Customer Reviews

Halo: Combat Evolved

5 star:		(204)
4 star:		(84)
3 star:		(49)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(42)

 

 

If you were like me, then you have heard about what a great game Halo is, but you couldn't figure out what was so great about it or what made it so special. It first glance, it looks so ordinary. You look at the box and see that you are fighting a bunch of aliens with laser guns and assault rifles. Sounds like a cliche doesn't it? But what is so great about this game is that it is just really fun to play. It gets all of the little things right. Halo isn't innovative as far as setting and storyline go, but it is a big breakthrough as far as gameplay goes. (Gameplay, remember that?) Even during the mind-numblingly repetitive spots, it still manages to be somewhat fun.

Here are five reasons why Halo is a great game:

1. Weapon balance - every weapon in the game is useful, and none are overpowered. Every weapon has at least one advantage, and one disadvantage. The pistol is accurate at long range, which gives it an advantage over the assault rifle, which is lethal, but only at a short range. The plasma rifle is good for taking down shields, but can't hold much ammo, and the rocket launcher is very powerful, but also slow to reload. You can only carry two weapons, but you will frequently find yourself changing them out for various situations. The fact that all of them are useful gives you all sorts of ways to fight differently.

2. Fantastic AI. The aliens in the game (called "The Covenant") give you some very smart enemies to fight. They will use cover to let their shields regenerate and if you are trying to run them over in a vehicle, they will dive out of the way. They will also use grenades sometimes to flush you out, as well as try to rush you and/or outflank you. Sometimes they will jump onto nearby turrets or vehicles. Not only do the enemies have great AI, but so do your marine teammates. This all makes for some very exciting battles, which never quite play out the same twice.

3. The game actually makes you use your skills and tactics, instead of memorizing where enemies are scripted to ambush you. I love this aspect. There are very few surprises in Halo. Winning battles requires skillful use of cover, smart weapon selection, and good use of grenades too. I am kind of spoiled now, because every other first-person shooter (except for maybe Serious Sam) seems inferior in this area. Most games require you to abuse the "quick save" key in order to get through the game.

4. In Halo, you are always moving forward. The game just flows so fast. This is due in large part to the regenerating shields mechanic, which is being copied by lots of other games. This simple innovation means that you can fight 15 or 20 battles without losing any health, as long as you are smart when you fight them. Thus, you don't have to backtrack all afternoon for a powerup. In addition, the game throws lots of ammo your way, so you don't have to spend much time scavenging for it.

5. Halo has vehicles and turrets seamlessly integrated into the game. There are vehicles scattered throughout the game that you can get into and use to mow down your enemies or fly around and blast them from the sky. When you get into the jeep, marine squadmates will jump in with you and take the gunner positions. The vehicles in this game are so much fun. Sometimes the best way to defeat a group of enemies is to drive around the perimeter and let your gunner blast away at them.

6. Surprise, surprise, grenades are not only useful, but crucial to surviving the game. This is thanks to a separate hotkey just for throwing grenades. You can be firing your assault rifle and throw a quick grenade, and then fire your rifle some more. You don't have to switch weapons to throw grenades, so they become that much more useful. This is another very simple innovation that substantially changes the gameplay.

OK I lied, that was 6 reasons. There are actually more, like the wonderful soundtrack, which makes the game's big battles so memorable. Lots of people dislike Halo's repetitiveness, especially towards the end. The infamous "Library" level gets pretty boring, but this is still really a great game despite being two years old and having some technical problems.

This is a review of the single player version, so if you are mainly interested in multi-player, you should skip to the next review.... I am actually playing Halo through for the second time, on a higher difficulty level. I played through the first time on Normal difficulty, and was able to complete the game in maybe 30 or 40 hours.

I thought the graphics were great, especially the outdoor scenes. I found myself wandering off from a few fire fights just to take in the view. The first set of enemies you fight, the Covenant, were unique and funny (at least the short ones were). They are pretty smart, and like to sneak up on you, lob grenades at your feet when you're not watching, etc. But the short ones also like to run away screaming in terror from time to time. The difficulty level of the game ramps up evenly as you move forward. Although I had to replay most levels several times to move on, I never had to go to the internet to find the "right" solution, although I was close to doing that a couple of times.

I liked that there weren't a lot of secret areas to find and puzzles to solve. There were a few tricky spots where you had to figure something out, but the solutions were usually obvious even to me, and I'm really bad at puzzles. And the tricky spots fit into the game--I never felt like I was being asked to solve an arbitrary puzzle just because the game designer liked puzzles.

