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This article is about the video game called Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the Halo series.

Halo: Combat Evolved
Developer(s)	Bungie Studios, PC port by Gearbox Software
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Platform(s)	Xbox, Windows PC, Apple Macintosh
Release	Xbox: November 15, 2001 (U.S.) March 14, 2002 (Europe) April 25, 2002 (Japan) PC and Mac: September 30, 2003 (U.S.)
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

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 games 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. 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 itself acknowledges 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 multiplayer section below.

The game does not support Microsoft's broadband gaming service Xbox Live because it was not available at the time Halo: Combat Evolved was released. However, the game is playable via Xbox Connect packet tunnelling software, which simulates a Local Area Network (LAN) over the internet. Thus, using the System Link option of Halo: Combat Evolved enables people to play online with and against each other. The successor of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, 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

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Halo's storyline is presented to the player through an instruction manual, scripted events and conversations during the game, and a number of cut-scenes rendered using the game's graphics engine. This method of storyline delivery is common among modern video games. As a literary side note, the design of Halo borrows heavily from the ring-shaped Ringworlds 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 years, 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

Back story

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 enjoying just controlling the character to the extent 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's single player gameplay is characterized by several features which set it apart from less acclaimed first-person shooter games. It was the first game to combine features such as recharging shields and a limited inventory of weapons, and has been widely imitated since the game's release.

• Storyline execution: Halo's gameplay and storyline are tightly interwoven, and delivered in a convincing manner which is consistent with the flow of the game. The cutscenes are edited, providing Halo with characters and locales which interest those who play it.

• Vehicles: Halo incorporates different vehicles into its single and multiplayer games, including an aircraft. The player can seamlessly change from guerrilla foot tactics to intense vehicle operations. The vehicles range from giant Scorpion tanks and Banshee ground-assault aircraft to Warthog jeeps and sleek Ghost hovercraft, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.

• Firearms: Halo's arsenal is smaller than those of most other First-person shooters but each weapon has a unique purpose. Seemingly weak or ineffective weapons will prove themselves immensely useful if used in the correct situation or against a particular enemy. In addition, the Master Chief can only carry two weapons at any given time, forcing the player to switch between them often, and make trade-offs when choosing which weapons to carry. These decisions can be driven by factors like enemy composition both now and in the future, personal proficiency, or even ammunition availability—Covenant plasma weapons cannot be reloaded but must simply be discarded when their batteries run out, as opposed to the reloadable human weapons. However, every bad guy you kill drops a new Covenant weapon, whereas human ammunition can be pretty rare.

• Melee Attacks: Halo integrated a melee-based close-range combat mechanic into shooting games, allowing the player to hit an opponent with a gun at any time, a feature which had previously been limited to a special "knife" weapon in past FPS. Melees did a great deal of damage and required a steady aim, again bringing skill into play in the combat, as well as providing for a certain amount of stealth. The double-melee glitch (BLB) was prominent in higher class games, as it allowed a near instant kill on a close ranged opponent.

• Grenades: Grenades are an integral part of combat in Halo. In fact, the game comes with an independent "use grenade" button (as opposed to most first-person shooters, in which one must holster one's firearm to throw them), and their proper use is critical to survival. The player can carry up to eight grenades, four of each type (human fragmentation grenades and Covenant plasma grenades), at one time. Like the game's other weapons, the two types of grenades are different in their application and effectiveness against enemies: the frag grenade bounces, detonates quickly, and does phyiscal damage (weak against shields) over a short distance, whereas the plasma grenade sticks to enemy targets, takes a little longer to detonate, causes plasma damage (stronger against shields) over a wide area, and causes the enemy to scatter.

• Artificial intelligence: Halo's AI was quite sophisticated for the time. For example, the more cowardly types of enemies panic when one of their superiors is killed (sometimes screaming "Leader's dead! Run a-way!", or other related phrases). If a speeding vehicle comes at them, they can dive out of the way, and they can take cover from explosives or suppressive fire. On the hardest difficulties, the Elites will formulate attack strategies and easily destroy your Marine cohorts.

