by Johan Burghall

Created on: September 16, 2007

Why is Halo one of the greatest games of our generation?
One acronym, two letters.

AI.

Except there's nothing Artificial about this Intelligence.

A group of Covenant aliens, fanatical and human-hating, stand guard over an entrance to the Halo's interior, delving into its secrets of ultimate destruction. Large Elites survey the sea stretching off into the horizon that curves above them to form the Ringworld, whilst the tiny Grunts squabble amongst themselves.

Then, with a great roaring of its engine and its machine-gun ablaze, a Warthog jeep comes thundering over the hilltop, and suddenly Halo really comes to life.
The Elites howl with angry alien alarm, opening fire as they sprint for cover. The human marines riding shotgun shout abuse as they spray the Covenant with bullets. With a swing of the controls you spin the Warthog around, a Grunt falling underneath its wheels with a cry and a cloud of purple blood, whilst an Elite dives out of the way and rolls to safety. And then the Grunts scatter. And my God, their squeals.
Halo was one of the first games where the enemies were actually scared of YOU.
As the one-man army that is the Master Chief charges down a corridor armed with a shotgun, the Grunts flee in panic, firing wildly, whilst the Elites fall back to more strategic positions, stepping out to lay down suppressing fire or to shout alien death threats as you pummel some skulls with the butt of your shotgun.
On the Legendary difficulty setting, even a single Elite is enough to take you down, playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that feels more like a multiplayer deathmatch than the usual FPS mopping up of hordes of enemies.

Now back to the squeals.
The sound effects make the game.
Whether it's the eerie wail of a circling Banshee, the cursing and gibbering of the Covenant forces, the subtly-menacing babbling of the Monitor, or the perfect, cinema-quality soundtrack, Halo is captivating even with your eyes closed.

Like everything, the game has its set-backs. Naturally the graphics are a little dated, but all graphics inevitably are. In gameplay terms, certain sections are repetitive, with several seemingly-endless mazes of corridors following a little red marker towards an objective. And the near-perfect execution of the story is tarnished by cliche at several moments.

But there's one other trump card in Halo's arsenal that settled it firmly as a classic: Co-op.
As a PC gamer, the joy of the console for me is that you actually get to play games whilst in the same room

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