MadCap's Game Reviews - "Halo: Combat Evolved"

That's right. This is the Fourth of July.  And, as a proud American, I can honestly say that there is not a single activity in all of American culture that is more American than taking an American boot and shoving it up the ass of some aliens.  Don't believe me? Are you calling Bill Pullman, our greatest fictional President, a liar? That's right, I didn't think you were.  So, strap yourselves in and get ready to not go quietly into the night.  Not vanish without a fight.  We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today...we celebrate...our Independence Day!

...with a game set in the future in space.

Hey, I gotta keep the NSA from spying on me, right? Lack of fervent patriotism is un-American...or something.

Halo is a game that needs no introduction - a power armored space marine wielding every gun imaginable to take on a bunch of inhuman enemies and repainting every single surface with all their blood and internal organs.  Sound familiar? Well, of course it does.  This is every single shooter set in the future that you've played since 2001 and doubtless even before, being in the vein of such shooter classics as Doom.  Indeed, Halo does feel a great deal like an updated version of Doom, just with the ability to jump and with actual voice acting.  Despite the stigma against the sequels, prequels and other additions to the franchise, there are two things that pretty much everyone has to acknowledge about this game.

One:  this game was huge.  Seriously.  Described once as the original Xbox's "killer app", it's been said that half of everyone who bought the original console also bought Halo.

Two:  ...well, this is less a fact and more of an opinion on my part but...this game is pretty good.

I've made my views on the Halo series pretty clear on this very blog.  It started out good and then immediately tripped over its own feet.  However, because a lot of people seemed to want to pay money for that, it continues to drag itself around as its legs dangle behind it and we're pretty sure it's suffering from internal bleeding, but it keeps on going anyway.

While I contemplate how dark that got, let me give a summary of the plot of the game.  The UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn has made a blind jump into space from the human colony of Reach, which has just fallen and sent most of humanity running.  In that jump, they've discovered a mysterious ring that floats in the space between a planetoid and its moon.  Discovering that it has deep religious significance to the Covenant - the alien force they're battling against - and that it might be used as a weapon.  The truth, however, is something far, far worse and...yeah, okay, it's Aliens, that's what we've got going on here.

However, unlike...certain...other properties involving Marines and Aliens...this one is actually concerned with something other than pointing to the fact that its based on a film series that deserves far, far better than that piece of smoldering...

...moving on, the mechanics of the game are fairly simplistic. The right trigger shoots until your either a) repaint every surface with your enemy's blood, b) run out of ammo, or c) both.  The left trigger throws one of two different types of grenades - the human frags and the Covenant plasma.  The main character, the Master Chief (otherwise known as Spartan 117), has an amazing ability to find weapons just about anywhere in his travels, and indeed many levels will have a variety of weaponry just strewn about for him to find.  Out of bullets for your assault rifle? Try a Plasma Rifle.  Or a Needler.  Or, in a pinch, another assault rifle from a dead Marine that just happened to be nearby.  Convenient, that.

Health bar? Yeah, you have that.  Although, you also have a handy, dandy energy shield that recharges when you're idle, too for extra protection.   Of course, there are many, many situations where you will not have the time or cover to trigger the recharge and will have to have immense good luck or...well, die.  As a side note to this, anyone who says that "The Library" is too easy, go play it on Legendary.  And then you can kiss the whitest part of my pasty white ass.

And, of course, the game itself is propelled along by the nearly mute Master Chief and his AI counterpart, Cortana.  While the sequels and spin-offs would further cement and develop the relationship between the two, this game establishes them as a duo and we do get a few vague hints about their past, as well as seeing some clear chemistry between the two in the few scenes where the Chief actually does speak.  Still, very little comes of it beyond several examples of them being an effective duo...Cortana being the brains and the Chief being the muscle.

The game has an overall very simplistic, back to basic feeling as far as first-person shooters go (indeed, Halo is credited with revitalizing the genre...for better or for worse), while still providing a storyline for those two do actually want to get invested.  Of course, if you're like 90% of the world's population, by the time that Halo 2 came out, all you cared about was the multiplayer...and with, I hate to say it, good reason.  Unlike 2, however, Halo doesn't suffer from having its development team shipped around to work on their short-term investments.  While the storyline itself isn't the stuff of absolute legend - being one part Aliens, one part 2001: A Space Odyssey, and one part Starship Troopers - it's enjoyable enough to keep you playing.

...provided, again, that you're not stupid enough to immediately jump to Legendary difficulty.

Seriously, don't do it.

No, not even for America.

Just stop.

Seriously.

My attitude has changed about the game series over time, obviously.  When I was younger, it was all great.  I enjoyed the depth of the storyline and how the world was building on itself.  And then, of course, there's the mass destruction one can cause with weaponry.  Nowadays? Some of that still applies.  Jumping back into Halo more than ten years after I first played it, I still find that I enjoy some aspects of it just as I did back then.  However, looking over everything that was spawned here, I'm reminded of the final scene where the Chief and Cortana escape from Halo, Cortana declaring that it's finished.  Of course, we all know how true that wasn't.

But, if it had, it would have been on a high note.  Alas, the terrible sequel monster decided to take over and see to it that absolutely every single penny could be wrung out of this as possible.  Hither came Halo 2...and 3...and so on.  Honestly, Chief, if you had wanted to finish the fight, I wish that you would have done it here...

Halo is now available from Bungie and Microsoft Game Studios, and is now available on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One games on demand.

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For my American readers, Happy Independence Day!