Being able to drive/fly vehicles was a nice addition. I especially enjoyed driving the Warhog and the tank. The controls for those vehicles were intuitive and were pretty much the same as what you use to move around on foot.

I also liked the way player health was handled. Because you have a force shield, you only take damage once the shield is depleted, and the shield regenerates after about 5 seconds if you haven't been hit during that time. I often left behind healing packs because I just didn't need them. I also finished several levels with just one health unit left, thanks to the energy shield.

On the down side, I thought some of the levels were a bit too repetitive, and they didn't flow together quite as seamlessly as Half Life's levels. In a few cases, not being able to save the game at an arbitrary point became *very* painful. Only being able to carry 2 weapons at a time was a definite pain. And the second set of enemies you fight, the Swarm, didn't seem appropriate to the story. They were more like zombies. These issues didn't keep me from enjoying the game, but they did cause me to give it 4 rather than 5 stars.

In general, I feel I got my money's worth from the game.

It's finally here! And it's... okay. That I think is the best way to describe Halo- several years late, even before Microsoft assimilated Bungie, they had always planned to do a PC version, and had it been released three years ago, it would have been cutting edge. Instead, we get a two year old Xbox cast off retooled by Gearbox Software with oversight by Bungie. Personally, I think they should have put a little more time into Halo than they did, because if this is what Bungie had in mind for what was then a ground breaking title, then I'm afraid it falls short in several areas, not least of which is some of the most amateurish and dull level design I have ever seen. I generally hold FPS games up against the likes of Jedi Knight, Half-Life, and the original Unreal- if it can compare to the quality of design of those games, then it scores big.

Halo's story, in a nutshell, is basically this: humanity is at war with a collection of races known as the Covenant, who are basically religious fanatics and the gods of which have declared humanity unclean and therefore must be exterminated. Naturally, the humans are losing the war so they concoct a plan to engineer super cyborg soldiers to combat Covenant, which they do successfully, but it's a case of too little too late. The last Spartacus II, the Master Chief, a.k.a you, are onboard the human starship Pillar of Autumn, when it engages several Covenant warships while investigating a ring word (I wonder if Niven got any royalties for that.), known as Halo. The ship is damaged and crash lands on the ring, but not before the Master Chief escapes with the Autumn's sexy babe AI core, Cortana. It is soon revealed that the Covenant have discovered that Halo is of course a weapon, but don't quite understand just how powerful it is and what it was originally intended for. Both sides race against time to gain control of the device to use it against the other side.

There is so much in this game that's really darn cool- the overall look and feel of the weapons, characters and vehicles in spot on, as are the exterior vistas and buildings seen through out the experience. Music is top notch, though sometimes it sounds like it came from a cheap Casio keyboard, it is for the most part as good as the main theme. The sound effects lack, especially in how the weapons sound, and especially how the aliens sound- they grunt and roar like cheap cartoon monsters, not the kind of thing you expect to hear from slick looking beasties in colored chrome battle armor wielding plasma guns. Game play is pretty good, though I don't like the fact that you can't double jump, that is jump on to an object then use that momentum to immediately jump again to a higher position. Then there is the vehicles- whether flying or driving, it has to be experienced to be believed, because it's that good. In either the 4WD Warthog or the Ghost hover bike, ground vehicles are a snap to drive and a lot of fun, meaning you concentrate more on the game than figuring out how to steer. The Covenant Banshee, a small attack fighter, is also a cinch to fly, steer and attack with. Plus the enemy AI is superb- Covenant dodge, shoot from cover and attack intelligently.

Now for the bad news. There is no gentle way to say this: Level design sucks. Maybe the bland stainless steel-like interior textures were meant to give everything a high tech look, but there are few elements of contrast and most every wall looks like every other wall. Worse, moving through levels is like a bad case of deja vu- because basically each new room is pretty much like the one you left, the main difference being there aren't any bodies or weapons lying around in the new ones. It appears as though the level designers merely cloned rooms, stuck tunnels between them to link a level together. Further, there aren't a lot of objects in them, either, and everything looks very sterile. There aren't a lot of computer screens, tools, junk or anything else lying around to look it. This doesn't just go for Halo's interiors- the insides of Covenant and human vessels are just as bland, with the same repetitive layout as their counterparts. If places, chambers, rooms, etc. had been decorated with as much care as the ones in Unreal II, I feel it might have made things a little more fun to explore and look at.

