Video Games : Halo

Rating: - Halo is Magnificent- Part 2
(Continued from Halo is Magnificent-Part 1)

Here is a note about the two parts of Halo is Magnificent. Read part 1 first, do not skip right on to this.

Co-operative play is a very interesting and fun way of beating your way through missions and covenant. The saying that says: Two heads (or people) are better than one could have been written for the Halo Co-operative section. Because of tactical advantages and the fact that one person could stay back and the other person could run up, weilding a weak and common weapon, but going up in a 'Kamikazi' or suicide way.

Split Screen is even better. Within split screen there are different game types. Oddball, CTF (Capture the Flag), Slayer, Team Slayer and juggernaut, make the split screen Halo extremely fun and very interesting. Slayer is intense fighting, sniping, rocket-launching, shooting fun, and is absolutely deadly (get the joke!?). Team Slayer is basically Slayer Multiplied by two, since two teams are fighting each other. Of course, you can make uneven teams (3 vs. 1). Once again, the saying mentioned in the paragraph above applies, and you might ask your friend to cover you while you raid enemy territory. Oddball is when you have to get possesion of the ball and have to keep it for as long as possible. Capture the flag is basically explained in the name. You have to capture a flag. However, you have to defend your own flag, kill enemies that dare to get near you, melee enemies that challenge you when you have the flag, Kill enemies that get near your flag, destroy vehicles that might give your enemies a tactical advantage, and think quickly to succeed in winning a CTF match. Juggernaut is basically a 3 vs. 1 match, the 1 person is the juggernaut. Basically every time the juggernaut is killed, the person who killed him will become juggernaut. So the cycle continues, at the end the person with the most points wins.

The thing about Halo is that it is a absolutely different criteria from the other FPS (first person shooter) games. It's graphics are stunningly good, even for the current year (2005) and Halo was made in 2001, The game world is huge. In a way, the Xbox was all lost until this game came along, and it helped (re) revelutionize gaming and the Xbox, which looked like a fire that just started but was starting to get put out, until more firewood (Halo) came along to breathe extra life into the Xbox fire.

Just unless you are wondering, Halo 2 is the sequel of Halo and Halo should be played first in any case. The Halo 2 game is more like a new game than a Halo sequel, it has no health bar, more variety of weapons, you play half the game as a covenant. Review on Halo 2 will come. Overall, I think anyone who likes FPS should get Halo. Anyone who likes good graphics should get Halo. Anyone who wants a great multiplayer game should buy Halo. Anyone who wants 10 extremely hard missions and extremely detailed landscapes and worlds should get Halo. Anyone who wants to have a good time on a console, get Halo (and, or) an Xbox if you do not have one.

May Halo 3 have the gameplay of Halo, and the graphics of Halo 2.

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Rating: - Halo is Magnificent- Part 1
Halo is one games with the best graphics that I have seen in a long time. I tried out the graphics in the 3rd mission, the Truth and reconceliation. You start off with a sniper that could aim to 2x magnification and 10x magnification. I aimed at a marine's eye and zoomed it up to 10x. I could actually see the marine blinking his eyes, and trying to get a good angle on a shot at a grunt. (I didn't pull the trigger, just in case you are wondering!)

Halo is set in in a world so huge that you cannot roam to all places. The game unfolds when you, the Master Chief,a heavily armored and virtually invincible warrior, have to escape from a (human) ship, because of the invasion of the covenant, alien races. When you do, 1st mission is over. The next mission, called Halo, is many times longer, but is in the open air, not in a cramped space, so you can explore more. You control the master chief as he leads a war against the covenant, explores the land, tries to find survivors from the first mission, and even finds shocking and freaky things about Halo. (get the game and find out)

There are 10 missions in the game. 10 missions may sound easy and quick, but each mission (with the exception of the 1st-The pillar of autumn) consists of mini-missions, each with new objectives (for e.g. Get out of the Pillar of Autumn). It is virtually impossible to beat the game on higher difficulties (Heroic and Legendary) without experience. For example, for the average gamer, the first 3 missions will probably take around 5-10 hours.

Both you and the covenant have vehicles.
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Covenant Vehicles
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The covenant have two that you can use, the ghost and the banshee. The ghost is a hovercraft, and the banshee is a aerial assault vehicle. The ghost is fast and spins around a lot, and flies up and somersaults, spins, and etc. when you or the covenant drive into a tank, whether it is covenant or Human. The banshee is a slow but small aerial assault vehicle. It fires twin plasma cannons and an inaccurate feul rod cannon that takes 5 seconds to reload. I said earlier about covenant vehicles that you can use. There are two (or more) covenant vehicles that are extremely annoying. The wraith is an annoying armoured tank that can move easily and is purple or light blue in colour. It fires blue mortar rays. There is also a covenant dropship that fires plasma rays at you and is extremely annoying also. The most annoying thing is that they cannot be destroyed.
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Human Vehicles
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There are three human vehicles, though you can only pilot two. These two are the Warthog, a 4wd vehicle with room for three, one at the side seat, and one at the back with the gun turret mounted on the bonnet. It can get extremely quick or fast but it can easily roll over. The Scorpion, or 808 MB, is a tank. It is deadly. However, it has many bad points. It is slow, and is a big target, so covenants could easily stick grenades all over the tank blow it (along with you!) up. It also has a dead zone that you cannot reach if you are inside a tank, meaning that you can easily die in a tank. The good thing is that marines (your comrades) can ride the tank and protect you. The good points about it is that it is a demolisher. It can blow up covenant gun turrets, pancake covenant, demolish obstacles, and even crush vehicles such as the ghost, banshee, or warthog.

