It's been my long running stance that the Xbox not only looks gay but is gay, plays gay and smells gay, all at the same time as being a shite machine not even worth the plastic and silicon it's made of. And that's not even mentioning the shite software titles available for it. Having recently acquired an Xbox to call my very own, (oh yeah, I didn't pay for it and never would!) I had a spare $30 and decided to exchange it for the original Halo for Xbox ("Xbox Calssics", because platnium was already taken). Seeing as I've heard so much pissing and moaning about it when it came out a few years back. The Pc version never ran properly and to be honest I wasn't really that interested.Halo has long been acclaimed as one of the best console First Person Shooters, if not the best there ever has been. More than sparking my interest, even if it was just to disprove this I decided to smack it in over my long weekend and give it a bash. Once and for all proving not only to myself that the Xbox is shite, but also that I've still got what it takes to finish a console FPS.
the secret "knee cannon"
As it turns out, you are defrosted from a cryogenic sleep in the middle of a holy war. For some reason or another you've been morphed into this super soldier capable of dishing out the pain on unsuspecting alien forces, decked out with tons of the latest and greatest gadgets. All your super soldier buddies (I can only assume they are all male and reproduce by man on man action) perish in an alien attack and you’re the last one of your kind, the SPARTAN-II. Fast forward about half an hour of game play and you've landed on a mysterious ring planet thing with your star ships AI. there's no messing about in this game. Within minutes you’re set on by nasty alien bible bashers, aka Mormons, that want to turn your tiny little balls into pâté.
Graphically Halo did very little to un-impress me. Sure some of the movements in cut scenes were a little jerky, robot style, but for a first wave released Xbox console game you couldn't really ask for more. The playing field is expansive, with little to no fogging and detailed backgrounds help with the illusion that your actually roaming an area bigger than it actually is.
not pictured: intensive care unit
With the game play it's really your typical shooter. Wave after wave of enemy come at you while you raid, pillage and tear ass though several different kind of missions, mostly just "go here", "find this person", "low up this". A nice spin on the game was the ability to hold only two weapons, it forces you to make tactical decisions on what your packing. Do you keep the rocket launcher with no ammo or do you swap it for a plasma gun? You can pick up enemy weapons, most of which are horse shit though, your best is sticking to a pistol and Machine gun at least until you locate a shot gun or sniper rifle. You can melee attack, which is a good thing, there's nothing more satisfying than running up to something while taking a few pot shots so it can't fire at you and then clubbing it to death with the ass end of your rifle when your close enough. You can also carry 4 of the 2 different types of grenades, 8 in total, which are readily available as pickups so don't be shy in using them.
You can pilot a few vehicles as well which was a bonus, the buggy handles like shite but the alien stuff is just plain fun. You can ball tear in a tank as well, something I missed out on somehow. Some levels force you to rob something to run around in while some give you freedom to choose (or in my case miss) at your leisure. your not entirely alone on the ass-ring either, you can call in back up marines, mostly they are just there to die or kill if you need the ammo, but it's a nice touch none the less.
left turn my ass...
Plot-wise it even throws a few twists and turn at you, and before you know it your off on one super mission to save the universe from a nasty alien race that looks like zombies. I won't spoil it though, for a shooter it's actually pretty entertaining. Although there are a couple of section that it gets very samey and you'll have a hard time trying to figure out if a) your heading in the right directions or b) your doing the right mission.
The only thing that really pissed me off in this game was the length. All up I think it took me under 6 hours from start to finish. Yeah ok, I died a few times, the game gradually gets harder and harder as you go along, but it's nothing a plasma grenade or a few shotgun shells couldn't fix. Oh, and once you find the shotgun you'll never swap out unless your out of ammo or HAVE to as dictated by a level change. Really, it's an overpowered weapon, but save your ass so much you'll learn to love it.
So what did I think of Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox?
Well it was much better and more gun toting fun than I expected, it's just a shame that it's on the Xbox. Not too sure yet if I’ll bother with the sequel though. If it wasn't so short and didn't have that annoying fucking ball thing that made me want to stab myself it would have gotten a few more points. It's not perfect, but it's damn close for a console shooter. So I'll give it an 85/100 for now.