What's also weird is that for all the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of space on the ring world, I never saw one example of fauna larger than insects- no animals, no fish, no birds, nothing. It's like the biosphere gave up after trees and bugs. Exterior vistas are quite large, especially in Banshee missions, and as I said, 2-3 years ago, the graphics would have been ground breaking, but even outside the textures seem kind of plain, though still attractive. Other annoyances is the switching of weapons from one mission to the next. There are a couple of instances where the next mission picks up right after the last one ends, but you no longer have the weapons you finished with- and that makes no sense. This is doubly bad since you can only carry two of them at any given time. I find the shotgun and the Covenant plasma rifle to be the best of the lot, though the latter must be discarded once out of ammo in order to find another, because for some reason you can't reload them. And for all the work Gearbox said they did on this game, would it have been too much to ask for to give us real save game options rather than stinky console check points?

My expectations were high and they were only partially met. There is a lot that's good in Halo- story, music, characters, vehicles and voice acting, but the things that are wrong with it are really wrong. It's a good game and it has a lot of elements that I love, but the uninspired level design, bland textures, dated graphics and silly aliens detract a great deal from what had the potential to be one of the greatest games ever made.

A year or so ago I was introduced to the Xbox and one of the games I got was Halo. At the time I didn't know much about it and I certainly didin't know how to play it but after 1 day of playing I LOVED THIS GAME!! First of all the graphics are surburb! Very realistic environements with basically no limits unlike a lot of games that will cut you off if your going in the wrong direction. Halo leaves you lots of room to explore. The weapons were also nice especially the pistol and the shotgun, many of them with nice scopes and add-ons.

As you will find out vehicles are crucial for the game. From the famous warthog to the tank or the banshee you will have fun finding the best vehicle suited for the situations your in. The vehicles preform well too and are very good for attacking all fronts.

The alien enemies (Grunts, Elites, Hunters, Jackals, and the members of the flood) are tough and You will always have your finger on the trigger and pumping lead into the nearest alien. If you have the volume up you can sometimes hear the grunts (The little weak guys) say hilarious things.

And that's just the game! MULTIPLAYER ROCKS!

If you have a friend you can go head to head or cooperative and play CTF, reverse tag, king of the hill, and lots more classic games with a twist. Basically you get to run around on special only-multiplayer levels to try and be the last team or man standing. Great fun!! Prob one of the best features of the game!!!

Overall I rate Halo 5/5 because it's just plain sooo fun and that's enough said. It's worth every penny and it will keep you glued to the screen. Probably one of the best Xbox games out there and maybe one of the best games in history.

I had heard the buzz about Halo for the Xbox for a while but never really investigated the game until I played it at a friend's house. The next day I bought an Xbox and Halo and have been hooked ever since. As with the legendary game Half Life, it is the story as well as the game play that makes Halo great. I found the characters in the game to be very well developed, the weaponry outstanding and the voice acting, especially by Jen Taylor (Cortana) and the Marines that fight along side you to be exceptionally well done.

Halo is loosely based off of several Sci-Fi movies from Aliens to Star Wars. The story begins at Reach, one of the worlds that humans have colonized. Reach is suddenly attacked by the covenant and your ship is forced to make a blind jump to lure your enemies away from Reach so that they do not discover the location of Earth. Your ship arrives at Halo but the covenant has somehow tracked you and follow closely behind. The covenant armada attacks your ship and you are forced to crash land on Halo, an ancient and mysterious ring world where the covenant horde attacks you at every turn. The covenant is made up of several alien races who find humans to be an affront to their gods. Their blind devotion to these gods has incited their leaders to declare a holy war against humanity with the ultimate goal of killing every human being. After several breathtaking missions and just when you think you have the covenant on the run, a new, more vicious foe appears. The Flood as they are known, are nothing more than human and covenant soldiers who have been infected by a mysterious disease that has but one purpose, to infect the entire galaxy. In an attempt to stop the Flood, the main character of Halo, the Master Chief attempts to activate Halo's weapon systems but his AI sidekick Cortana discovers the horrifying truth about Halo's true purpose.

Halo is quite simply the finest video game ever made. The story behind the game is phenomenal, the characters in this game range from the Master Chief, an experimental warrior with cybernetic enhancements to Cortana, his AI partner to the comic relief of the covenant foot soldiers known as grunts. The maps in this game are incredible with realistic natural effects that are stunning to behold. All of these elements are welded together to form the best video game experience of all time.

