I hope you play this game, but I also hope you can understand and sympathize with why I can only call this "good".
To judge a game that you're not particularly fond of for a single, but important reason, is all the more difficult when you know how successful the title has been and you know the place that gamers have for it in their hearts. I am talking about Halo: Combat Evolved, for the PC, a now legendary game that has just spawned an overnight success out of its sequel to the tune of $125 million and over two million copies sold... and the first week of its life hadn't even ended yet. I will attempt to be as fair as possible, because Halo does so many things right, regardless of platform, and regardless of age -- but choices in level design leave me aghast of the single player campaign, and for that I personally cannot excuse it.
Bungie Software was designing Halo for the Mac and PC, when Microsoft liked what they saw and decided to purchase the studio outright. They then made the game an Xbox exclusive for nearly the first two years of its life. I had already planned to spend my next-gen console money elsewhere and at the time couldn't afford to snag yet another console so close together. I saw Halo videos with eager eyes, lamenting on how nice it would have been to have a simultaneous launch: Halo on the Xbox and PC, so that both parties could enjoy what Bungie had to offer. After seeing the title perform on the console, my anticipation waned. It didn't feel too good. It didn't feel right. Most of it, of course, was attributed to my seething hatred for using controllers for most FPS' (see Eye, Golden- for a prime example of the frustration of using a gamepad -- that's right, I said Goldeneye. Boo me if you want...). But the visuals looked less spectacular than I was expecting from Microsoft's supposed juggernaut of a console and Master Chief just didn't control well.
That was then, on a demo unit, in an EBGames shop. Fast forward to today, and after playing several multiplayer matches on the Xbox and completing the game on my PC, things done changed. Bungie has a great grasp on the FPS mechanic of making the slaying of little nasty aliens and big lug aliens a pleasure. The assault rifle just feels tight and balanced. There is great payback from killing enemies, similar to the cathartic pleasure we got from blasting Doom demons back to hell. Bullets punch alien armor fiercely as they grunt, groan and wail. They fire back with equally painful methods. Their AI routines have them dodging, seeking cover, sneaking up behind you, and flanking you -- they're effing smart, which makes it all the more satisfying when you finally put them in their place with a shot to the head.
The survival mechanic, too, is a unique system that I at first hated, but grew to enjoy. Master Chief has a rechargeable shield along with normal health bars. The shield can't take too much damage, but when you retreat behind cover and wait, it can and will recharge all the way to full strength. Thus you are never ever faced with the problem of being trapped with nowhere to go, with one hit before you bite the dust. Even with one health bar, with careful shooting mixed with running for cover at the appropriate time, you can make it out alive. That's skill right there. It's quite a nice system, and it's one that has been mimicked by games like Gungrave and the recently released Killzone.
Better still are the weapon mechanics in the game. Like Metroid Prime, the weapons do not become obsolete. They do not follow the pattern of "the later you find a weapon, the stronger it be!" that so many other games in the past -- and games that are still releasing today utilized. Even the diminutive handgun packs a mean punch -- it's so accurate that two or three bullets are usually more efficient than a third of a clip from your assault rifle. And every weapon lets you pistol whip chumps over the head. Yet another mechanic that was adopted by another successful game (Call of Duty -- another fine shooter). The feeling is so satisfying, it might be more worth it to pistol whip an enemy than shoot it dead, simply for the sheer sound of crunching alien bones.
A small nitpick that I have is that Halo forces you to a maximum of two weapons and a grenade. It's nothing major and it still works well strategically, forcing players to think about what they might need for what situations, but I would have liked at least one more allotment. Master Chief should never be without his pistol, which as I mentioned, kicks mounds of arse -- can't he stick it on his belt holster or something? But I digress. It's still a functional and innovative system that makes players think about different ways to approach the action in this genre.
I'm pretty sure that Halo was also one of the first, if not the first games, to let you fire and chuck grenades without the unceremonious labor of switching weapons in mid-fire. Just hold down the left mouse button to fill aliens full of lead, and right-click when you want to send the gift box of explosive joy over to the kids for Christmas. BLAM. Ultimately satisfying. Let me take a few seconds to mention the plasma grenade, an especially wonderful gift for deserving children, that sticks to their alien armor while they frantically run to brush it off (to no avail). Best grenade of all time?
I could go into vehicles in depth too, but let's just say that to this day I haven't played a first person shooter that had as intuitively controlled vehicles as Halo, except for Unreal Tourney 2004. Even the glorious Far Cry, one of my picks for best shooter out there, has some faulty Hummer control. And -- wait for it -- you can jump into alien vehicles as well, and fly your arseout of a tough situation. In short, the vehicles are as well implemented as the core shooting action, and that's quite a feat when you consider the failure to do so in so many other games.
You can see where I'm getting at here. Bungie has the shooter mechanic down pat. If they licensed their engine to a house such as, say, Infinity Ward or Free Radical, that game would be mine even before I knew what the name of it was. But their creative minds extend to the backstory and game setup. The universe of Halo is a very cool one, if not a bit cliched with the "aliens want eat us brain!" motif. Halo is actually a ringworld, with a vast ecosystem that takes up the inner part of the ring, while mechanical support systems adorn the outside. It's just a really cool thing to look at, whether it be on the title screen of the game or on the world itself, where you can look into the horizon and see what looks like a stairway to heaven -- the path of the Halo extending skywards, and coming back around behind you. The story about the Convenant and the _________ is also intriguing, providing for a somewhat unexpected twist in near the end of the game.
