Echo 136: Green, clean, and extremely mean!

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Echo

136

"Green, clean, and extremely mean."

Halo PC

Product: Halo: Combat Evolved (PC Version)
Review by: Jim Richmond
Review from: AVault

Halo is probably one of the best known and most reviewed titles on the market today. It seems like everybody has played it, even if they don�t personally own an Xbox. I went over to my brother�s house and got my first feel of Halo as it poured off of his 36� television screen. I really enjoyed what I was able to play in the couple of hours I was there, but one thought kept lurking in the back of my mind: �Man, this would be a lot better if I could use a mouse!� Fortunately, developers Gearbox and Bungie heard those types of cries, and now Halo: Combat Evolved has finally been unleashed onto the PC.

In Halo, you don the armor of the Master Chief; a war-hardened soldier that only comes out when the going gets really tough. The Earth is at war with a mysterious race called the Covenant and as the game opens, a Halcyon-class cruiser from Earth, the Pillar of Autumn, has dropped out of warp badly damaged. Worse yet, the Autumn is being pursued by a Covenant fleet. The Master Chief is given the mandate to get the ship�s main computer construct, Cortana, away from the cruiser as the captain crashes the battered Pillar of Autumn on a strange ring-shaped object (later to be known as Halo). You must get Cortana off of the Autumn and then keep yourself alive long enough figure out what secrets Halo hides.

Your first view through the eyes of the Master Chief comes after he�s been woken up from a cryogenically frozen sleep. After a short �systems analysis� where you get the feel for the controls and are given a couple of other basic workouts, you are summoned to the bridge where you receive your marching orders concerning Cortana. The ship is already under attack and you have no weapon. Dodging fire along the way, you eventually acquire a gun, and then the heat really gets turned up.

Your main opposition is the Covenant. While there is no explanation as to why Earth�s forces and the Covenant are at each other�s throats, the Covenant does go to great lengths to see the Master Chief stopped in his tracks. Covenant troops include an array of fighters including diminutive Grunts, cagy Elite, and brutish Hunters. Grunts are the easiest to kill, and they tend to run away with their hands waving in the air when they have been shot a couple of times. Elites and Hunters are a different story, however. Elites have an energy shield that surrounds them much like the one your environment suit emits and are quick on their feet. Hunters are the lumberjacks of the group, relying on their brute strength as well as a wickedly powerful gun mounted on the end of one arm. The Covenant bands emphasize team work and play off of each member�s strengths in a coordinated effort to drop your health to zero.

As you make your way through Halo�s story, you will eventually run into the Flood. The Flood are a grotesque display of uber-evil wrought in flesh that fight both you and the Covenant. They aren�t the strategic tacticians in a conflict that the Covenant are, but what they lack in brilliant battle-sense, they make up for in sheer volume. Their numbers include the scurrying Ranger, the bulbous Carrier, and hulking soldiers. The Rangers look like short-tentacled jellyfish and scurry toward their target in large groups, trying to break down the defenses of their foes en mass. Carriers waddle forward at a rival and explode when they get in proximity, causing splash damage and spewing more Rangers from inside them into the fray. Soldiers carry weapons, jump into a brawl with melee attacks, and take a great deal of punishment before their threat is eliminated. The Flood come in relentless waves, and can make getting from one point to the next a serious challenge.

Of course, you�re not defenseless against your enemies; you have an arsenal of conventional and alien weaponry at your disposal to aid in the kicking of tail and the taking of names. Ballistic armaments like the auto-rifle, shotgun and pistol start you on your way, but you eventually run into heavier gadgetry in the form of rocket launchers and sniper rifles. You can pick up the guns left by fallen bad guys, and with the bagging of your first Covenant, you have access to their energy rifles, energy pistols and needle guns. Offensive firepower is almost never complete without some type of explosive ordinance, so fragmentation and plasma grenades fill this calling. In something of a welcome reminder of 3D Realms� Shadow Warrior, the plasma grenades act as sticky bombs if your aim is good enough to land one on an opponent. There�s nothing they can do to shake them, and the timer does run short.

Another aspect of staying alive in the face of those who would like to see you otherwise is your environmental suit. The Master Chief wears it exclusively throughout his missions, and it helps keep him alive by emitting a self-recharging energy shield. This shield can be worn down by fire and bypassed completely if you�re standing too close to an explosion, but largely it�s your best defense against getting your own toe-tag. If your shield level dips too low, the environmental suit warns you with an audible beeping noise. That�s your signal to find cover quick. A couple of seconds without a plasma bolt to the brainpan is enough for your suit to get its act together and for your shields to again reach maximum levels.

