It took a while for Half Life to be booted from the throne of Finest First-Person Shooter ever, and for some time many believed it might never happen. The Spring of 2002, however, put paid to that idea with the arrival of Microsoft's mighty black and green behemoth, the Xbox. Almost as exciting as the arrival of the latest "most powerful console in the world" was it's launch day killer app; an eagerly anticipated FPS by the unassuming name of Halo. Produced by Bungie, a company with it's history grounded in Mac-based shooter series Marathon, Halo had initially been a Mac-only title, then a PC exclusive, then Mac, then PC, then Mac...and so on, and so on, until finally Bill Gates threw a big bundle of crisp geen sheets their way with a proposition of making it his new baby's essential must-have launch title.
The rest, as they say, is history. For once in videogaming history, the wait was indeed worth the constant necessity to swallow spurious hype. "You'll be able to move around vast outdoor environments with no load times and huge draw distances!". Aye right. "You can hop in and out of any of the vehicles seamlessly at will, using their weapons, and in co-op modes other players can climb in beside you!". Bollocks. I've heard these kinds of promises before, and I'm not falling for that old trick again. But don't you know, those cheeky monkeys at Bungie actually delivered on their promises, and how.
Excited Mac owners who for once in their lives can boast about having been there first will no doubt take great pleasure in informing us that this is essentially a continuation of the Marathon series. On the run from an alien ambush, the covert transport ship Pillar of Autumn holds a deadly cargo designed to redress the balance of an ongoing galactic war between mankind and the Covenant; a race of nasty buggers united in their quest for dominance of the universe. That cargo is you - the only remaining prototype of a new gentically engineered warrior integrated into a combat suit called the Spartan II. Known only by your rank of Master Chief, it falls upon your broad metallic shoulders to deliver humanity from certain annihilation. Same old same old.
Whilst the plot may be codswallop, everything else about Halo reeks of nigh-on gaming perfection. Like Half Life, the action follows a tightly plotted storyline that essentially leads the player from set-piece event to set-piece event. Typically, some outdoor action will lead the player indoors to some corridor-based combat before returning to an open area where larger scale mayhem will ensue. It may border on the familiar after a while, but it does work tremendously well. The linear nature of the plotting also means that despite having the freedom of the terrain, players will seldom find themselves lost as to where they should be heading next, with handy waypoint markers provided for those who need to be lead by the hand.
The weapons system on offer is also a departure form the norm. There are two types of weapon; Human projectile-based offerings, and Covenant shooters which operate on energy principles. Both have their pros and cons and there are several varieties of each on offer from pistols to assault rifles and rocket launchers. But here's the rub; players can only carry two weapons at any one time. Picking up a new weapon will result in you dropping the one you currently have active, necessitating some neat forward planning on the player's part depending on his situation. A sniper rifle might carry significantly less ammo, but in the encroaching battle across open rocky terrain, is it a better choice than the fully automatic assault rifle? It's a stroke of genius that departs from the norm and works extremely well.
In addition, players may carry up to eight grenades comprising four each of the two available types. The Human grenades are traditional high-explosive fragmentation offerings with a set fuse. Covenant types, however, are a slightly less powerfull plasma type, but they stick to certain surfaces (such as friends and foes), exploding three seconds after coming to rest. Never in a game have grenades played such an important role. Certainly I can count the number of times I felt compelled to use them in Half Life on the fingers of one finger. Here, however, the choice to use a grenade can drastically redress the ballance of a failing assault, or potentially even deliver a hugely lethal first-strike against unsuspecting hordes of enemy targets.
For all the joy of ground-based combat that Halo offers, the one aspect absolutely everyone loves about this game are the vehicles. Early on in the proceedings you will be granted the opportunity to commandeer the Warthog; a jeep-like all terrain vehicle with a gun platform on the back which, should it take your fancy, you can hop onto and man to your hearts content. Similarly, should you be driving along past any of your comrades, they will happily hop on board at your behest and gun from the rear platform and passenger seats should the situation call for it, and it often does.
There is also the Scorpion tank which although slow is immensely powerfull and will seat an additional four soldiers on it's tread covers. Handy for large battlefield scenarios where enemy tanks may be rainign fire down on you, the Scorpion can retaliate with it's cannon that lobs high-explosive shells and a rather nifty anti-personell machine gun. Where things really take off, if you'll pardon the pun, is when you first encounter the Covenant 'Banshee' craft. Like the smaller 'Ghost' ships (which you can also man), the Banshee is an anti-gravity vehicle that hovers along delivering plasma death, but unlike it's smaller cousin can happily take to the air, allowing the player to reach previously inaccessible areas and platforms. Zooming about out of range of enemy fire whilst spitting rocket justice at your foes really is a thing of majesty, and it's testament to the superb game engine that entry into any of the vehicles is seamless and uninterrupted, and one can easily spend hours just messing about performing crazy stunts.
Much of this enjoyment is down to superb terrain design. Especially when on wheels, the sublime controls and joyous map layout make running around tremendous fun. Many will be the occasion where less hurried players will spend literally hours just performing huge jumps in their Warthog, trying to land the right way up after leaping from a cliff or other such suicidal position. This terrain design not only benefits those in search of vehicular thrills, but is also unlike anything else yet encountered in a FPS of this ilk in that it often drives the player towards certain tactical decisions.
Consider an enemy position on a cliff at the apex of a winding road. Should you suicidally run up there on foot with close-range weapons like the assault rifle, dodging incoming fire? Should you instead grab a Warthog of Ghost and charge the position but risk falling off the path and to your doom? Do you sit sit still and use your sniper rifle to pick off the most dangerous foes first? Or then again could you use that Banshee to attack from above, but again risk plummeting to your death? On many an occasion the terrain will force such decisions upon the player. Although admittedly there may not always be so many choices, decisions always have to be made, and you will occasionally die trying.
There are many other aspects of Halo that warrant mention. The brilliant multiplayer, the excellently integrated cutscenes, superb use of sound and a stunning soundtrack, the wonderful setpieces like the climactic escape from an exploding ship onboard a Warthog. All of them merge seamlessly to make a gaming experience of immense beauty, of that there can be no doubt, but let's not be blinded by the honeymoon-haze all who play through Halo will undoubtedly experience; there are still a number of flaws that need to be addressed.
My primary concern is the length of the game. Naturally, as is the case with a joyous experience like this, time seems to fly by. It is entirely likely, however, that experienced players will be able to fight their way through to completion in a single day if played at normal difficulty. This might well seem unforgivable, but considering the time, effort, quality and craftmanship of the game in general, it is something I and many others are willing to overlook. It is also debateable whether anyone would have such luck when the game is played on 'heroic' or 'legendary' difficulty settings.
Fault can also be found in the weapons and vehicles; not in their design or execution, merely that there are not enough of them. Again this is something that can be forgiven due in part to the limited size of the game; better to be intimately familiar with a small number of vehicles and weapons than vaguely aware of a swathe of them. As superbly implemented as the terrain is also, the level design does suffer somewhat from the middle of the game onwards. One section in particular where a series of canyons are interlinked by seemingly endless and idential corridor networks borders on the irritating, but then it does serve to enhance the experience of the subsequent change in environment through sheer relief on the player's part.
All of the above are minor niggles when comapred to the game as a whole; flecks of odd colour in the midst of a Da Vinci. Having completed the game over several times on various difficulty levels, I can stand well back and admire the whole experience objectively. In doing so I have no hesitation in recommending Halo as the best FPS of all time, and also a strong contender for best game of all time. It really is that good. Do yourself a favour; an Xbox and a copy of Halo will cost you as little as £150. Take a hint.