All this is fleshed out with realistic looking environments. The bump-mapping work -- especially for a port of a two year old console title -- was still fantastic for the 2003 PC release. Metal looks like metal. Rocks look like rocks. All of this holds true when you walk right up to it and it's in your face -- there is very little to no texture distortion or mess or any of that. It looks damn fine from a techincal level. I do think the art direction needed help though -- I understand that alien defense structures are no doubt cold and sterile, but for all of its technical glory, Halo looks -- design-wise -- sort of plain. Not bad, just plain. It's like having a master painter paint a beautifully realistic picture of a stack of bricks. There's nothing overtly wrong with that though -- it still has some robust technology, and they made it sing. The outdoor environments, at least, look grand because of the aforementioned sight of "the rest of" Halo in the distance, rising up out of a beautiful sea.
And here's the best part of this game: the music that makes the world alive. Composers Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori have done an absolutely fantastic, breathtaking job with the soundtrack for Halo. The soundtrack is something I would be proud to have in my discman while walking to work or something. It's a mix of orchestrated military combat themes, tribal-sounding percussion themes, eerie alien themes and Gregorian chanting. It all blends together so perfectly, and while it may not always be super-fitting for the environment at hand, it's still such great music to listen to -- you won't care that there's Gregorian chanting while an alien's brain gets punched through its eye socket. Absolutely fantastic work that may be the reason this title is so memorable to gamers subconsciously.
So then why the hell don't I like it as much as I should?
Level design. Level design, level design, freaking [PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT LYRICS] level design.
I think Bungie took the creation of logical structures a little too, er, logically. Let me start off with an analogy. Suppose someone built four sets of barracks that were connected by bridges. Logically, the construction company would build the barracks identically, yes? It's a standard design for a standard barrack. They will look the same from the inside. I understand this, and this is perfectly logical. But it just doesn't work well in practice, for me at least. Three million Xbox owners and countless other PC gamers don't care, but I do. There are sections of the game where there are half hours worth of the same looking corridor, almost identical except for maybe a left turn here instead of a right. There is this one section where you enter a building, cross a bridge, enter a building at the end of that bridge that is ALMOST IDENTICAL, exit that building to find an IDENTICAL bridge to the last one, only to stumble across yet another building identical to the last, onto another identical bridge. You get the picture. The most aggravating section comes before the last few levels of the game, where you are forced to run down long, wide, and deep hallways for what felt to me like almost an hour. With no change of scenery, save for two short underground passages that lead... of course... to the same identical looking hallways. Why didn't Bungie just turn this section into an arcade light gun game -- it would have fared better that way.
Look -- I know the hordes of gamers out there might not care, but I certainly do, and you -- a gamer who might not have played Halo yet -- might care as well. The length and tedium of these boring level sections are the likes of which I have rarely seen in what is supposed to be a high profile, high quality game. The guys at Penny Arcade really weren't kidding when they drew Gabe as saying, "It's the same stupid level, over and over again!" I will say that pounding a nail through my you-know-what (as Tycho so eloquently compared the game to) is far less appealing than playing Halo, though.
Halo is a good, solidly constructed game that's marred in the end by what I feel is inexcusable recycled levels. It's as if they wanted to extend the content just so Microsoft could say, "This game is 10 full hours long!" I would have been so happy with a mere five or six hour game, with less repetitive levels, and I would have been ready to call this an incredible shooter. But I can't. I'm happy that there are people on this earth who can get past such a fundamental thing as non-repetitive level design, because as long as people are happy, I'm happy. But at the same time I'm frustrated by those levels. So I'm not happy.
Confused?
It's such a relief then, that Halo's multiplayer is intact from the Xbox version. It's the Xbox equivalent to multiplayer Goldeneye in terms of a variance of modes and options, so you just know that it's awesome. Capture the Flag? With vehicles? Awesome. And when porting the title over to PC, Gearbox let players use a flamethrower, energy rod (so called n00b rod) and the flying Banshee vehicles -- making multiplayer even better than its Xbox compatriot. One thing to shed a tear for: no co-op campaign. This would have spiced things up for me during the ultimately boring, tedious sections that so plague the single-player mode. Perhaps it would have been enough for me to be more happy about this game. Alas, it was not to be. Xbox owners, you got the better end of the deal with regards to that.
In the end, I must recommend Halo to shooter fans, with the explicit warning that you may possibly be disappointed if you have certain standards for level design. But then again, you may not be. I realize I am in the VAST minority (I will repeat: three-effing-million Xbox owners and countless other PC owners!) to say Halo is good but not great. For the PC its saving grace is the internet-enabled multiplayer with extra capabilities and 32-person matches. Others might be pleased with the sci-fi story that is bolstered by a fascinating backstory thanks to books and the recent I Love Bees marketing campaign. Yet others still just love shooting the crapulence out of aliens, in general.
But I value a great single player experience without loopy levels. And when something like the original Unreal Tournament -- a damned multi-player ONLY game -- can provide a single-player botmatch environment that can STILL entertain me endlessly, I expect that a FPS with a dedicated single-player campaign impress me even more. Halo did not. Bungie has put so much creative effort into the rest of this game, and I'm sad the level design had to bring it down.
I hope you play this game, and play the sequel, but I also hope you can understand and sympathize with me as to why I can only call it "good." I certainly understand why other gamers loved it so, there are great, legitimate reasons for it. But I wanted to love it too, I wanted to be proud of it, beam brightly and rank it up there with the best of this generation of console games. But instead, I can only smile weakly.