the weapons feature an enhancement, such as the scopes on the Marine pistol, sniper rifle and rocket launcher and the "power-up" shot of the Covenant plasma pistol. All feature a trade-off of some kind; using the scope means vision outside of the scope reticle is blurred and limited, and powering the plasma pistol up uses more ammunition. It makes swapping weapons always a serious tactical consideration, and you'll find that no particular combination works well in all situations. Adding depth to that decision are the facts that that all Marine weapons can be reloaded, but ammunition, especially for the more powerful weapons, can be hard to come by, whilst Covenant weapons are more common, but, barring the needler, cannot be reloaded (if you run out of ammo, you have to find a new weapon).
Halo: Combat Evolved also inverts the standard conventions of health and armour. Whilst the Master Chief's Health operates on the same principles as health in previous FPSes - it is permanently lost unless the character picks up a first aid kit (although there's divergence here; a first aid kit fully regenerates the Chief's health, whereas health packs in most FPSes usually regenerate either a small or sizeable fraction of the player's health) - the Chief uses a shield system that re-charges six to ten seconds after the last hit the Chief took. This means that, rather than having to hunt for Kevlar vests or other armour power-ups, the player simply needs to find cover for ten seconds in order for the Chief to regain full armour protection. Of course, this also allows your opponents a chance to regroup, and the Covenant Elites, who are common opponents, have regenerating shields too. You're often forced to choose whether to risk injury in order to bring your opponents down, or to run and fight another minute and allow your enemies to regroup and regenerate. Making things more interesting is the possibility of coming across two types of Covenant artifact; one adds two layers of additional, non-recharging "over-shield", while the other turns you temporarily invisible (or, more accurately, almost-invisible, a'la the Predator). While it seems the Elites never use the former, several invisible Elites do pop up during the Campaign.
Whilst on the topic of health and damage, it's worth noting that the Marine vehicles - the Warthog jeep and the Scorpion tank - are indestructible (although you'll still take damage from hits on them), while Covenant vehicles - the Ghost hover cycle and the Banshee aircraft - are fragile; weapons fire can blow them out from under you (especially dangerous whilst airborne in the Banshee).
Vehicular weapons always have unlimited ammunition, although each works differently. The Warthog , for example, has a pintle-mounted chain gun on a rear platform, which is good for clearing large concentrations of enemies and shooting Banshees down, but you can't operate it if you're driving (it's usually manned by a Marine where available, although the option is available to the other player in co-operative mode). All other vehicles offer direct weapon control to the driver, but handle it in different ways; the Ghost's plasma guns can be elevated and depressed, and the Scorpion has two weapons in one turret, but these are slaved to the viewpoint, so a moving Scorpion will always turn to head wherever the turret is pointing.
Although the Xbox has an internal hard drive, you aren't capable of saving your game whenever you wish. However, auto-save checkpoints are abundant, and in the event of your death, you're automatically loaded from the last checkpoint you went through. They're close enough together, and at key places in the action, that you never have to backtrack far.
I've already expounded on the gorgeous graphics, so it's worthwhile mentioning that the sounds are almost of the same par. Environmental noises, from the rumble of the Pillar of Autumn's engines in the first mission to the unearthly nocturnal noises of Halo, help to cement your suspension of disbelief. The weapon noises are clear and unique, and as exaggerated as you'd expect in any action film. Voice acting is absolutely spot-on, again keeping to the action film feel with a slightly melodramatic emphasis. The voices of the Grunts (who are the only member-race of the Covenant who, for reasons unknown, speak fluent English with a perfect handle on modern American idiom) are worth special mention; there's nothing like hearing these little pipsqueaks talking tough in their high-pitched voices, only to have them squeal "He's everywhere!" or "Run away!" when you wade into them.
Complementing the soundscape is some lovely music that uses as its base a fast-paced Celtic theme; it's intermixed freely with a military-drum-based action theme in the initial stages (especially during the first level) and even incorporates some driving guitar when you're fighting your way out of a Covenant-occupied installation and the crossfire is thick. The icing on the cake are wordless Gregorian riffs used at just the moments when a chill down the spine or a sense of awe is needed (such as when we're introduced to the Master Chief and when we return to the looming wreck of the Pillar of Autumn near the end of the game).
The Multiplayer experience is as solid as the famed GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64, with better graphics. The usual play modes are included, from Stalker (Halo's term for deathmatch) to tag-based games and King of the Hill. A racing mode is also included, which works best with the two maps which feature vehicles. The maps are well detailed, and feature teleport portals, sniping positions and defensible (but not invulnerable) forts and watersheds for team play, as well as the over-shield and invisibility power-ups. On top of that, the two-weapons-only rule of the Campaign and the tactical decision-making therein is carried over to Multiplayer, giving it a unique flavour that sets it apart from most other FPS fragfests. I've yet to try system-link play, as there's only one person near enough to me to bring their Xbox and TV over (my TV's just too big and heavy to take anywhere).