Drivable vehicles are available to help in defense, offense and just plain getting over the fence. There are four modes of transportation in Halo that can be manned: the Ghost, the Banshee, the Scorpion and the much ballyhooed Warthog. The Warthog is a nimble and versatile all-terrain vehicle that has a space for a passenger who provides the reason to call it �riding shotgun,� as well as a place on the back for someone to operate a Vulcan cannon. The Scorpion is a tank that packs a whollup out of its main turret as well as a secondary fire mechanism for a machine gun. Up to six soldiers can climb aboard the Scorpion and ride along. Both the Ghost and the Banshee are brought to the table by the Covenant. The Ghost is a form of speeder bike that fires energy bolts and has a lot of get-up-and-go, while the Banshee is a glider that can fire either energy bolts or devastating fuel rods as it soars above the heads of the enemy. In addition to packing heavy firepower, each of the implements of locomotion can devastate a crowd of baddies by going in Carmageddon style.

Graphics: It�s been almost two years since the debut of Halo on the Xbox, and, unfortunately, the age is starting to show. Halo still looks great and has the added benefit on the PC of being able to push resolutions up to 1600x1200 - well past its television-based confines. Still, many of the textures look faded and decidedly low-res, and character models are rough around the edges. This leads to an overall visual sensation you might expect from something fished out of the bargain bin from years gone past. This downside doesn�t in any way sink the ship, but it�s dated enough that occasionally you�ll be whipping along, fragging everything in sight, and then you�ll see something that will make you stop and say to yourself, �Geez, that texture panel really looks flat.� If Halo would have come out on the PC nearer its original release on the Xbox, it would have been more state-of-the art, and the crows feet it�s getting around the eyes would have been far less noticeable.
Getting Halo up to the higher resolutions requires a burly gaming rig. My setup is slightly above the median in the current market, and when getting into a frenetic battle or into large open spaces using resolutions north of 1024x768, I started to get noticeable chop. The game ran without a hitch at the lower resolutions, but there seemed to be some sort of threshold.

All that said, Halo is still surprisingly sturdy for a nearly two-year-old game. It stands up handily to most titles currently out there, even if it lacks the high gloss polish of stuff like the more recent Unreal releases. One of the stand-out aspects is the lighting that neatly diffuses across surfaces in a startlingly realistic manner. No matter the source, be it fixed in the environment, radiating from energy weapons, blaring out of the front of the Warthog, or from your own flashlight, light plays very naturally and impressively. Explosions, too, have a great visual appeal, as do death animations and rag-doll physics.

Interface: Halo�s interface is pretty standard fare for first-person shooters, yet it excels because it keeps things clean and uncomplicated instead of adding unnecessary decorative borders and displays. You just get the basics: an aiming reticule in the center and ammo display, health meter and personal radar in the corners. Also, each discrete HUD component is rendered at about 50 percent opacity, so nothing ever completely blocks your view unless it�s a Covenant Hunter that got too close.

There are configuration options aplenty. Mouse and keyboard controls are fully customizable, and there are scads of audio and video options to fiddle with. You can even configure Halo to work with a PC gamepad, if you choose. The only thing missing is a level editor for the mod community. This feature is slated for a future release and should give Halo some added longevity.

Gameplay: Halo is just as phenomenal on the PC as it ever was on its mother system, and is a joy to play. Directing the Master Chief with the mouse and keyboard feels extremely natural. Added to that is the pitch-perfect blend of realistic and arcade physics that govern the maneuverability of the Warthog. After you grab its wheel for the first time, you can only smile in anticipation every time you see another one later on. It�s a giddy feeling that only comes when you�re wallowing in pure pleasure.

One downer is that in-game saves are relegated to the crusty old save point system. There�s a menu option to manually save a checkpoint, but that simply files the most recent checkpoint away for later retrieval as opposed to having it overwritten with the next checkpoint. The save system does cause a few moments of frustration as you work your way back through areas you�ve already finished, but checkpoints are frequent and generally save about as often as you�d find yourself doing if a quicksave option had been available.

About half way through the game, another bugaboo rears its head: monotony. In juxtaposition to the early levels, which feel open even as you�re funneled from Point A to Point B, the later maps seem to be comprised of one solitary corridor. It�s the same complaint that was leveled against Halo during its maiden voyage into the market, but it hasn�t changed. The single-player side of the experience just hits a lull, and you have to grind your way through a foray into the Land of the Dull and back to some really good gaming. Fortunately, the Halo experience redeems itself, revisiting the glory of its first half, and ends on a very high note I won�t spoil for anyone who hasn�t gotten there yet.

