First-person shooters are just getting started on consoles with the release of Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life on other consoles, Halo has to put up quite a fight really if it want's to get some respect from the first person shooter scene. Everyone who's reading this review probably knows the storyline but here's a reminder: Halo is set in the future where Humans are battling an alien race known as the Covenant, your overall mission is to lure the aliens away from Earth whilst you are stuck on this ancient ring-world due to being shot-down. So as you can imagine there's quite a lot of gameplay involved and the game is quite long full of missions and the like.

As this is a console game you don't have the usual mouse and keyboard to use (well not at the moment) so the X-Box controller will have to do. I admit that for a control pad the layout was rather good everything was at your fingertips, the triggers fired weapons, the analogue stick controlled movement and other buttons were used to jump change weapons etc. The movement is funny at first but you get used to it weapons are very easy to use, the only thing I don't like is jumping and changing weapons they feel like they've been assigned the wrong buttons for default and need to be changed really. But apart from that that's a bloody good attempt for FPS controls on the X-Box pad.

Graphics look above average for the X-Box; Halo looks good but doesn't boast anything brilliant but the graphics are good enough to support the gameplay. But some of the worlds are quite big and it's possible to explore anywhere in the level whilst still maintaining good graphical quality too. You don't just walk around in Halo; you're given vehicles too which will take you from place to place also adding extra levels too by travelling. The weapons are fairly good, we don't have a BFG or a Redeemer but there are your basic weapons and some fairly nice ones too but nothing fancy.

Halo also like Half-Life gives you a tutorial at the beginning and it forfils a lot of stuff to introduce to FPS's, as well as the X-Box controller moving, jumping firing weapons etc. The AI is very intelligent within Halo I started one level outdoors and I was invaded by the Covenant and no matter what I tried they just followed me trying to kick my ass!! So pint being the computer is getting close to matching the intelligence of a human being; quite good! There's also a multiplayer mode to tangle with it, it looks quite good with a strong line-up of weapons (despite there being no BFG's etc) and arenas to boot and X-Box can easily support the 4-player split screen needed at a nice graphical rate too.

So in my view if you are a FPS lover and you can't get enough of them then this is another FPS with a good story and weapons and graphics to boot. But if you're just getting into FPS it's one to try too, the control pad makes it ideal for newbies to play at a competitive level. Halo has the best of both worlds it has a brilliant multiplayer and story too but is let down only slightly by the feel of repeated backgrounds whilst playing and the feeling that this has been done ever so well before by Half-Life and Deus-Ex, but still it keeps up a good standard not bad for a console only FPS.