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''Halo: Combat Evolved'', or simply '''''Halo''''', is a First-person Shooter (FPS) Video Game , created by the Microsoft -owned Bungie Studios . It was one of the Launch Game s released for the Xbox gaming system on November 15 , 2001 , and is considered to be that platform's " Killer App ", or must-have " Killer Game ." ''Halo'' was released as a PC and Mac port later on. ''Halo'' has sold several million copies since its release on November 15 2001 alongside the Xbox console. The game is widely considered to be one of the best, or most influential, first-person shooter games of all time, rivaling such classics as '' GoldenEye 007 '' and '' Half-Life ''. Many others see it as a generic shooting game with little influentual value. For example, the usually harsh Edge magazine gave it a full score of ten out of ten, its fourth in the magazines 12-year history. Only its sequel, '' Halo 2 '', has sold more units for the Xbox video game console. Nevertheless, ''Halo'' has its criticisms; some have labeled its game play as repetitive, an element Bungie themselves acknowledge as a fault of some of the later levels. In ''Halo'', the player assumes the role of Master Chief , a human Cyborg "super-soldier" with MJOLNIR Battle Armor accompanied by Cortana , an AI construct that resides in the neural implant between the suit and the Master Chief's brain. The game is relatively simple to learn when compared to other first person shooters, and has been praised for its engaging story. Although ''Halo'' has a well-regarded campaign (single player) mode, its multiplayer function gives much more replayability to the game. See the below. The game does not support Microsoft's broadband gaming service '', fully supports Xbox Live. Many FPS games (on various platforms) following in the wake of Halo's initial release have been, whether erroneously or not, hailed as "''Halo''-killers", so great has the impact been not only on the Xbox community but the gaming community as a whole. STORYLINE ''Halo'' As a literary side note, the design of Halo borrows heavily from the ring-shaped Ringworld s of Larry Niven 's novels. The size of "Halo", however, is more consistent with the Orbitals of Iain M. Banks ' Culture novels. In describing the geography of "Halo", the game also borrows terms such as "up spin" from Niven's novels (e.g. Cortana refers to a site "... on a desert plateau roughly three hundred kilometers up spin"). The unorthodox naming of spaceships in ''Halo'' (e.g. "The Truth and Reconciliation") recalls similar names taken by Culture Ships . Synopsis Like previous Bungie releases, such as the '' Marathon '' series, ''Halo'' has an intricate plot. The titular Halo refers to an enormous (exactly 10,000 kilometers in diameter) artificial Space Habitat which is discovered by the human warship '' Pillar Of Autumn ''. The central character, the SPARTAN supersoldier Master Chief Spartan-117, is aboard this vessel at the start of the game. The ''Pillar of Autumn'' exits slip-space near the Gas Giant Threshold, its Satellite ,Basis, and a mysterious ring shaped space station that orbits Threshold at a Lagrange Point between Threshold and Basis. The ring, called " Halo " by the Covenant (an alliance of alien races at war with humanity), is obviously artificial and teeming with life. A Covenant fleet, however, is also present, and a subsequent battle heavily damages the ''Pillar of Autumn''. Captain Keyes initiates The Cole Protocol —- all records of Earth's location are erased, and the Autumn crash lands onto Halo. The ship's AI construct, Cortana, leaves the ''Autumn'' with the Master Chief in an Escape Pod which also crash lands on Halo. Game play begins in earnest with the Master Chief's escape from the ''Autumn'', and continues upon landing. With the help of his fellow marines and the ship's Artificial Intelligence , Cortana, the Master Chief discovers the secrets of Halo while fighting off The Covenant . The first levels of the game deal with an attempt to reach Halo's control center to uncover its purpose. While in Halo's control center, Cortana discovers something, something that even the Covenant are afraid of, and remains in the control center while she sends Master Chief to find Captain Keyes. It is soon discovered that the Covenant had accidentally released The Flood , a parasitic race that gets its name from its nature. The Flood overwhelm, infest, then spread. The Flood sweep across Halo and destroy human and Covenant forces positioned on it. The release of the Flood prompts 343 Guilty Spark , an eccentric AI responsible for monitoring and maintaining the ring world's systems, to get the Master Chief to activate Halo's defense system. This defense system is in fact a pulse weapon that, when fired, would wipe out all life in the galaxy large enough to be hosts for the Flood. Technically, that installation only has a maximum effective radius of 25,000 Light Year s, but the pulse would trigger other installations as well, effectively killing all life in the galaxy. This system is designed to stop the Flood from spreading through the universe if they escape the confinement of Halo by the only way possible: starving the Flood of any life source large enough to sustain them. Naturally, this would wipe out humanity as well, and so the final levels of the game revolve around the Master Chief's attempts to destroy Halo before it fires. The game leaves the story open to further developments, with the revelation that there are most likely