Overview
Halo is a science fiction epic adventure first person shooter, brought to the PC by Bungie and Gearbox Software. It contains all the gameplay and rich story that made it a hit with Xbox gamers, but Halo for PC also allows you to take the battle online with all new multiplayer features, including new maps, weapons and vehicles.

Bent on Humankind's extermination, a powerful fellowship of alien races known as the Covenant is wiping out the Earth's fledgling interstellar empire. You and the other surviving defenders of a devastated colony-world make a desperate attempt to lure the alien fleet away from Earth. Shot down and marooned on the ancient ring-world Halo, you begin a guerilla-war against the Covenant. Fight for humanity against an alien onslaught as you race to uncover the mysteries of Halo.

Features

• An award-winning, twisted, sci-fi story, filled with complex characters and cunning enemies
• Fight on foot, in vehicles, in the air, and beneath the surface of an orbiting alien ring
• Increased precision of obliterating the Covenant swarms with a mouse and keyboard
• Play as a single-player or take the battle online with gamers all over the world
• Intense 16-player, online PC/Mac battles; new weapons, maps, and vehicles
• 15 multiplayer maps including 6 brand new, never before seen maps
• Unleash multiplayer destruction with new vehicles and aircraft, and new weapons such as the fuel-rod cannon and flamethrower

Setup
Installing Halo requires first installing the game. If you don't have the latest DirectX, it also steps you through installing that as well. Original installation requires a serial number, and gameplay requires the CD in the PC. You will also want to go through the setup of the controls, and either memorize them as they are, or set them to keys that you are more comfortable with. About half the action keys I reconfigured for my tastes, and the other half I left as the default. Overall, the setup process was relatively simple.

Single Player Game Play
The first things I noticed playing Halo are the rich graphics and the great sound effects. I was blown away by the detail of the graphics, and how quickly the game engine rendered scenes and animations. Having a long history of playing Bungie's Marathon series first person shooters, I couldn't help but notice the flavor of Bungie all over this game, from the physics to the sounds of the aliens. For those of you not familiar with the Marathon series, this is a big compliment. Of course, the quality of both the graphics and sounds are far superior to the now dated Marathon engine. The action flows smoothly in Halo, and the story is well integrated into each level.

The story is broken into major chapters, and within each chapter are different levels. Some levels pit your against the bad guys all by yourself, and others include the option to have marines fighting with you. You might be tempted to let the marines battle for you, but without your help, they'll be killed eventually, and you won't have any help later on in some more tougher battles. In other words, try to fight with them, and use them wisely!

The available weapons in Halo have some similarities to the weapons in Marathon, such as having a pistol, a machine gun, missile launcher, and even the alien gun. The weapons are more refined, but the biggest difference is that you can only carry two weapons at a time (versus being able to carry every weapon you encounter in Marathon). It makes for a little more interesting game play. When given a choice of shotgun, missile launcher, and sniper rifle, which two to choose depends upon the type of battle you are in (or ones that are coming up). Sometimes you leave the wrong weapon behind.

Halo includes vehicle support, and although there has been some vehicle support in some other games, I have never encountered it done as well as it is in Halo. Weather behind the controls of a jeep, a hover craft, or a tank, the physics that control the behavior of the vehicle feel "just right". My ability to control the vehicle is really the bottom line, and Halo does a good job of keeping the control within ease. This allows you to concentrate on other aspects, such as running over bad guys, not running over good guys, and even picking up your fellow marines so that they can hop aboard and man the guns or sit shotgun (if you pull the vehicle up to them, they'll jump aboard). You can bang up a vehicle pretty good without hurting yourself, and if the vehicle flips, you can use the action key to flip it back over. I thought it was amusing that I was strong enough to flip a tank over, but for the sake of game play, this is actually a good thing. In fact, it appears that a lot of thought went into each aspect of the game, ensuring that you have a realistic gaming adventure, while being challenged, yet not to the point of being too frustrated.

The levels within a chapter are all connected, and you can usually return to previous scenes (although sometimes doors close that cannot be re-opened, or elevators that once worked are now non-functioning). As the chapters change, you usually end up being picked up by a drop ship, and then when the next chapter begins, you start off with a different set of weapons (usually a pistol and a machine gun). That is sometimes upsetting because you may have gone through great pains to grab a full compliment of rockets for your missile launcher, and now you don't even have the launcher.

