Halo is one of the best First Person adventure games ever made. Fact!
On the graphics front, Halo is simply stunning for the age of the game. Though the levels are huge and, as such, fairly sparsely detailed, the details that are there are truly amazing. The textures are high resolution, giving every object, building, or vehicle a solid, real life look that is completely unmatched to this point on consoles. Amazingly, the textures displayed no blurring, regardless of how close the camera got to them. The characters and creatures are equally well done. I had nearly as much fun watching the computer controlled members of my assault team exchange fire with the aliens as I did killing them myself. To complement the graphics, Halo also brings some new , or at least tweaked, gameplay mechanics to console First Person Shooters. 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 First Person Shooter 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 since Castle Wolfenstein. Scripted sequences, like those in Half life 2, add to the games cinematic feel. The plot is B movie science fiction with elements lifted from various sources, but it is still involving and enjoyable. The fact that the beautiful cinematics actually use the game engine really puts the players in the middle of the action.
As good as most of these elements are, Halo could easily have been ruined by faulty control. That is not the case however. The control scheme is mapped efficiently onto the Xbox 360's controller, and mere minutes into the game, most of the functions had become second nature to me. Any player familiar with the way Killzone and Red Faction control on the PS2's controller should have no trouble adapting to Halo's controls. Even Call Of Duty 4 on the PS3 or Xbox 360! Halo is an amazing title, one of the best titles I have ever played on the 360, along with Halo 3, but it is not perfect. Though the game is fairly well locked in at a constant framerate (reported by the developers as 30 frames per second), framerate problems occur throughout the game whenever a significant amount of action is happening simultaneously, especially when multiple explosions occur at once. For some bits of the game, this has no effect on gameplay at all; however, during the second mission it becomes really terrible. This gripe aside, Halo is a solid game, and should be experienced by every 360 owner!
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+ Great graphics
+ Solid gameplay and audio
+ Amazing campaign
- Some frame issues
- Some bugs and glitches