• Health: The player in Halo has a limited, non-regenerating health bar which can be fully restored by picking up health-packs; it is represented by the segmented blue rectangles in the graphic at the right. Running completely out of health will result in death, but having lower health doesn't impede player actions. A player's health can only be reduced if his shields have failed. If the player's health is low the game plays a low heart-beat sound.

• Shields: The MJOLNIR battle armor has a shield, represented by the large blue bar in the graphic to the right, which protects all parts of his body from damage. The bar (and the shield) is depleted by weapons fire, but will quickly recharge if the player is not attacked for a short period of time. The shield provides the player with a large and relatively permanent buffer of health, and represents a marked departure from most FPS games. In Halo, the shield is the player's primary defense, and players who do not learn to retreat and regenerate it will find themselves repeatedly dead. Players who do, on the other hand, can survive almost indefinitely, and to kill such a player, whether in single- or multiplayer, requires a concentrated and swift assault. Thus, the shield encourages an almost cerebral level of tactics and decision-making, in addition to the game's "twitch"-based gameplay.

Powerups

There are three types of powerups available in Halo:

• Health packs: a single health pack will fully restore the player's health, but does not regenerate shields.

• Active camouflage: Reduces the player's visibility for a period of time, making him nearly transparent (the player becomes little more than a distortion in the air). This effect is gradually weakened if the player is hit by weapons fire or if the player fires a weapon, soon recharges. After the camouflage runs out, the player will slowly fade into view.

• Over Shield: The over shield is a non-regenerating extra shield which functions on top of the regular shield, giving the player three times their normal damage capacity. When picked up, it takes approximately two seconds to completely charge, but during the charging period the player will be invincible. When it is active, the normal shield does not take damage until the over shield is completely gone (although any damage overlapping from something destroying the overshield, for example a grenade's explosion, will take the full rest of its effect on the original shield/health). If the over shield is picked up when the shield is down, the player receives a full charge and the effects of the over shield stay. In the single player game, the over shield is reduced only when the player is hit, while in the multiplayer game, it also weakens at a constant rate (see MJOLNIR MARK V battle suit).

• Note: If you get an Over Shield and Active camouflage at the same time, you can still be seen. The Over Shield creates an aura around you that prevents the active camouflage from making you completely disappear.

Allies/Enemies

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Four factions of allies/enemies are encountered on Halo: the Covenant, the Flood, the Forerunner Sentinels, and the UNSC Marine Corps.

• Covenant: The Covenant is set up as a caste system, ruled by the High Prophets. The Covenant is a conglomeration of different species that were defeated and incorporated into the Prophet's fold:
  • Grunts, the Covenant working class, which have very little offensive or defensive capabilities;
  • Jackals, somewhat stronger creatures which have energy shields strapped to their wrists;
  • Elites, which are equipped with personal recharging energy shields and possess combat prowess equivalent to that of the Master Chief; and
  • Hunters, which have thick armor plates that cover most of their bodies and are used as living tanks.

• The Flood: The parasitic Flood are encountered in 3 forms. The Infection Flood are the parasitic spores themselves, which make up for their extreme fragility by travelling in large swarms. The Combat Flood are infested Humans and Covenant Elites, their bodies hideously deformed. Combat Flood are unshielded but very sturdy. They can use both Human and Covenant weapons, and the tentacles which grow out of their hosts' limbs are formidable melee weapons. Carrier Flood are infested bodies that cannot be used for combat. The Carriers are walking incubators for Infection Flood. When they are wounded or close to a potential victim, they will explode, releasing their spores and causing damage to nearby life forms.

• Forerunner Sentinels: The Sentinels are drones that were designed to maintain and limit the Flood. 343 Guilty Spark is the caretaker of Installation 04 and can control the Sentinels as well as many other aspects of Halo. The Sentinels possess a powerful beam weapon and, while immune to infection by the Flood, are not particularly durable or resistant to damage. Some contain shield generators, which cast the same shield type as the ones the Elites have, since almost all of Covenant technology was copied from the Forerunners. Sentinels will target whatever they are ordered to by 343 Guilty Spark, be it Covenant forces or the Master Chief.

