Developer: Bungie
Release Date: Out Now
RRP: $49.99, £34.99

After a long wait Halo has finally arrived to take its original and rightful place on the PC! Halo, the Xbox’s biggest hit game also the best along with Golden Eye (N64), 1st person shooter on a console, kept students from doing there work all over Britain for the most of this year and the better part of last year. With its single player replay value and the endless fun had with 3 friends exploring the multiplayer side to Halo, you never got board of it!

For those of you who don’t know halo you play the part of the Master Chief, the last of a few who were bred solely for battle. You enter the game when you are onboard a human battle ship in the depths of space and your ship is under attack by an alien race called the covenant. You then battle for the survival of the human race, and that of all life in the galaxy!

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This most important question I think is; has the transition to the PC made the game any better? In single player, other than it obviously being better due to the control system of keyboard and mouse, there really isn’t any difference. Multiplayer on the other had is a completely different ballpark.

System Tested On	Verdict
Pentium 4 2.4GHz 1024MB DDR Geforce 4 Ti4400 128MB	Looks Nice, But that's it. Some nasty loss of frame rates that really shouldn't be there. But turning some options off gets it running smoothly.
Pentium 3 933MHz 384MB PC133 Geforce 2 GTS 32MB	Turning everything right down and the game runs at a playable level.

Graphically halo doesn’t look too bad, but due to poor coding in the transition from Xbox to PC it is very system hungry. Normal games that are very demanding look like they should be, sadly halo doesn’t. There are no real world physics to eat up your CPU power and the textures aren’t even particularly high resolution. It looks like a slightly enhanced version of the Xbox version; this is disappointing as the PC can do better, and a game that looks like halo does shouldn’t need the hardware it seems to demand.

As previously said Halo single player is the same; the game is very engrossing and pulls you into the story. However saying this, the levels are all very samey and linear and the gameplay being very much the same throughout with the odd change from time to time. There is a good variation in the type of enemy encountered although no real difference between the actions of many of them.

The AI is still a contradiction, at some points the AI can be really intelligent, where enemies run for cover, and work in teams and even run scared, but in other cases you can be a few yards away (I’m talking about in the like of sight here!) and they don’t notice your there. This though happens fairly infrequently and isn’t a set back in the game play. However the AI of your marine companions is very good, they work with you in groups, and communicating with you telling you when and where they are being attacked, warning you of incoming enemy’s and thrown grenades

The implementation of the vehicles is great, and they are great fun to drive, using similar control systems to the Xbox you use the mouse to steer and the keys for acceleration and brake. These are the same controls as used while on foot, although a little tricky to get used to, after formularising yourself and a little practice they become just as easy to use, and often easier for big FPS fans. Due to not having to change between two different control systems, the transition from foot to vehicle is much smoother. The marines and the covenant both have vehicles each have a tank and a smaller more manoeuvrable vehicle. Alas you don’t get to drive the covenants tank, but they do have there very own single manned air to ground combat vehicle (Some sort of plain) which you get to fly!

Halo multiplayer was great on the Xbox and is even better played over the internet on the PC. There are a huge number of different game types to choose from and a large number of levels to choose from, the gameplay is all action action action. However if you’d rather have a stealthy sniper battle, halo provides this too. The addition of vehicles in every game type creates a much more frantic, involved and even, a more tactical style of gameplay. As being in a vehicle has some major advantages and some major disadvantages, this doesn’t give people who get to vehicles first a greater advantage, it just invokes a different tactical angle to the game. For those of you who want to know what more you’re getting in the PC version, you get a banshee and a Rocket warthog in addition to all the original multiplayer vehicles. You also get a couple more weapons!