Halo Zero, 2D fangame to the Halo series? But does it actually work?
It had some pretty innovative ideas, Halo Zero tries that too, but it just doesn't work. A broken sniper rifle and useless weapons that you don't ever need? That's not what Halo was about eh?
So it's based on the Fall of Reach Halo book I heard, and well, the story in this game is as thin as it gets nowadays, short dialouges and explainations, that's about it. But still, it's enough to keep you playing through the short levels, the gameplay is kinda good, but it could have been better, more like Abuse, in Halo Zero you just run, stop, gun down the enemies, and repeat, and there isn't much else to it, on some missions you get to drive a warthog though, pretty cool but still pretty useless because it just feels like you are racing past all these enemies and it's not that exciting. Oh yeah, and you get weapons like a rocket launcher, but you don't really need since the game is so easy anyway. The weapons are quite nice, you have the standard pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle (which is broken!), rocket launcher, shotgun, plasma pistol, plasma rifle, nailgun and the plasma and regular grenades. But you can just go with anything, works as good as everything else, which is, kinda disappointing. What's worst is probably the view field, everything feels so zoomed in, if Master Cheif was just smaller, and the enemies, it would be alot more fun to play and the enemy could shoot towards you from greater distances providing a bit tougher experience.
The graphics though, are crisp and nice 2D graphics which are great modeled and nicely animated, they look really good, some of the backgrounds though, arent pixelated as the characters and just doesn't fit in quite, but what does fit in, is the sound! All sounds and music are ripped from Halo and they sound, well as they do in Halo! Which is nice, it gives a solid Halo feel to the whole experience, the graphics and sound are the best parts of this game.
And the value? Well, it's free! If you like Halo and 2D sidescrollers, give it a go, it's not very long and you will finish it in a couple of hours, it has a pretty nice multiplayer mode too if you are into that, but this is no way near a killer game like Metal Slug! So don't expect too much from it.
And there isn't really a reason to go through it a second time, since enemy placement, everything, it's just the same.
But the final word? If you like Halo, 2D sidescrolling action, why not try it? I mean, it's free, and it's always cool to see what garage productions can manage to produce.