Multiplayer: The delay in bringing Halo to the PC was attributed primarily to a retooling of the multiplayer segment of the game. They made the levels bigger and added other details that give the PC version something to call its own. The extra time was well spent. There are five core gameplay modes: King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, Race, Oddball and Slayer. Each of these is similar to other multiplayer offerings, but several variations have been provided on each theme to give almost 40 play styles out of the box.

One of the fun changes is the addition of a Warthog with a rocket launcher in place of the Vulcan cannon. That�s a hoot when going up against human opponents. Just having the option of using vehicles in the fray is a goose to normal online action, and helps set Halo away from the pack, even if the available game modes are well proven.

Hooking into a multiplayer bout is easy. The built-in browser works very well at identifying a plethora of matches sortable by any category you wish such as ping time, game name or game style. All you do once you know where you�d like to jack in is click the �Join Game� button and you�re off. Hosting a tournament yourself is equally as simple. You pick your medium (LAN or Internet), a starting map and finally a game type; then you�re in business.

Some minor complaints are the inability to skin yourself with anything other than different color variations of the Master Chief�s environment suit and again, the lack of a level editor. The biggest issue with Halo�s multiplayer segment is the lag. I wanted to score this criterion higher, but the lagginess in almost every round I played on the Internet was at times wholly unreasonable. Players and vehicles jump from one place to the next, and your own animation grinds sometimes to a momentary halt while you�re repositioned on the map. The problem seems to affect every Internet game server I competed on, even the servers that reported the lowest ping times. This is most annoying because I�m positively addicted to Halo�s Capture the Flag matches, and I�ve experienced some regrettable and unnecessary deaths in critical moments as a result of the dreaded lag. Multiplayer on a local LAN seems to be devoid of this same issue, but I didn�t have the opportunity to cram the maximum of 16 players onto a map to see how that would affect the performance.

Sound FX: I only ran into one minor problem with the sound effects, and judging from the Bungie message boards, it�s fairly common with Creative Labs-based cards. The issue is that as cutscenes play, the dialog near the end of each speaking part cuts off. This is annoying, but not life threatening, and other voice-overs and effects don�t seem to be affected. Otherwise, the audible environment is stunning on every level from the voice acting to the bursts of your auto-rifle. Every aspect of the sonance is crystal clear, immersive and satisfying. Halo also supports 5.1 sound, if you�re so accoutered.

Musical Score: Halo�s main story has a moody and desperate tone, with music that accompanies the experience fitting like a glove. The orchestral scores are understated but of the same caliber as any Hollywood feature out there. (It�s even available as a separate 26 cut soundtrack.) The intensity level of the pieces befits the scenes in which you find yourself engaged, and when you�re in a place that�s calmer than a haggard firefight, the music follows suit. All in all, the score glistens with the shine of a high production value.

Intelligence & Difficulty: The most invigorating feature that Halo shows up with is the AI. The Covenant are some of the most lifelike AI enemies since the commando teams in Half-Life. They dodge your fire, use the environment to hide from your shots, try to flank you, lay down cover fire and follow up with grenades, and back off when they�re over matched, allowing their shields to recharge before coming at you again. It�s almost like having human-controlled players on the receiving end of your rifle. This is in stark contrast to the Flood, who seem to be bent on simply overwhelming you. Even then, it feels more like pack behavior as opposed to straight-across Serious Sam-style engagements; however, given the choice, I still vastly prefer going up against the Covenant.

Difficulty is scaleable, and you can choose different levels to suit your personal constitution. There are four grades in all, with the default being the second-tier position of �normal.� The �legendary� level is the real challenge, as the opposition is even more plentiful than in other modes, and they fight with a noticeably heightened aggressiveness and ferocity.

Overall: Halo: Combat Evolved is a solid game with a stern hold on the pleasure centers of anybody who likes first-person shooters. Even though it came at the cost of a protracted delay getting to the PC, Bungie, Gearbox and Microsoft are to be lauded for the effort that went into making Halo come into its own away from the Xbox. It doesn�t set any new standards, but it�s great fun in both the single- and multiplayer sides of the house. Hopefully, it will prove itself in large enough sales figures to warrant a similar visitation from Halo 2 over on the PC.