• UNSC Marine Corps: On any difficulty setting other than Legendary (in which they are often susceptible to slaughter), these troops will offer effective ground support (including hitching rides in the Warthog, manning its gun turret and being passengers of the Scorpion tank; They later become the target of The Flood and are literally transformed into walking corpses by it.

Weapons

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 Marathon series is seen in the weapons of both sides - in both games the human weapons are mostly identical, save for one addition - the Sniper Rifle. However, there is more variety on the side of the Covenant, including the transferring of some weapons, such as the flechette launcher and fusion pistol, from the human to Covenant inventories. Weapon influences can be seen from the 1995-1996 TV series Space: Above and Beyond and Aliens.

Vehicles

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 then girlfriend (Meg aka Pallor) 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 :

• A developer's tag stained into a wall (Rex)
• The "Food Nipple Grunt", a thirsty creature who is only in the game to deliver his one line, and is the only Covenant enemy who has a weapon but will not attack the player
• The ability to hear a musical selection ("Siege of Madrigal") from a previous Bungie Studios game, Myth, in a special zone within the campaign mode
• The ability to wield three weapons at once, only triggered on the Pillar Of Autumn
• Outside the bridge on the Pillar Of Autumn, there is a bulletin board with several posters on it. Most of these are humourous eggs
• Upon selecting "edit gametypes" on the multiplayer select screen, an image of a Spartan appears to the right, with little captions pointing to various parts of his body. On closer inspection these captions are actually easter eggs (see image)

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 from this bridge down into the canyon without taking fatal damage. It's also possible to distract an Elite before he gets into his Banshee, then fly the Banshee to the canyon floor. Either way, the player skips a minor segment 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

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 local area network, using four Xboxes that have been connected through the Ethernet hub. The game's seamless support for this type of play, as well as a few large maps that can comfortably hold up to 16 combatants, was a first for console games. The PC version introduced free Internet multiplayer gameplay, as well as new vehicles (the Banshee, which was previously only available in Campaign mode, and a new Warthog with a tri-barrel rocket launcher), weapons (Fuel Rod Gun and Flamethrower), and 6 new maps for multiplayer. A free release by Gearbox Software, Halo: Custom Edition, lets experienced modders create their own maps and play on them over the Internet with other people who have downloaded the map.

The M6D Pistol 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.

• Halo: The Fall of Reach is a prequel to the game, written by Eric Nylund.
• Halo: The Flood is an adaptation of the game's story by William C. Dietz.
• Halo: First Strike takes place between the first game and Halo 2, by Eric Nylund. In light of the storyline in Halo 2, it may not be 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 Halo: Custom Edition, 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. On the 9th May 2006 it was announced that Halo 3 has been in production for a number of months and will be released at some point during 2007. It was also announced that Halo 3 is the third and final game in the Halo series.

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 Command & Conquer: Generals. 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 Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. It turns the RTS into one with a Halo theme.

There is an unofficial, user developed map on Counter-Strike: Source called Battle Creek. It is a reasonably accurate facsimile of Battle Creek from Halo: Combat Evolved and its descendant, Beaver Creek from Halo 2.

There is also an upcoming Metroid Prime mod of the game

References

1. "Halo 2 Launch Date and Special Limited Edition!". Retrieved 2006-03-11.
2. "Gamespot". Retrieved 2006-03-12.

External links

• Official site
• Halo on Xbox.com
• Halo wiki walkthrough at StrategyWiki

• 2001 computer and video games
• 2003 computer and video games
• Mac OS games
• Cancelled Dreamcast games
• First-person shooters
• Halo
• Killer games
• Microsoft games
• Multiplayer online games
• Science fiction computer and video games
• Windows games
• Xbox games