Sound: 10
Gameplay: 10
Replay Value: 10
Reviewer's Tilt: 10
Overall: 10
For those of you who like depth in video games, then Halo is your best friend. The single player mode is engaging enough, but you can also do it with 2 people, in a co-op. Yes, you can beat the Campaign mode with another person. This is exceptionally helpful because Halo is not always an easy game. Even playing in Easy mode gets rather tricky toward the final portion of the game, so the gameplay's difficulty level is extremely well-balanced. Enemies are super-smart, dodging a lot of your attacks. They will use shields to block all of your fire, and they're not perfect shots. All those other first person shooter games have AI that is super-deadly, and can pop you in the back of the skull at 100 yards. Well, Halo is not one of those kinds of games. It actually gives the player a chance, and you will not find yourself using cheat codes to advance to the next stage.
Halo is a squad-based first person shooter. If you've ever played Ghost Recon, you know what that's all about. You can't issue commands to them, but you can take their ammo and help them take out aliens. They will hitch a ride in vehicles with you, and act like actual humans. They will work with you to take out the creatures with tactic. One of my soldiers shot at the enemies, distracting them, while I walked behind them and flanked them. It was one of the most amazing moments I've had with video games, and I felt triumphant. These feelings alone is why I play Halo.
Without a doubt, you've heard about vehicles in Halo. You can drive a Banshee (an alien spacecraft), a Ghost (an alien hovercraft), a Warthog (a human Jeep-like vehicle) and the Scorpion, which is a human tank. Well, that's only half the fun. The soldiers will actually get a ride on your tank, or sit in the gunner's seat of your Warthog and blast away at Grunts. When you play with 2 players, you could have your friend drive while you attack, or you could sit in the passenger seat and shoot your gun out the side of the Warthog. Your selection of guns is not very vast, but it's good enough to get you by because of the weapon effects, which ultimately steal the show. You can fling a plasma grenade down a low-lit corridor and watch the hallway light up with blue. The levels start you out with an assault rifle and a pistol, but you can get rid of weapons and replace them along the way. You can steal the Grunt weapons too, and hijack their rides.
Halo has a huge advantage over other console FPS games: It's powered by the powerful Xbox console. As you play Halo, you may notice that the graphics have a very powerful, PC-like feel to them. That's intentional. No other next-gen console could have made Halo possible without low resolution textures and less interesting lighting. Some may argue that Halo would have looked better on the PC, but I think that the Xbox is fine for now. In fact, it has the best visuals I've seen. Yes, they even look better than Resident Evil on Gamecube. Why? Because Resident Evil's graphics were pre-rendered and non-interactive, Halo's are not; they are delivered in real-time. So are the CGs. Halo runs at a constant 30 frames a second. Not the 60 frames you might expect from the Xbox, but the framerate isn't noticeable because it's constant. The lighting effects are great, with huge stony cliffs leaving a shadow on the ground below. The game is highly detailed too. An example of this is the grass. You can actually see it! It's not the usual "green solid color" that other video games has given you, it's actually photorealistic grass. The beach sand is also pathetically detailed to perfection. One thing that was nice about the game was the flashlight that you carry around. When you shine it on rocks on the ground, some very nice shadows come to life. The trees have bark, the rocks have ridges, the hills have rocks. And for once, a video game that makes trees look like trees! Basically, Halo is a huge graphical achievement that can only be improved upon in the sequel.
Its graphics and gameplay are more than enough of a reason to buy Halo, but that's not all the game has to offer. The sounds are perhaps the best yet. The shooting sounds are lifelike, and the voicework sounds like it was ripped right out of a blockbuster film. The characters are actually quite serious-sounding, and the Monitor at the end of the game is pretty clever sounding. Master Chief, the player, has a gruff voice and sounds like Solid Snake. Your squad has different voices and personalities. Some of them will be scared, others will laugh and shout "Woo hoo!" when you ramp your Warthog over a hill. The alien weapons actually sizzle and burn your hands after they overheat. You can hear the ping of the pin when you pull it out of a grenade and huck it. Halo's sounds are just as realistic as its amazing visuals.
Besides co-op, you can play with 2 people in multiplayer. There are many levels to choose from, and they all have unique features about them. For example, no level looks alike, and have different weapons and power-ups to choose from. But if you don't like the multiplayer settings, you can change them! Each map is customizable from the weapons to the vehicles. You and your opponant have lots of places to duke it out, like rivers, deserts, snowy mountains and beaches. Of course, there are many modes to choose from, including your standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, invisible players, snipers, and way too many to list here. Multiplayer is flat out amazing and features a lot of memorable maps such as Hang em High and Blood Gulch.
I think I've mentioned every reason why you should buy this game. If there's only one Xbox game you can get in your life, make it Halo. There will never be a better Xbox game ever. Halo raises the FPS genre to a new extreme, making it one of 2001's best games.