Well here it is, Halo where it was originally supposed to launch;PC. Microsoft bought Bungie,(the developers) so the PC version was cancelled. A lot of people wanted online multiplayer for Halo, so Bungie let Gearbox make a PC port. The campaign is exactly the same as the Xbox version, but multiplayer is the good part.

So Master Chief is on a warship called the "Pillar of Autumn", escaping the destruction of Reach. The Covenant (aliens) follow that ship and then they find a mysterious ring-world called "Halo".The humans abandon ship and crash-land on Halo.

I'm not going to go much further into the plot. (I don't want to spoil it for you, it's actually kind of good)

You get a assortment of weapons ranging from the standard Assault Rife, to the overpowered Pistol, to the Covenant plasma pistol. The controls here are just the same as about any other PC shooter.

There's one thing that stands out in the gameplay a lot, apart from the vechicles you can drive; You can only hold two weapons at once. I think that this adds realism to the game. I remember playing Medal of Honor games and the main character can hold a shotgun, a rocket launcher, pistol, sniper, and a machine gun all at once. Unrealistic!

I really like the multiplayer except for two things; One is the laggyness. Do not try to play online unless you have a good cable connection and you are playing with only people with cable. Dial up sucks really bad for this game.

Second, is the enormous amount of losers online. They kill their teammates and scream four letter words at people for no reason.But still, there are a lot of nice people too. I just wish there was some way to kick people out of your game.

You can play games online like:

Slayer: Free for all

Team Slayer: Same as above only with teams

Oddball: Hold the ball for a certain amount of time to win

Race: Hop in a vechicle and race around maps

There are a ton of other games, these are just the most commonly played.

There is another problem with this game. You will need a VERY good computer to run it at maximum settings. My laptop far exceeds the minimum system requirements, but the game runs really slow and has horrible graphics. (I guess this is why I am making a gaming PC...)

Gearbox really should have worked on optimizing this game more. The game kind of feels like it was rushed.

PROS:

+Lots of action

+Good storyline

+Vechicles to drive!

+Two-weapon feature adds realism and makes you think about weapon choice

+Pretty good graphics (if you have a good gaming PC)

+Game runs at 60 frames per second unlike the Xbox's 30 (but you need a good computer)

CONS:

-Some maps are reused a lot in campaign

-Need a good computer to run

-Losers on the internet

-Laggy online play

-Can get repetetive at times (especially the "Library" level)

And if you are concerned about violence or blood, don't worry. Halo was originally going to be rated Teen, before the 9/11 attacks. (The ratings were bumped up then)

If you don't want to see blood or gore, then just go to the game options and turn off the "Particle effects" and the "Decals".If you turn off the blood and gore, the game is equivalent to a Teen-rated game.

Overall, despite some technical problems and losers online, Halo PC is a game that all PC gamers should get.

This game is sweet. It takes a powerful PC to run but the detail, graphics and the play control are great. The single player game has a good story line and is a good teacher for learning character control and the in's and out's of the game. However, you buy this game for the online PvP battles and the game delivers. Hundreds of servers are always available and there is nothing like a good 8 v 8 game of capture the flag in Blood Gulch....

I have read on the box that it requires a minimum of 733Mhz to run, that may be a bit optimistic. I would say nothing short of maybe a 1.3 or 1.5Ghz and lots of RAM, at least 256 megs. I have a 2.4Ghz Pentium with 768 Megs of RAM and it runs super smoothly with no lag for load time while game scenery changes.

This seems to be hotly contested here at Amazon, but I have to say, Halo PC is wonderful. But its not like there aren't issues.

First, to all the folks saying things like "it shouldn't be like this with my video card" and "not for a 2 year old game" and other such things (in regards to video performance): hate to burst your bubble, but welcome to the future of gaming! I would direct your attention to Anandtech.com and their last review of all the latest graphics cards running 15 of the latest and upcoming games. Guess what? The days of 160FPS in Unreal Tournament are over. The fastest card available, the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB, only gets an AVERAGE framerate of 43 in Halo. And not just Halo. Halo, Jedi Academy, Final Fantasy XI, Half Life 2, Doom 3 -- all the most anticipated games of the year -- are DirectX 9.0 games. And the very latest hardware can only run any of these games in the ranges of 30 to 60 FPS, average. Sometimes you'll only get 20 frames. Yes, even with a Radeon 9700 or 9800. The 9800 Pro 256MB only averages 19.9 in Final Fantasy XI! Its not the game producer's fault, nor does it mean that a game sucks. It means that your hardware sucks in comparison to what it could be. Nothing personal. Your self-image shouldn't be wrapped up in what video card you bought and installed. But game hardware is obviously going to need to advance more still in order to keep up with software requirements. I personally think that you should blame both ATI and Nvidia for doing a poor job of actually getting the market ready for DX9. (One tip: Halo doesn't support Anti-Aliasing yet -- not many DX9 games do -- so make sure your drivers are set to "Application Preference" so that the card doesn't try to set AA. That will really bog things down.)