There are four types of covenant. They are the Grunts, the Jackals, the Elites, and the Hunters. The grunts are the most stupid but hilarious. They would run away shouting "We're Gonna Die!" or "Get away!!" or "Run for you life!!!" They are tiny and often rather useless. The jackals have shining energy sheilds that basically deflect almost everything. However, you can go up to them and melee, or hit them and they will easily fall. The Elites are strong, tall and powerful. They carry plasma rifles, annoying weapons. And Finally, the Hunter is both huge (12" feet tall) and powerful. It is basically invincible (I struck it 15 times with a sniper rifle and it did not even falter). It carries a huge sheild that you cannot destroy, the Hunter is strong and accurate: it carries a fuel rod cannon that can kill you in two shots.

There are all kinds of weapons on Halo, both Human and covenant. Some of them have ammunition, while some of them run on batteries. Luckily if your weapon is out of ammo or out of battery, you can easily press B(on default button settings)which is a melee attack. Melee attacks can be quite interesting! When you first play the game it is rather fun to see what weapons have huge lunges and which ones have tiny useless melee attacks. Covenant weapons are effective (ironically) on the covenant.Most of them are useful. There are plasma rifles, pistols, needlers, and plasma grenades that are sticky; they basically stick onto anything that they touch; for example, your face.There is also the fuel rod cannon, without which the game would be a lot easier, mainly because grunts and hunters (the covenant that have them) always seem to be at the most annoying place. The humans have more types of weapons. There are weapons from pistols to rocket launchers, the human equivalent of the covenant fuel rod cannon. Humans have fragmentation grenades that, unfortunately, do not have a sticking device, so they bounce around on the ground.

Halo Multiplayer is even better than the Singleplayer. You can choose to work together in missions, which can be extremely effective, or choose to try to destroy each other in multiplayer maps.

Continued in part 2

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Rating: - I can't wait for Halo 3
First Halo the original,let's face it, it's the only real reason anyone buys an XBOX except for Project Gotham. We all know fps's are the best games, we also know that this is the greatest fps right. So what does that mean, yup it's even better than Doom, Doom was the best game ever for years, Half Life was almost as good but it wasn't until the Halo games came out that something actually topped it. Every time I play Halo i feel really annoyed that they released Halo 2 cos it kind of took away the magnificance of the original. Halo was perfect, I don't care what anyone else thinks cos i'm right, then Halo 2 came out and everyone I know who has an XBOX bought it the first day it was out, I completed it the next day. The single player was brilliant, playing as the arbiter was cool too, I really liked the level on Earth, the only problems were that they brought back the flood, I thought maybe they could have used a new type of alien and the other thing was the ending, it had been going so well and the ending kinda spoiled it. I understand that they were setting it up for Halo 3 but they could have made it a bit longer.That was really annoying but it still gets 20/10 yeah you read that right, this is because i got XBOX Live soon after and the first game I played was Halo 2. It was one of the most amazing things i've ever done, i was talkin to some guys in America moments before i killed them.I will never get bored of this.

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Rating: - Halo and Halo2
When i first got Halo I thought it was really gd. The guns are terrific, the vehicles are really gd and the AI is really kl. Even the liitle enemys called "Grunts" run away screaming the minute they see u! However in the missions, the checkpoints were sometimes really hard to find. Sometimes you'll find yourself looking for a checkpoint for about 2 days! Also the multiplayer is extremlly gd. A personal favorate of mine would be "Hang 'em High" map with Slayer type on.
However, compared to Halo 2, I think that Halo was a better game overall. Yeah, yeah all the grafics and guns and stuff are better but what the heck! halo is still a classic game so I dont think it beats Halo2.
Halo 2 is an extremlly gd game. The grafics are so gd, the dual wielding is a brilliant idea and the game is just brilliant! I though, did not think that the multiplayer was all that gd. You still get the same guns but i think on multiplayer it is just way too easy to kill your opponent. Sometimes the player might have dual neederlers (which are trully brutal), or sometimes the player might have just a battle rifle. This , i think is a fair match. But not if you have just come back to life and then you feel a shower of bullets raining down on you from dual smg machine guns.
I also found some brillant glitches in Halo 2. On one map i got onto a crane about 1000ft above ground and sometimes i got passed an invisable wall and went all the way round the whole map!
Although from my reports you might think that i rate Halo 2 better than Halo, I dont.
I think if you would want to buy one or the other, I would choose Halo because its just a classic Xbox game and is just simply BRILLIANT!!!

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Rating: - The best game of all time
First, may I tell you that this may be the wisest gaming investment (after the Xbox, of course) that you will ever make. Halo is easily THE most original, fun, interesting, well scripted, nice to look at game in the world. It boasts its 9/10 in the Official XBOX Magazine, it whines of its XBOX exclusiveness, and boy, does it deserve to.
Gameplay. 5/5. Simple to master, and when you have it is such a game you will want to keep coming back and back and back for more. Watching a marine beat up an evil grunt is worth playing it, for the Graphics (5/5) are so well executed, animations well designed and dialog fitting every slot. Epic backgrounds are another excuse to play, just looking upwards at the ring world is enough to bring a tear to your eye.
Halo 2, however, made massive improvements on the originals graphics, but gameplay feels awkward, and killing the hideous brutes can never compare to sneaking up behind an elite and smacking it in the back. Gruesome, yes, but nevertheless enjoyable. EVery level has a Story (5/5) , with a few twists, turns, and a few "Hmmmm..." moments. WHen you finish that last level, you won't be able to contain your gasps, for you have completed the greatest game on Earth.
Now just do it on Legendary difficulty.

Ppumpkin