A technical marvel (but with a few gameplay issues) graces the Xbox debut of the promising Bungie Studios in 1999.
Technically Halo and Metroid Prime are simply excellent and the reaction is the same: you read the console specs at least four times to make sure what hardware these games are running on. Visually Halo is nothing but fantastic. The textures used for the protagonist are gorgeous, the light effects and the animations are believable and without any glitch. The audio is no less impressive with digitally sampled voices (both human, alien and robot-like) accompanied by a powerful soundtrack that kicks in when a specific encounter takes place.
The game itself is captivating and the player is immediately sucked in, thanks also to the well-laid controls. I have been playing the game in CO-OP and it's been fantastic. Offering a CO-OP mode is really one of the best features a game can offer (in my opinion) and I was very pleased to find one (working flawlessly) in Halo. The only problem with it was that you have to finish a whole level (usually 3-4 hours long) because the Save option is not present in this mode (but the checkpoints come at regular intervals so that you don't have to start the level from the beginning in case both players die). Nothing major then.
The AI is pretty good (with only a few odd behaviours of enemy-piloted flying vehicles) with enemies looking for cover and using facilities like Plasma Turrets whenever they have the opportunity. The game is undeniably fun. But there are lowdowns: a strange lack of refinements in the settings makes it impossible to independently configure SFX's and Music levels. If we add to this the surprising lack of subtitles, you can easily figure how a non-native english speaker becomes irritated with the debriefing voice systematically being covered by too loud music. The fact that Halo has been localized to various languages is only a partial justification to this.
But the main problem with Halo is its repetitiveness within the levels. Each level could have been 30% of its whole lenght. The rest is a boring exercise of repeating the same task two, three or even more times. The level design also plays a negative role in this since the same areas are recycled leading to many moments of confusion about whether or not you have already visited a place. This situation unfortunately undermines rather seriously an otherwise excellent gameplay system.
The game itself is not short but now more than ever this is not to be intended as a compliment. A more compact game would have reached a higher score. Bungie went for full quality on the tech side while the gameplay is a mixed bag. I had hoped it was clear that the equation longer game=longer fun is not true. More often than not, like for Halo, the opposite would have improved the game. A shorter game can more easily hold focus and offer a quickly varying and thrilling experience. With the game market producing many titles, I think that shorter games are to be favoured. At least if you, like me, don't believe that the amount of money spent on a game should be proportional to its lenght but to its overall quality.
One other criticism is about the physics used: the player obviously moves in an environment with a different gravity than Earth. While this choice might be understandable, it ends up making vehicles pretty hard to control. All in all, Halo is still a recommended game. Especially if you are going to play it in CO-OP mode.