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On July 21, 1999, Mac C.E.O. Steve Jobs announced Bungie Studio's new real-time strategy title, Halo, would launch simultaneously on the Mac and Windows PC. By E3 2000 the game had evolved into a third-person action-shooter and showed off it's graphical prowess in one of the industries most infamous trailers.
Flash-forward to late June 2000 where Microsoft announced they had acquired Bungie and the title was evolved again into the flagship title for the new Microsoft console. The game was both a critical and commercial success and in late 2003, Gearbox Software released the PC port with added content. How does Halo: Combat Evolved measure today? Charge up your over shield and jump in to find out... (Spoiler Free)
 When it was announced at E3 2002 that Halo would finally see life on the PC reactions were mixed. The game had been released for over a year, graphically was no longer impressive and was now considerable different in form from it's original announced genre. The subtitle, Combat Evolved, is humorous considering the number of times the game changed its format. From RTS - to 3rd Person Shooter - to Xbox FPS. However, the game itself had the ability to shine on the PC by adding a wealth of new content, opening up to the map community and finally give gamers the opportunity to experience Halo online.
Halo's story is a sci-fi human-survival adventure. You are the Master Chief, a last-of-his kind (super human) Spartan soldier battling the ferocious Covenant (a conglomerate of alien races), hell-bent on destroying civilization. You crash land an escape pod onto a large ring-world where the Covenant seem to be in search of something. The battle rages on from on board your fallen ship, The Pillar of Autumn, on a Covenant craft for a rescue mission and through the ins and outs of the Halo's massive outdoor and indoor environments. It is up to you to find out what Halo is, why the Covenant are there and your A.I. colleague, Cortana, from falling into the enemy hands with the location of Planet Earth embedded into her memory system.
Halo is an interesting game to grade graphically. The environments and weapons modeling in the game are still beautiful and a joy to look at, but the character models and animations have not held up well in the least. Halo: Combat Evolved is marred by blurred textures and clunky characters that move in a robotic fashion, regardless if they are our favorite Spartan soldier or not. Still the levels, including the over 20 multiplayer maps that ship standard with the game, are beautiful.
In recent history no other game's soundtrack has gripped me the way Halo has, and it certainly continues to shine today. The music from Bungie's Marty O'Donnell and producer Michael Salvatori are epic and dramatically tragic at times. It truly is one of the best soundtracks ever composed. The guns, explosions and voice-acting in Halo are all also top-notch and truly add to the experience of the fantastic storyline.
  
The wealth of options in Halo is fantastic, from multiple weapons, great vehicles (which switch the game into a 3rd person mode) and terrific enemy A.I. What the game lacks is variety. There are only three main Covenant enemy types and other enemies later in the game. The last two levels of the game are nearly identical from start to finish, you go through Halo's underbelly and it's as if the arcitects that designed it did so on the train-ride to work that morning. Every room is the same but inverted, then inverted... you get the point. It really is disappointing. The game's final level is fun and ripped right of an action movie and the ending leaves you satisfied, while hoping for more. Halo set a standard for controls for first-person shooters on consoles; the PC controls aren't innovative in that respect but are fully customizable and work well. Halo also set the standard for how health was done in games; the Master Chief has a recharging energy-shield (borrowed technology from the Covenant enemy) which recharges after you make your strategic retreat. This charging energy mechanic has since become standard in a variety of shooters from Call of Duty 2 to the new Shadowrun. Also something rare from a shooter is the element of only being able to carry two weapons at once a welcome aside from games like Doom where you can seem to carry an entire army's worth of weaponsry and this element adds to the strategy. The enemy A.I. is fantastic, they use cover effectively and attack in waves and the A.I. translates well when you have your own teammates.
When you're complete the 10-12 hour single-player game you can jump into a wealth of online modes with nearly two dozen maps. The online component in Halo also adds new weapons to the game, some of which still are not available in Halo 2 or in the Halo 3 Beta (flamethrower, covenant fuel-rod cannon) and add usable Banshee's to the game. You still play as the Master Chief but you can customize the color of your amour and play basics like deathmatch (slayer), team deathmatch, capture the flag, oddball (hold the skull the longest). The game goes deeper even by being able to set parameters within those modes. Jumping on today I did not expect to find a soul playing the first Halo on PC, but there are still dozens of rooms filled with gamers. Sure, you die instantaneously... but it's still a fun experience. Add to the fact that Gearbox released the free Custom Edition add-on to Halo for PC and you can download community made maps, modes and even weapons! It's still a thriving community and still a blast to play with up to 16 other players.
The presentation of the game suffers greatly from the repetitive level design which leads to moments of boring game play elements, but overall the game holds up well to today's high standards.Â
Halo for PC might not look gorgeous anymore, but it's undeniable that the game play is some of the best the genre has to offer. Halo's story and overall mechanics are truly one of this genre's best, right along side Half-Life and the original Doom series. Unfortunately one of the best elements of Halo on Xbox were ditched in this port, the co-op mode, but Halo is still well worth the price of admission if you don't have an Xbox and have yet to play this true classic. If you have? Don't bother, it's more of the same with higher-res textures.
Single-Player Better Than: Halo 2
Multi-Player Not As Good As: Halo 2
Master Chief Is: A total badass
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