The only problem I ran into with the single player adventure is that there were a few scenes where I simply had to play through them a few too many times. This is because Halo does not have an anytime save function (neither did Marathon). Unlike Marathon, however, instead of save "terminals" where you have a choice of whether to save or not, Halo has save "points" that automatically save your progress as soon as you pass through certain points in the map. That means that you cannot go back to a previously saved point, which is something you might want to do (especially if you happen to have made some really bad decsisions between the two save points). There is also another reason this save method really bites, and that's because of the ability to back-track (note, that back-tracking over past save points do not re-save). In one chapter I was in a major battle, and decided that I needed to do some major back-tracking to find a sniper rifle. After doing so, I then came back up to where I had been, but died again. That was an awful lot of work for nothing and it would have been nice if I at least didn't have to go back and find the rifle again. Oh, and just when I thought that the game never saved previous save points, apparently I had gone back far enough once that it did re-save at an earlier stage. The problem now was that it was way way back, further than I really needed to go, and now I had to move forward through several old save points (that no longer saved), back into battle, and then upon dying again, the whole process had to be repeated. These anomolies happened to me rarely (in fact, only twice during the whole game), but they were miserable enough to leave some lasting memories of wasted evenings.

The not-so-great save point structure aside, the game still kept my interest, nearly to the point of addiction. It is a really fun game, with some major cool factors. In fact, when it was finally over, I was really sad that it was over. It just didn't feel like it lasted long enough.

Multi-Player Game Play
Where the single player game approached addiction, the multi-player feature of the game went far beyond it. The reason why I am writing this review as 3:30 in the morning rather than the originally planned 11:00 PM is because I could not stop myself from getting online and playing a "few" matches first. Using Gamespy, which also installs with the CD, you can jump on the internet (choosing Multiplayer, then Internet), click on the "Get List" button, and a list of all the available games start scrolling down your screen. Whether it's Slayer (one with the most kills wins), or CTF (Capture the Flag), or any of several other types of multi-player setups, once you've experienced a few of these games, it takes iron-willed discipline to keep from playing when you should be sleeping (or doing laundry, or writing reviews).

The first thing you notice is that playing against live players is nothing like playing against the computer. I loved the sniper rifle in the single player game, but it's my least favorite in multiplayer. Why? Because nobody stands still long enough to get the scope targeted on them! I much prefer the rocket launcher, or give me a spacecraft... I've gotten quite attached to those. My favorite genre is the CTF matches, where you need to have some kind of coordinated effort to both protect your base, while also going after the other teams flag. Teams are divided in blue and red, and you usually don't know any of the other people in the game (often reaching the maximum of 8 players on each team). When you jump into a jeep, you just hope that two other players on your team will have the sense to come jump in with you before you take off after the other team's flag. The ones who do really well are the more experienced players (of course) as well as the ones who have learned these network maps inside and out (thereby knowing where the good sniper points are, as well as where the best weapons are).

The only thing I would have liked to have seen that wasn't there is the ability to start up some net games against the computer AI which would have both allowed me to practice and learn the net maps a little before becoming cannon fodder to those who already knew what they were doing.

Summary
Halo: Combat Evolved is truly a first person shooter experience evolved. The single player action fully emerses you into a dynamic and living environment with amazing graphics, sounds and physics. Not since Marathon net games have I experienced such a thrill of multi-player action that Halo provides, making it feel truly like a team sport where the sky is literally the limit as far as what you can do. Gameplay in Halo is finely tuned, with great attention paid not just to the aesthetics, but also to the behavior of the game, how vehicles operate, how weapons work, and how the computer AI engages you (either as friend or foe). The method of saving your game leaves something to be desired, and the story is a bit short. Where the story falls short, however, the multiplayer action picks up the slack. You just may find yourself flying a spacecraft night after night hunting down your enemies and securing your team's flag. When you cannot remember the last time you had a full night's sleep, don't say I didn't warn you! This is definitely the cream of the crop when it comes to first person shooters.

Pros:

• Awesome graphics and effects
• Well-balanced game play
• Exciting and addictive multiplayer action
• Great storyline

Cons:

• Lack of save game control
• Single player action ended too soon
• No AI challengers for net game practice

Overall Rating:

4 1/2 out of 5 Mice