Also, although the core of the game is 2 years old, it was completely recoded from the equivalent of a DirectX 8 game (on Xbox) to a DirectX 9 game. So in terms of coding, its brand new. Much newer, in fact, than even Unreal 2 or Unreal Tournament 2003 (both Direct X 8.1 games).

Also, keep in mind that there is a lot of controversy over Nvidia graphics cards and their performance in DirectX 9 games. They optimized their drivers for benchmark performance, but they don't actually "fully" support DirectX 9. As a result, you get less than anticipated performance in any DirectX 9 game, of which Halo is one. Yes, even a 5600 or a 5900 Ultra. Sorry. Don't kill the messenger. (Again, I recommend you peruse Anandtech.com for much more detail on this). I wouldn't be surprised if most of those reporting poor performance here are using newer Nvidia cards.

As for Halo itself, its simply wonderful! It truly is visually incredible. I'm using a Radeon 9500 Pro and a Pentium 4 2.4C at 1024x768, everything set to high. I personally have only had minor performance problems during very large combat scenes (30+ characters, lots of fire, lots of decals (blood), and lots of sky and ground textures). Be sure you update to the latest driveres for your video card.

The gameplay is pretty much perfect. Better than anything else out there. Someone finally made a PC game where you don't have to switch to grenades in order to use them! And you get lots of them (so use them liberally). The weapons are diverse, but there are none (with the exception of the perennial favorite rocket launcher) that is clearly more powerful or useful than any other, which keeps the gameplay balanced. And the bot AI is awesome. Some of the Covenant foes are really clever. Some are really not. The little ones (forget their names) are hysterical. "He'll kill us all!" "Down in front!" "Run for your lives!" I find myself (morbidly) laughing out loud in the middle of major battle scenes.

Multiplayer is really fun and reminds of my days playing Team Fortress Challenge. I dig it. But you HAVE to download the update before you can play in multiplayer. Otherwise performance will [smell] or multiplayer will crash repeatedly.

In the final analysis, this game really is ahead of its time. You can't blame the game or Microsoft, no matter how much you want to, if your hardware can't keep up. Blame the hardware manufacturer. Send them a letter and tell them that you demand better. And if your able, definitely consider upgrading to a Radeon 9500, 9600, or 9700 card. They all perform well in this and other new games, and are all under $...now. The investment will be worth it if you want to play any new games this year.

I am going to start doing my reviews in PRO/CON format (at least all of my videogame reviews) and then summarizing it all at the end.

PRO:

1.Graphics are great

2.More guns then the original Halo game for Xbox which include a flamethrower and a fuel rod cannon.

3. More maps then the Xbox version

4. ONLINE and it hardly lags!

5. Audio-music is great!

6. Doesn't require an overly powerful computer.

CON:

1.SOMETIMES can lag, but all games lag every once in a while online, dont they?

2. Campaign mode is to short and easy.

Even though i did add a couple cons, i am not going to take away one star making it a 4/5, because the PROS heavily outdo the CONS.

All in all, this game is highly recommended and if you have an Xbox/PC, you should get the PC version of HALO due to online mode, more guns and more maps.

(However Halo 2 is much better then this game, so i would go with that if you were to choose between Halo 1/Halo 2.

I'm not saying this is a bad game by any means-just look at the rave reviews it got. However, gearbox (the developer) did a poor job bring this over to the pc. Ignore the game requirements, this game only runs on some systems well. I have 2 computers in my possesion, a 3.06 with a 9700 pro and a 2.8 (laptop) with a geforcefx mobile- it runs amazing on my desktop, but it barely runs at all on the laptop. How such a small difference in system specs (on systems very capable accordign to the minimum specs) can there be such a drastic performance drop? I'm not sure myself, if you have a chance I'd suggest downloading the demo availible for it and see how it runs on your system before putting your hard earned money in a game that has a 50% chance of running.