When I first heard about this game for the X-Box way back in the day, it was probably one of the key points to me buying the system. What I found with the game when I first played it was a set of excellent story line potential, weapons, enemies, computer intelligence and a rather killer audio interface to bring home a Starship Troopers type theme! Getting into the game is something that you have to have patience and time for, because depending on the level of difficulty, the game could take your hours to complete and reach the goals of being a Halo Master. Although the game is heavily laden with science fiction and war, the overall premise to the game is still to kill whatever looks like an enemy and ask questions later.

The story line is something that you would expect out of a good science fiction movie that centers around a planet being overrun by a huge alien force that wants nothing more than your eradication. Through the use of cut-scenes and scripted fire fights to give you the feel of an invasion and war, Halo delivers the story line in a rather interesting fashion that keeps the overall theme at a maximum. However, you may find that if you've played games such as Doom, you are pretty much playing a game that features you on a planet and the only way to win is to kill everything or be killed yourself. I won't ruin the overall story for you, but take a cross between Aliens and Starship Troopers and you'll have a good idea what to expect!

The game play is as simple as it gets in terms of what the game is supposed to represent. For the most part, you'll wander from place to place, picking up weapons and killing off the enemy all while avoiding a nasty death yourself. Through your adventures, you'll find weapons that range from a standard energy gun to much more powerful and nasty weapons that you would associate with a futuristic setting. As with most first person shooters, the weapons that you pick up and use all need ammunition and the traits, abilities and otherwise with them are different. A little bit of strategy is needed in order to use these weapons in the middle of a heavy fire fight, so be prepared to do plenty of running and hiding in the process.

Even though the game wants to give you the sense of teamwork and otherwise, your actual team really doesn't do much to help you and they are more or less cannon fodder for the aliens. Although the vehicles that you come across are pretty cool and they do offer a little bit more of a game play option, unless one of your computer controlled buddies is alive to drive it, you won't do much of the weapons blasting that the hype commercials give to you! More often than not, you'll find that it is you against the rest of the horde and if you're not careful, you may end up dead simply because the game difficulty can be ramped to a level that makes it nearly impossible not to get wasted.

Multiplayer is another feature of the game that I really didn't get into, but from what I was able to work with, you can get a few friends going and even get up to eight in any given game with a pair of linked up X-Box machines and a couple of televisions. Although this seems like a cool idea, there is a lack of computer controlled enemies and the action is limited a few weapons that you can hold through your assault. With that in mind, the game is mainly a one or two player adventure through the world of Halo and you'll need to have solo time in order to enjoy the game overall!

Control is a feature here in Halo that is done in a rather interesting fashion. Because of the way that the X-Box controller is set up, you may need to take a little time and get used to the way that the buttons are laid out and the overall interface. Movement and otherwise isn't that hard to take care of, but weapons aiming make take some time and patience to get used to. As always, you're moving through a world that has plenty of places to go and different environments to scale, so you'll have to make use of the different actions that your soldier can perform.

Visually, Halo is one hell of a stunning game that allows you to experience the world of Halo through the use of extensive locations and seemingly endless terrain. The fire fights that you see are astounding and at some points, you need to force your eyes away from the battles just to keep yourself from getting killed. However, something that I found with Halo is that there isn't any surrounding damage that you can perform like you can in Red Faction. While this isn't much of a deal, it would have been nice to see those weapons of mass destruction do some serious area damage and change the terrain for you!

Audio wise, Halo offers the same type of experience that you would hope for in a good science fiction flick, assuming that you have full surround sound available to you. With the music that comes through being something akin to futuristic action and some points of lulling suspense, there is a good blend and mix of both to create the overall sound track. The sound effects also play a major role in the audio with the way that the battles and environments are set up through the different surround sound systems. For the most part, you'll find that every laser blast and scream as well as compliments and orders barked to you are done in a fashion to immerse you, successfully, into the experience.

Halo is one of the better games that you can find on the X-Box and worthy of buying if you're a first person shooter fan. Yes, people have said that the game rips off other ones and that the ideas here are nothing that you haven't seen before, but in the end, no game out there is a true 'original'. If you like the science fiction format of FPS games, and you like killing aliens with really big energy guns, the you'll find this to be right up your alley. However, if you don't like games where you have to kill everything in sight, then you need to move on to something else, because this one is for killers only!