several Halo ring worlds in the galaxy, due to Halo being numbered Installation 04 by 343 Guilty Spark. (In ''Halo 2'', the number of rings was revealed to be seven, counting the ring from the first game.) Characters See Also: List of Halo characters Back story See Also: Halo universe Unreleased versions Early versions of ''Halo'' with slightly different storylines were presented at both Macworld 1999 and at E3 2000. In these versions of the game, the Player is a Marine Recon Unit of the Human Empire. Pursued by Alien Covenant ships, the Human ship is destroyed and crashes on Halo and the player must defeat Humankind's sworn enemy through a Guerrilla War over air, land, and sea above and below the surface of Halo. PLATFORMS Prior to Bungie 's takeover by Microsoft , the initial release of ''Halo'' was planned for the Mac OS and Windows platforms; in fact, the game was first previewed at the Macworld Conference & Expo , New York , in 1999. It was also originally planned as a Real-time Strategy Game with the twist that you could control the character manually instead of clicking on the character and then clicking where they would go. However, the developers were having so much fun with just ''controlling'' the character that they decided to make it a First-person Shooter . Following the takeover, ''Halo'' was redesigned exclusively for Microsoft's Xbox Game Console and released on November 15 , 2001 in North America , on 14 March 2002 in Europe and Australia and 25 April 2002 in Japan . On September 30 , 2003 -- almost two years after the American Xbox release -- a port (developed by Gearbox Studios) of ''Halo'' was released for Windows, followed by a release for Mac OS X on December 11 , 2003 . The port released for the PC comes with slightly altered multiplayer maps when compared to the original Xbox release. The Windows and Mac OS X version do have some problems, however, largely stemming from its Porting . While the plot and content remained the same, there were severe frame rate issues (though in terms of generating 3D models it would simply be a slightly slower than normal game, the presence of nearby decals and/or 2D objects, in particular muzzle flashes and blood stains, dramatically slowed the game down). When special effects and decals were removed or lessened significantly, frame rates typically were raised to acceptable levels. Another porting-related flaw in the Mac version is that the control/shift/option keys cannot be mapped to in-game commands. GAMEPLAY ''Halo''
Powerups There are three types of powerups available in ''Halo'':
Allies/Enemies Three factions of allies/enemies are encountered on Halo: the Covenant, the Flood, and the Forerunner Sentinels.
Weapons See Also: List of weapons in Halo: Combat Evolved All usable weapons in ''Halo: Combat Evolved'' belong to either the Covenant or the UNSC (humans). The player can only carry two weapons at a time, in addition to up to eight grenades (four fragmentation grenades and four plasma grenades). Covenant weapons are better suited for downing shields, and typically fire faster than their human-constructed counterparts. With the exception of the needler, they do not require ammunition or reloading; instead, each weapon comes with its own Battery . Once this battery is depleted, the weapon must be discarded. Covenant weapons can also overheat if fired too often, after which they must be given time to cool down before they can be used again. Human weapons, on the other hand, require both ammunition and constant reloading. They are better suited against unshielded opponents and do not overheat. The influence of the '' and '' Aliens ''. Vehicles See Also: List of vehicles in the Halo universe The Halo games let the player drive, pilot, and board a variety of vehicles during single and multiplayer gameplay, making their maneuverability, firepower and speed available to the player. When driving or piloting a vehicle, the game switches to a third-person perspective. Vehicles in ''Halo: Combat Evolved'' were indestructible (except for active Covenant vehicles in the Campaign mode), and the only way to take control of an occupied vehicle was to kill the driver. Also, when the vehicle flipped over, the entire crew was ejected from it. In '' Halo 2 '', the vehicle system was changed, adding the ability to recover from a flip and to hijack a manned vehicle, as well as making all pilotable vehicles completely destructable. In the campaign component of ''Halo 2'', many levels contain a significantly higher number of vehicles than the first ''Halo'' game, due to the addition of damage and degradation which has the effect of each vehicle lasting for shorter periods of time, and the increased emphasis on vehicles in gameplay. Easter eggs ''Halo'' contains a number of Easter Eggs , the most famous of which is the "Megg". A series of clues were handed out by the girlfriend (Meg) of Jaime Griesemer, the developer who put the Megg into ''Halo''. In fact, the egg was originally intended as a "gift" only to be seen by her. A walkthrough to unlock the Megg can be found here . Aside from the Megg, many other Easter Eggs have been found. These include :
