For the uninitiated Halo is an FPS originally for XBox but later ported to PCs. You play as the Master Chief, a SPARTAN-II creation and more importantly for us, a one man army. Initially the enemy is a collection of alien races known as the Covenant but later the focus of the Master Chief's wrath becomes the Flood, a parasitic race which basically eats up almost anything with sufficient biomass. You play first to gain control of Halo, a superweapon. Yup, the planet is a weapon and for better understanding let's just say that the Death Star is a water pistol in comparison. When you realize that the planet will put a halo (sorry couldn't resist) around all the sentient beings in the galaxy, it's up to you to destroy the beautiful ring.The game is simply put...brilliant. For one thing it has a good weapons array. One gets everything from the up close and personal shotgun to the 8x zoom sniper which can take out most of the Covenant baddies with one well placed round. While the human weapons have to be reloaded at regular intervals, though their ammo can be picked up with relative ease, the Covenant weapons are susceptible to overheating the midst of a battle and also get discharged and thus have to be discarded. The thing about the weapons is that unlike UT or Quake where, as Saksham would put it "Fear not the weapon but the hand that wields it", here you often have to make a choice between two or more very good weapons (the Master Chief can carry only 2 weapons, 4 fragmentation grenades and 4 plasma grenades) and if later you realize that you took the wrong one, you will go back and return with a different weapon in tow.
Another thing is the vehicle design. The vehicles can easily be destroyed by something as puny as the pistol. Find some cover, take a peep, if the vehicle has its back turned, zoom in and take a couple off pops and repeat the process. If you're the one driving the vehicle then your health goes down not the vehicle's (unless it's a Covenant Ghost or Banshee while you're playing the campaign), so even if you get killed a teammate doesn't have to wait for the vehicle to spawn and then join the melee. And it's not as if you're a sitting duck in one of the mechanical monsters of this game. In a multiplayer game, good maneuvering and above average team support should enable a team to rule a map.
The enemies in the campaign range from the stupid and fun-to-kill "Grunts" to I-need-my-mommy-bad "Hunters". I am not an expert on this (have only played Halo: Combat Evolved, that too on normal) but the sequels to the game present a hierarchy for the other races, which makes some units of a particular race harder to kill, something which is there in Halo:CE but not to that extent. Take for example the Elites, the blue ones are easy, the red ones well, a slight pain in the ass but the gold, sword-bearing elites send you ducking for cover. The fact that the AI is also aware of this hierarchy only adds to the game, if you have a bunch of Grunts being led by an Elite, try and take the Elite out first as that will send the Grunts scrambling away, but if you're taking on Spec-Ops Grunts that will make them more determined to send you to your maker. And, contrary to what the makers of Godzilla say, size doesn't always matter. The "Infection Form" of the Flood (really appropriate name for these tiny critters) would put any Mongol horde to shame. The fact that the enemies also use similar tactics to human players, especially in the later levels, such as grenade spamming and hiding around corners only makes the game that more interesting.
The campaign itself is a dream come true for any person who games or writes games, and you often catch yourself wishing to go to a particular place in some level just for the heck of it. Though at some points a bit repetitive, its sheer brilliance is undoubtedly what has propelled Halo as one of the best games today. One of the standouts in the game was the music. The synchronization with the different checkpoints would just send a shiver down my spine me and an appropriate message, whether it be to go into stealth mode, snipe a little and just enjoy the beautiful ecosystem of Installation-04 or check my shields, reload both weapons, frantically search for grenades and basically get ready for some drawn out battles. The best score would undoubtedly be when you get to the checkpoint labeled "The Final Run", beautiful and fitting to say the least.
The multiplayer can be and has been described using many words, though one word speaks more eloquently than any other combination. Addictive. Saksham, Atulya, Akshay and I spent almost the majority of our waking time (that's at least true for me) playing the Halo on LAN in Avinash's room, for three days. One day we started out at 6 in the evening and finally packed up at 3 in the morning with only minor breaks for food (less than 10 minutes) and recuperation. That's like almost 9 hours staring at a tiny screen while screaming at your teammate, taunting the enemy and crying when someone sneaks up behind you and finishes you with the one shot. And if that doesn't tell you enough, one night Akshay had to leave because his wrist had started hurting.
The last few paragraphs on my entry on Halo, detail some of my most favorite moments from the game. The scariest time would definitely be when the flood was first released. You're in this square room which has doors on all the sides and suddenly you see this blot of red on your radar, you turn to see these green spidery things rushing towards you and start firing the assault rifle. The moment you think it's over another red blot on the radar and this time they're a lot more in number. So this is where one starts to learn how to shoot, move backwards, reload, chuck a grenade, switch weapons and jump over the aliens, while keeping an eye on them as well as the ammo count, superfast and then continue with that for 2-3 minutes. The other time I almost pissed myself was when I saw the Hunters for the first time. It was when you try and get aboard the Covenant vessel and suddenly see that these 2 hulking behemoths are being beamed down. At that time the only thought running through my mind was "Fuck..." which was soon replaced by "I need some cover. Goddamnit why did I ditch that goddamn sniper rifle?" and then these two were attacking the shit out of the marines around me while I whimpered behind some rocks. This was also one of the coolest moments, for me, as I eventually (not like after 10 years or anything) came out of hiding and charged at the 2 demons. Armed with the knowledge that these things can be taken down with a shot/melee attack to their orange regions, I did some jumping around and brought these mighty beasts down without sustaining much damage. The first time I encountered the "Zealot Elite", left me dead, as the only thing I saw was this blur of gold and a blue sword coming down on me. The next time, I threw a plasma grenade at it when it charged.
By the end of the game, I changed my style from clearing out one room and then moving to the next to simply running towards the enemies, jumping over them, shooting at the most threatening one and moving into the next room where hopefully a different race would be waiting. There I would go into some corner wait for the 2 races to finish each other off and then come out guns blazing. Did this a lot in the last 2 levels and it really helped. The final levels also get a lot tougher as the Grunts and Elites start throwing plasma grenades at you with pretty good accuracy. Died many times as while engaging on foe, some asswipe would stick me with a grenade and then dash to safety. The only timed checkpoint, which is the last checkpoint before you finish the game was also one big rush of adrenalin. You have to drive a Warthog to a ship to get off the Pillar of Autumn. The catch is that the road ain't exactly straight, you're driving through a battle scene from 300 where you're the star attraction and a timer's counting down at the bottom right of your screen. Talk about "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shiiiiiit...WOOHOO" moments.
So this was about Halo. Hope you enjoyed reading it. And if this entry hasn't pushed you into giving Halo a shot, if you haven't done so already, here's a more personal message. Play the goddamned game.