However, the real multiplayer fun comes in the capability to play the Campaign co-operatively with one other player, either split-screen or across a system link. I can't say this for sure, but I think Halo: Combat Evolved is the first game to share such a multiplayer mode, and I love it. It makes an already superlative single-player experience much more enjoyable, and ups the replay value easily - while you play through the Campaign on your own, it's not hard to imagine how you'd tackle each level with a friend to help you. Actually playing in Cooperative mode is heaps of fun; it's great having a team-mate of equal power to yourself, and planning attacks and co-ordianting assaults (and retreats) brings a whole new depth of play to the Campaign.
Unfortunately for Halo: Combat Evolved, it did ship with some rather problematic issues. The first one I noticed was that the voice track was mixed inappropriately at several points in the game; it's regularly hard to hear exactly what mission-critical characters such as Cortana and Captain Keyes are saying (which is doubly annoying in the latter instance when you think that Cortana has direct access to your armour's systems), even in the cutscenes. Fans of driving games may find Halo's viewpoint-based vehicle control system takes some getting used to, simply because it doesn't obey the same conventions; a friend who loves driving games still complains about the steering system's awkwardness.
The setup of the checkpoint system allows only one saved game per game profile; if you wish to go back (or forward) to a different level (playing through a level unlocks it), you have to restart the whole level you're going to, and the save from the level you were playing previously isn't kept. It's difficult, therefore, to save near a cool cutscene that you'd love to show off. Also, during cutscenes, the Master Chief always appears carrying an assault rifle, regardless of the player's active weapon at the time (and even if the player's inactive weapon isn't an assualt rifle). It's one of those things that chips away at the suspension of disbelief, no matter how cool the Chief looks with an assualt rifle.
Multiplayer is also something of a disappointment to those who've been following Halo since it was first announced. From the various message boards on the game, I've gathered that prior to the Microsoft buy-out, Bungie were planning to allow massive, army-style battles in Multiplayer, and whilst Halo: Combat Evolved's multiplayer is fun, we've seen most of the match modes before in other console-based FPSes. On top of that, the only skin available to players is the Master Chief (although you can change colour), which ensures everyone who's played the Campaign is familiar with the avatar's capabilities in terms of health, shields and speed, but leaves little visual variety. Also, of all the vehicles, only the Warthog is available, and only in the two Vehicle maps. Bots are not available at all, so if you're playing off the one console, action on the larger maps can be very sparse. And although the Cooperative Campaign option is a wonderful two-man team experience, all the cutscenes and voice-overs are unchanged, including and referring to, respectively, a single Master Chief. This does compromise the suspension of disbelief somewhat.
And very occasionally, you might possibly encounter a bug or two. Right near the end of the game, I walked onto a lift platform that was to take me to a means of escape. The door to the lift shaft closed - and suddenly, the lift passed through me and went up the shaft, while I was left standing on thin air. I re-loaded the level from the last checkpoint - and it happened again! On the second reload, I walked over to the edge of the platform where it connected to the wall, and this time, it lifted me up. It didn't happen during the second play-through on Heroic difficulty. It was a very anticlimactic moment right near what looked to be a very exciting climax.
Still, all these are minor problems compared to the single most unfortunate aspect of Halo: Combat Evolved - the level design. The first four levels are well-designed and laid out, but about halfway through the game, things begin to change: levels five, six and seven (and to a lesser extent, level three) feature repetitive interior environments. It's really annoying to play through a series of rooms and cross a canyon bridge only to discover that the next series of rooms are identical to the last lot (if in a slightly different order), with a bridge afterward in another canyon that's very similar to the first. Not only that, but levels eight and nine re-use levels five and three; you're fighting your way back through those same boring levels again, only the enemies have changed somewhat. Even the first third of level ten re-uses the map from level one, and if you're not find of the vehicle control system, you'll positively hate the obstacle course race against time right at the end of the game.
The thing is, I gritted my teeth, put up with the repetition, played through the game twice and had fun doing it. The challenge of the AI, and the way the game played out slightly differently each time thanks to it, was enough to overcome the level design problems for me, but I can understand why the level design might frustrate and bore some enough to seriously detract from their enjoyment of the game.
In summary, Halo: Combat Evolved is a very enjoyable first-person shooter that almost does everything right. It provides a satisfactory and solid single- and multi-player experience with gorgeous graphics, frenetic action that rewards tactical thinking, and a well-presented story. Even with its level design issues and more minor problems, you may well find yourself picking up your Xbox controller for yet another play-through, especially if a friend joins you in the fun; it's simply that compelling.
Reviewed On: Xbox with Advanced AV Cable, LG RT-29F flat-screen TV using S-Video Input, Marantz SR440 amplifier with 2-speaker stereo output.
