Grenades in Halo are also really great. The standard human frag grenade explodes almost on contact, causing any foes, weapons, or debris in the vicinity to go flying every which way. It just doesn't cease to be thrilling to watch a pack of Covenant get caught in an explosion. The Covenant's plasma grenades work great, too. They take a few seconds to explode, but they can also stick to a target, which will run around frantically in its final moments. Later in the game, when grenades are in heavy supply and when you're fighting mostly in close quarters, vast chain reactions of grenade explosions can lead to some very messy results.

A well-placed grenade can set off a chain reaction that blows away a whole pack of enemies.

Halo's single-player campaign does have one noticeable shortcoming in the actual level design. Though the wide-open areas are great, the game's numerous indoor levels aren't very interesting to look at and mostly consist of one same-looking room or corridor after another. The level design just isn't nearly as imaginative as every other aspect of the game, and it's the one aspect of Halo that really does seem dated. Nevertheless, the level design never stoops to slowing you down with tedious puzzles or jumping sequences, or overbearing dialogue or stealth elements, so the focus is always on the action. And since the enemy and friendly AI and the weapon design are so good, the layout of the levels really isn't so important, because the quality of the action is always top-notch. At any rate, Halo's single-player campaign lets you move seamlessly between outdoor and indoor environments, and the game's long-range vehicle battles and close-quarters, claustrophobic corridor crawls are all highly entertaining in their own right.

Surprisingly, Halo looks really great on the PC--if you can get it to run smoothly. The creature and vehicle design is top notch--there are clear thematic design differences between the steely, utilitarian human designs and the sleek, purple-hued, almost oily-looking alien constructions. The weapon effects, explosions, and vehicles are especially impressive, and the enemy animations are very well done, too. The textures are sharpened up for the PC and are effectively bump-mapped to make them look touchable and realistic rather than flat and fake, though Halo's outdoor areas look particularly good. The character models and level architecture aren't terribly complex, however. But the only real issue with Halo's visuals is that they won't necessarily run smoothly at a high resolution, even on a high-end PC. You can tone down various aspects of the visuals to up the frame rate, but still, you're unlikely to experience a better frame rate from Halo than you would from other popular shooters from the past year or so. That's too bad, since the frame rate was one aspect of Halo that the PC version could ideally have improved on over the original version, which moved no more smoothly than 30 frames per second.

Halo is one of the best shooters of all time, on any platform.

On the other hand, the audio in Halo has been translated completely intact and is still first-rate. A truly superb soundtrack swells up during key moments of the single-player campaign. Chock-full of militaristic percussion, choirlike vocals, and cello strings, this is one of the best soundtracks in a shooter, and it adds a lot of drama to the action. The sound of the various weapons is also well done--each sounds distinctly different, though the Covenant's plasma weapons sound a bit underpowered. The voice acting is also excellent, from the Master Chief's soft-spoken, reassuring one-liners to the marines' variety of elated battle cries. In a nice touch, the marines even have different ethnic accents, and they have a great deal of dialogue, in general, so you'll rarely hear them repeat their lines. Covenant forces sound pretty great, too, as do some of the other characters and foes you'll face.

Some aspects of Halo for the PC are disappointing, to be sure. Considering this is mostly just a straight port of the Xbox version, it's a shame that we had to wait two long years for the game to come out. It's also too bad that the Xbox version's option to play through the campaign cooperatively is nowhere to be found and that the graphics engine doesn't seem well optimized for the PC. And the multiplayer component, while entertaining, doesn't offer the sheer scale or unique modes of play offered by the most popular multiplayer PC shooters of today. But even with all that said, Halo is still a tremendously entertaining game on its own merits, and it can easily be placed in the same category as other all-time greatest shooters, like Doom and Half-Life. So if you've been holding out for the PC version of the game all these years, then don't deny yourself this experience any longer, and see what you've been missing.