Exploits A number of small glitches in the game have made room for exploits, where said glitches are often (but not always) used to the advantage of the player. One such secret is the "Blood Gulch Hack", where it is possible for the player to jump inside a rock using a Warthog or Scorpion tank. However, the secrets are not limited to the multiplayer maps. One example of a campaign map secret is in the level "Assault on the Control Room". Towards the end of the level, the character passes through a large, open canyon area on a narrow bridge. It is possible to jump to the huge dividing pillar that runs the length of the control room structure below. From here the player can climb either up or down (down provides a sniper rifle and health packs under the bottom of the pillar). Whichever direction is taken, no more enemies should be encountered for the rest of the level. Another exploit, albeit not very major, is the ability to "weapon-mix". Weapon-mixing is achieved on single-player maps, by activating a checkpoint while in the middle of swapping weapons. One interesting mix is the MA5B Assault Rifle and the M6D Pistol. If one was to be wielding the Pistol, and swap it for the MA5B while a checkpoint was activated, they would usually be left with an image of the Rifle only halfway or so pointed forward. If they then fired / melee attacked / threw a grenade, they would then have the weapon pointed normally. However, while looking like an Assault Rifle, and meleeing the same way, the mixed weapon fires Pistol shots and can zoom in like the pistol. It also has the ammunition capacity (12) of the Pistol. Other interesting weapon mixes are possible too, however they are "deactivated" when the player changes weapons (Y button on Xbox) or picks up a new weapon. MULTIPLAYER See Also: Multiplayer in Halo: Combat Evolved While 2-4 player multiplayer on a single Xbox is available, it feels barren and empty when faced with the prospect that 16 players can play together in one ''Halo'' game over a '', lets experienced modders create their own maps and play on them over the Internet with other people who have downloaded the map. The is a prominent feature of ''Halo'' multiplayer - an extremely accurate, quick-firing weapon which could kill in three shots (as long as the last shot is in the head). The difficulty in aiming, as well as the requirement to lead shots for the pistol and the sniper rifle, made the weapons a prominent aspect of competitive ''Halo'' play, in which skilled players could outkill comparatively weaker players who were carrying weapons which, comparatively, inflicted more damage per shot, such as the rocket launcher. This set the game's weapons slightly off balance, however, and often resulted in many people using the pistol over any other weapon. While most of the other weapons such as the Plasma Rifle, Sniper Rifle and Shotgun all had specific uses, the pistol tended to overpower each of these weapons in all but the most extreme cases. The weapon respawn system also compelled a wave of players to use timers to determine the exact time weapons spawned, creating a map control scenario which defined team play. This is frowned upon by many people, who consider the use of non-game tools in the game defeats the purpose of skill based play, relegating it to what some refer to as "stopwatch gaming." Additionally, the Double-Melee (BLB) and Backpack Reload (X,X,Y) glitches were extremely useful, the first allowing extremely quick kills on close opponents, and the second keeping combat flowing by bypassing reloads. These are considered by some to be bad form, as it is exploiting a glitch which was unintentionally there. Major League Gaming helped spawn ''Halo'' tournaments, and continues today as an organizer of ''Halo 2'' and '' Super Smash Brothers '' tournaments. BOOKS As of December 2005, three books have been written based in the Halo universe, that are considered Canon by Bungie .
SOUNDTRACK The '' Halo Original Soundtrack '' was composed and produced by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori. The soundtrack has 26 songs and a 65:08 minute runtime. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS The PC version of ''Halo'' received an update, called '''', which was released by Gearbox Software . This update extends the game's multiplayer mode, and has a customizable map option in which you can design your own multiplayer maps using common 3D modeling tools. The next episode in the Halo story, Halo 2 , was released on November 9, 2004.1 There is also speculation that work may already have begun on Halo 3 for Microsoft's Xbox 360 , although no official announcement has yet been made.2 In August 2005, Microsoft announced that a ''Halo'' Movie was under development by Universal Studios . It is scheduled to be released in 2007. Halo 2 is currently being ported to Windows Vista , and will fully utilize DirectX10 . OTHER GAMES WITH ''HALO''-THEMED MODS A free Mod for the computer game series '' Battlefield 1942 ''/'' Vietnam '' called ''Homefront'' features ''Halo''-esque and original content for online multiplayer games with up to 64 players. HaloGen is a mod for . It turns the RTS into one with a Halo theme. Halo: The Conquerors is a mod for Age Of Empires II . It turns the RTS into one with a Halo theme. Halogrounds is a mod for . It turns the RTS into one with a Halo theme. There is a level on '''' called Battle Creek. It is a copy of Battle Creek from Halo: Combat Evolved and Beaver Creek from ''Halo 2''. This is a user created map, not from the creators of Counter-Strike. There are often halo "Clans" that play the game. It is a group of people who play under and alias such as (AGE)Sniper. One of the most famous clans is Clan Enigma. There is also an upcoming Metroid Prime mod of the game {Link without Title} REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS |
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