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HALO: Combat
Evolved
One of the Xbox’s highest profile games, Halo: Combat Evolved proves it
is an amazing adventure indeed and one that you will never forget (until a sequel arrives, that is!). With beautiful graphics, an unbelievably well-scripted storyline and great music, Halo is a must buy for any FPS
(first person shooter) fan.
You are the ultimate commando - a cybernetically enhanced soldier representing the peak of human military evolution. You are efficient, skilled, and dangerous. Your situation: In a desperate attempt to keep a conquering alien race called the Covenant from finding Earth, you and a ragtag group of marines flee to a distant uncharted system where you unexpectedly stumble across Halo, an enormous alien artifact in orbit between a gas giant and its moon. Your objective: Uncover Halo's horrible secret, and destroy mankind's nemesis - the Covenant. A sci-fi shooter that takes place on a mysterious alien ring-world, Halo will have you battling through amazing indoor and outdoor environments, in vehicles, and on foot with the largest arsenal of futuristic weapons, vehicles, and combat roles of any shooter ever.
On the graphics front, Halo is simply stunning. Though the levels are huge and, as such, fairly sparsely detailed, the details that are there are truly amazing. The textures are high-resolution and feature heavy use of bump mapping, giving every object, building, or vehicle a solid, “real life” look that is completely unmatched to this point on consoles.
The backgrounds, mountains, rivers, and grass are ultra-realistic. There
are some minor frame-rate drops in the game though, but these happen
rarely, and it holds very stable even in huge shootouts.
To compliment the graphics, Halo also brings some new, or at least tweaked, gameplay mechanics to console FPS’s. The most notable is the use of vehicles as integral parts of many of the missions. Playing through the game, players get the chance to control both human and alien vehicles. Though all of the vehicles, especially the Warthog, are given odd control mechanics, playing with the vehicles adds quite a bit of enjoyment to the otherwise standard FPS game mechanics. And make no mistake, as good as Halo is, it is simply a first person shooter. Though some of the levels are huge outdoor environments, much of the game is played in the same tight corridors that have been common in these types of games.
Probably the only part where Halo isn’t perfect is control. Although the ground combat is easy to control, the vehicles are a different story. The vehicles actually always stay to the center of the screen, and you must pan the screen with the right joystick to turn. With practice, you should be able to get the hand of it, but in levels where you must drive
through obstacles, whatever skills you learned in Gran Turismo 3 won't help in the least here.
This gripe aside, Halo is the first console FPS to truly give PC titles a run for their money. Both the graphics and the control are the best yet seen in a console FPS. On top of the remarkable single-player game, a co-op mode allows two players to play through the entire campaign mode together. Combined with a deep and addictive multi-player mode, the co-op mode gives Halo solid replay value.
With kick-ass graphics, awesome in-game movies and voice acting that is
extremely well done without being too "cheesy", Halo: Combat Evolved is a game that you can’t put down, that sets a new tone for first person shooters, and that will be a measure for other games to be. Hands down, it is
one of Xbox’s greatest game to date, and the best FPS to date.
Furthermore, with Halo 2 coming out this year for Xbox Live, 2003 will
surely be the year of Halo.
So whether you're a "weekend warrior" or a total gaming freak,
Xbox's Halo: Combat Evolved is one helluva ride! Get your
buddies, beer, and send the ladies out shopping...you'll be up all night!
Official
Xbox Website:
http://www.xbox.com
Where
to find XBox Cheats:
http://www.xboxcheats.com
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