There is nothing angelic about this by-the-numbers shooter.
It's hard to separate graphics from level design but the fact is that something went horribly wrong here. Until I played Halo I thought F.E.A.R. had the worst level design I have ever seen in a shooter but I actually think Halo manages to tie for 1st place in that department. The levels in Halo consist of lots and lots of grey corridors and mostly empty rooms with some important looking sci-fi machinery thrown in for good measure. Even worse all the rooms and corridors look the same so you will sometimes get lost because you don't have a map and nothing to separate were you have been from were you are supposed to go. But the final kick in the balls is in the last few levels where you have to navigate through previously explored levels in reverse in order to escape – so not only is the level design consistently bland and boring but you will have to go through them twice. The few levels that take place outside are not much better because the draw distance is so poor that you can't really see much of anything. The graphics look like a 2001 console game and hence are poor.
Another thing that annoyed me was the very limited field of view your character had. It constantly looked like Master Chief had developed tunnel vision and this meant you had to swirl your mouse around a lot in order to get a good view of things. Enemies that came to close to you would simply disappear out of view. This was made worse by the fact that it looked like your character was floating through the air due to no "head-bob". The running speed was also extremely slow and limited field of view combined with slow running speed contributed to some very awkward jumping sequences. Poor controls were also a big part of why I hated the driving parts of the game. During the game you get to control a dune buggy, a tank and some small flying vehicles. You use W and S to go forward and backwards but you use the mouse to steer left and right. This made every driving sequence feel like you were controlling a drunken rhino in a greenhouse. Especially the last level of Halo was a pain due to this fact because you couldn't do any precision driving needed to make the proper jumps etc.
Another thing I have heard to much praise about is the story. In Halo you play Master Chief – a super soldier that wakes up onboard a spaceship because an alien race called The Covenant is taking over the universe and has opened up a hell portal to The Flood, and only our lonely hero can save the galaxy from this alien invasion. Wait, were have I heard this story before? Oh yeah, how about in every other sci-fi story ever made! Even worse the story as it is told is pretty obscure. Who is Master Chief? Why is The Covenant evil and is it really a good idea to kill all life in the universe just to starve The Flood? What happens when Master Chief interrupts this process? We don't know unless we play the two sequels and read the novels but this is simply poor storytelling. Things must be explained and make sense without having to resort to exterior sources for information. Halo fails to create an engaging story and engaging characters.
The level design was bland and boring and unfortunately this carries over to the enemies also. Through most of the game you will be fighting the same 3-4 enemies over and over again. The Covenants have some small orange and red dudes that spend most of their time running away from you screaming "He is gonna kill us". I actually feel bad for killing these poor souls because they remind of the Ewoks from Star Wars. So imagine spending most of your time in Halo killing little Ewoks and some bigger purple creatures. It actually got so bad that I used my melee-attack to knock them out just so I can sleep in peace at night from my conscience. Later in the game you face The Flood. They consist mostly of brown creatures and the Michelin Man that explodes and send left-over headcraps from Half Life against you. These little buggers are very annoying because they are hard to see and therefore hard to target. You are literally swarmed by these creatures and after a while they simply just get to be a hassle. The enemy AI is actually fairly good and they will seek cover and use grenades etc. Another feature of Halo I didn't like was the health-meter. Master Chief has a shield and as long as the shield is intact he doesn't take damage. But once the shield is in the red and if you still take damage, you will begin to loose health. So most fights consist of you battling it out until your shield is down and then you run away and hide in a corner sucking your thumb for a minute until the shield is back up again. This is never explained in the game how this is supposed to work. I don't mind armour in games but not recharging ones where you just run away and take a time-out for a few seconds. Give me the recharge-stations of Black Mesa any day of the week, thank you!
Do I have anything good to say about Halo? Not much I must say. Grenades are probably the best part of Halo. They are really useful and have good splash-damage. The sticky-grenades can be used against an enemy that will run back to his mates and kill them all when the grenade goes off. In most other shooters grenades are either impossible to throw with any accuracy or they simply don't do enough damage, but in Halo they work very well. The weapons are nothing special but they get the job done. It was also I nice idea how you can constantly swap weapons if you run out of ammo for a specific one. It was also a good idea that you can only carry two weapons at a time so you will make some strategically decisions in the game about what weapon to use in a mission.
Let me finish this review by saying that Halo is by no means a bad game. There are no game-breaking design flaws in this game. It all works to provide a by-the-numbers shooter experience. Halo feels like a stripped down console shooter that is a textbook definition of the word "mediocre". On the PC this is unacceptable and the game simply does not deserve all the praise it is getting when there are so many better shooters out there like Stalker, Crysis, Half Life, Deus Ex, Painkiller, Unreal and Quake. Do yourself a favour and skip this one and play something better.