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geswaldo's Halo: Combat Evolved (XBX)
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| [April 18, 2013 10:08:55 PM]
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Game Type:
First person shooter
Campaign - Single player or cooperative
Multi-player - Two to sixteen player (LAN)
Enemies:
The difficulty of some of the enemies in this game are denoted by different colors. The elites have the largest variety of difficulty (in this order) with the colors blue, maroon, gold and black. While an argument can be made for gold elites being more difficult to kill than the black elites, I believe that the black elites show a higher level of intelligence. There are several different types of enemies that are encountered through Halo with each having its own quirks.
Grunt - Basic enemy type that is armed with a plasma pistol, a needler or sometimes a plasma cannon that explodes when they die. Has vulnerability to being shot in the head and will retreat most of the time when nearby elites are killed.
Elite - Officer type enemy surrounded by an invisible energy shield that flares when hit and usually armed with a plasma rifle. Will find cover when shield is depleted and will hide until shield recovers. There are some situations where the elites are invisible and some situations where they are armed with an energy sword (sometimes both). Has vulnerability to being shot in the head when shield is depleted.
Jackal - Enemy type that shoots a charged plasma shot as well as regular plasma shots from behind an energy shield that it holds in-front of itself. Has vulnerability to being shot in the head and will retreat most of the time when nearby elites are killed.
Hunter - Heavily armored enemy that fires plasma cannon shots at long-medium range and charges to melee at close range. Has vulnerability to being shot in orange colored areas of body by single shot human weapons.
Vehicles:
"UNSC"
Warthog - Holds one passenger, one gunner and one driver; Can be operated by player.
Scorpion Tank - Holds up to four non-player occupants and one driver, fires high explosive rounds and has a short range machine gun; Can be operated by player.
"Covenant"
Banshee - Single occupant, flying vehicle that can fire plasma rounds and has a plasma cannon; Can be operated by player.
Ghost - Single occupant, fast attack vehicle that hovers above the ground; Can be operated by player.
Wraith - Artillery type vehicle that fires large balls of plasma; Cannot be operated by player.
Story:
You start out as SPARTAN named Master Chief (who is a enhanced human with special armor) on a spaceship that is running from the covenant and comes across a giant ring-like structure in space. A firefight ensues and the ship is forced to crash-land on the structure, Master Chief then tries to determine the function of the large structure and activate it. Master Chief learns that the "Halo" was built to destroy the flood but to do so it will destroy all living beings in the system, finding this out he then destroys the ring by blowing up the reactors in his crashed ship.
Campaign Game-play:
When I first started playing through the campaign I will admit that I had an arterial motive. Originally I was just trying to hone my skills in preparation for playing multi-player but after I started playing I really became enthralled in the story. I started the campaign on heroic difficulty so I did not get the walk through that you get on Normal and Easy difficulties but for the most part it is pretty simple to figure out how things work. After the first two levels of learning how to accurately and effectively use the pistol (along with good grenade placement), none of the other levels gave me any problems as far as difficulty goes with the exception being the "Library" in which you follow 343 Guilty Spark through a dimly lit building while being attacked by the flood. On my first couple of attempts I just ran with 343 Guilty Spark but that is not a very good idea and I was overwhelmed very quickly. Eventually I found out that the enemies in each section would eventually stop spawning after that the rest of the game was smooth sailing. With the game beaten I proceeded to replay on legendary and was relatively surprised at all of the extras given by playing on the highest difficulty. The perks of playing on legendary difficulty were added dialog in the cut scenes, the marines use more adult language and even an alternate ending.
Multi-player Game-play:
The multi-player aspect of Halo is what made this game one of best games of all time in my experience the smallest teams you can have to be able to get the best experience of how much fun the multi-player can be is two teams of three. The ultimate experience is when you can get two teams of eight which was my last experience of the Halo multi-player. To get balanced teams we played an exhibition slayer match and paired the people who did the worst with the person who did the best and the rest with the second best player. We repeated this process a couple of times until the matches started becoming close wins, then we started to play capture the flag and custom team slayer matches. It was during these matches that I realized that the pistol is the ultimate weapon for mid-range fighting and was really effective at close and long ranges as well. What I enjoyed most about the setup of the multi-player system is that the matches were never a rush to secure the power weapons such as sniper rifles and rockets because they respawn at regular intervals so there was never a situation where one team had all the power weapons leaving the other team at a major disadvantage. The matches usually boiled down to whomever was better with the pistol and with a little team tactics thrown in (FYI, my team always won). To mix it up a little we played what is now my favorite type of match which is the level Boarding Action with the weapons set to Snipers so that everyone starts with a sniper rifle. If you are gonna set up a LAN party to play with a large group of people be prepared to spend all day/night playing because time flies and it will be morning before you know it.
Overview:
Overall the game is amazing and well balanced as far as not making your character too strong or too weak. For it's time Halo was also a great looking
game as far as the graphics go and traversed from a lighter mood for the first half of the game to a more dark/fearful mood for the second half of the game.
The multi-player aspect is why people buy the game but the campaign mode is nothing to snap at.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Apr 18th, 2013 at 22:14:56.
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geswaldo's Halo: Combat Evolved (XBX)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 1 January, 2003
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