Hype aside, Halo is a fantastic game, and stands tall as the greatest first-person shooter a console has ever seen.
With a few minor exceptions, the first-person shooter has not had the smoothest history on consoles. EA has the solid Medal of Honor series and Rare put out Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but outside of a few rare scores (Volition's Red Faction, for instance), the genre hasn't really lived up to its potential, and on consoles, is a very small fraction of the PC FPS experience.
But Halo is a better game than most, and even as an FPS, it's very good, and the fact that consoles have a very good FPS is reason alone to score Halo highly. But it is not on those merits alone that the game is strong.
For starters, there is very good level design. There are your corridors and your large rooms, sure, but there are also outdoor areas, multi-tiered stages, and combinations of these formulas; Halo really does a good job of taking some staples, tweaking them some, and adding somenewthings to the mix. The level design is good, but let's be honest here: Halo has lots of backtracking, and if a games is heavy on retracing one's own steps, one sure as hell bette rhave some great levels to do this through. Halo has this, and the way it plays out is actually very fun; having a point that was once the target and coming from there, in a well-designed level, is a totally different, yet familiar experience, and it's one that's a lot of fun when done right. That Halo has this down is one of its two biggest strengths.
The other is AI; although not perfect, Halo has some of the best AI in console gaming period, and that this holds true three years after says something. The enemies try to flank the player, each foe type has tendencies and sttrategies, and it's all very convincing. Halo rarely feels like target practice, and with the difficulty ramped up, it never feels like a simulation; it's quite intense, and if the palyer can take it, it is highly recommended to play it on Heroic at the very least; Legendary once they've got some real time under their belts is even better.
The visuals are good, but a tad uninspired at times. It's neat to see aliens that look differenat and interesting, but the second type of aliens the palyer encounters aren't all that interesting, really; just kinda jammed together, especially the small ones. The vehicles generally look interesting, but not very flashy; they all seem to follow a basic design technology but aren't all that appealing. The framerate is generally solid, but can also stutter once grenades start flying; it's not typically an issue, but at times, it happens. Overall, Halo looks very good, but it just feels a tad plain at times; Halo is an original title, and as such, feels like a mix of some new stuff and some stock material thrown in. It's technically solid, but a tad lacking artistically.
Thankfully, the audio suffers from no such shortcomings. With a great main theme and an overall very well-done soundtrack, halo has dramatic music that is on par with that of the great RPG soundtracks of the same time period; it's rather impressive, really, to hear an FPS title's music and want to hear more of it. The voice acting is all well-done, and the audio mix is great as well... Halo sounds wonderful.
The controls are also extremely well-done; the movement feels just right and it's a very good translation of pinpoint controls to the dual-analog setup of a controller pad. The button mappings are all logical, and Halo offers left-handed and stick-switch analog methods... many console-centric FPS fans, and southpaws as well, can thank Bungie for the little extra methods that can make or break an experience that relies on seamlessness. The only contradiction with controls comes to controlling vehicles; not only do they all control somewhat differently, the Wartrhog, a jeep-style vehicle, is a mode of transportation that has its very own learning curve, independent of the game, to master. Overall, however, controlling and fighting in vehicles is an absolute joy, and Halo's stingy restraint on how often the player gets to pilot a vehicle mean that every time the palyer gets one, it's a total blast.
The game's impetus is that the player is Master Chief, a Spartan, a cyborg supersoldier who is woken up during a crisis on a ship from Earth approaching a "Halo", which is followed by a crash-landing onto said structure. Much of the plot revolves around rescuing any fellow survivers found on the Halo, and figuring out the Halo's purpose. And staying alive as wave after wave of alien foes come after the player.
The game is great by itself, but it's the multiplayer which renders Halo an instant classic. It's got system link support and lots of neat modes and maps, but the odds of having the proper setup, including space and hardware, is low. But this isn't what elevates Halo.
It's the cooperative multiplayer. Two players can take the fight to Halo, and it's when two people play together, with more in the way of strategy and teamwork, that Halo really opens up. It's an experience that not only cannot be missed, but one more developers should take advantage of; it's absolutely brilliant.
Halo isn't a revolution to the FPS genre as a whole, but it IS a revolution for console shooters, and that it still stands atop this genre on consoles nearly three years later, with the only real competition coming from its own sequel, speaks more than any review could ever say. It's a game everyone should at least try, and many that do will find themselves absolutely captivated by a classic action game that begs to be palyed over and over again.