OK...Why do I love Halo?

So now I'm going to drop it on you...why am I so obsessed with a stupid video game?

Well, I'll start with the broad reasons first, then take you to nitty-gritty land:

In a very broad sense, I love the vibe of Halo. Like all great games, it has a unique feel, language, aesthetic...and it just pulls me in. I find my mind responding to it strongly.

In a slightly-less broad sense...

1. It has a great science-fiction story and setting...and I'm a sci-fi geek!
2. It is an immersive, amazingly well-designed first-person shooter (FPS)...and I'm a gamin' geek!

That was too easy, wasn't it? OK, let's get into the aspects of this game that make it so crack-esque to me:

1. Great visual design/graphics: You play through Halo as the Master Chief. Alright...the name is cheesy (before playing Halo and seeing the name, I started referring to him as the "Master Cheese"), but his character design is sweet. He's clad in an armoured suit and a helmet with a reflective faceplate. You only see yourself in third-person perspective manning a turret or during cutscenes, but even in first-person viewpoint, your gauntlets look formidable when holdling or reloading a weapon.

As Master Chief, you fight against a conglomerate of several alien races known as The Covenant. Each race is unique and looks really interesting. You've got the short, humpbacked Grunts with their methane breathing masks; the human-size Elites who have faces that split into four toothy mandibles; the bird-like, bipedal Jackals, with their mohawks and sizzling energy-shields; and the ferocious 12-foot tall Hunters, clad in spike-backed blue armour with huge fuel-rod cannons strapped to their arms. Later, you meet The Flood, who are essentially alien zombies and come in various shapes and sizes.

Some of the places you visit have really interesting architecture. Human and alien styles are very different from each another. There's no doubt as to what type of locale you're traversing in the game.

Graphics are a huge factor in enjoying a game, as far as I'm concerned. Better graphics make the game more immersive, which is key to a good FPS. You can walk right up to walls in a spaceship and the brushed-metal textures still look sharp and detailed close-up. When you land on Halo, you'll marvel at waterfalls, cliffs, rocks, swaying grass. And then you look across to the horizon...to see this ring-shaped construct arching far over your head.

2. Amazing enemy Artifical Intelligence (A.I.): Halo is revolutionary for this reason alone. In a FPS, once you get a feel for the controls and moving your character around and shooting are second-nature, you get an overall idea of the "game world": its rules (including its physics and types of weapons) and the behaviour of its other occupants...most notably, obviously, your enemies. In most games, you just shoot baddies who move around in a mechanical fashion and often fall into predictable patterns, or (even worse) just "glitch" and stand stupidly, facing away from you as you shoot them. Sometimes they don't even notice when you kill one of their pals right next to them. All of this really doesn't aid in immersion, if you haven't guessed, and greatly reduces the suspension of disbelief.

Not so with Halo.

Your enemies work in groups, approaching you from different directions, flanking you, charging you when you reload or if you "stick" them with an adhesive plasma grenade. On one level of Halo, I was playing a crazy cat-and-mouse game with an Elite around a large concrete fin on a bridge. It was like playing against another person: an intelligent adversary who used multiple tactics and could change those up on the fly.

In most shooters, you pop out from cover and take some shots and can pop back into cover again. You can put the controller down, get off your ass and go make a sandwich if you want, and they still won't have clued in to your location by the time you get back. In Halo, enemies will often remember where they last saw you and come looking for you. It makes the threat of them that much more real and immediate. In Halo, you really have to think often and think tactically to win; you can't just charge in with guns blazing and expect to survive. Brute force alone ain't gonna cut it. Kudos to developers Bungie for making a thinking-man's shooter!

3. Recharging shields. Ah, another design coup! In most shooters, you will be shot at, and hit, and lose some health. Typically, you wind up frantically scouring the level for health packs or cheeseburgers or whatever to get your health back up to full. Oftentimes, you'll run into a pack of enemies, have low health, and get mulched because you couldn't find that damn cheeseburger. Halo revolutionized this game mechanic. In Halo, all you need to do is hang back and find cover for a few seconds...and your shields quickly recharge to full strength! However, this is not as easy as it sounds as you get further into the game and face more aggressive opponents who won't give you a chance to duck into cover. But overall, this game mechanic minimizes frustration.

4. Frequent checkpoints: Typically, in any videogame, you'll have points to "save" your progress. In an adventure, action, or shooting game, you might clear a room of enemies. You want to save that progress so you don't have to do it again if you die or have finished playing the game for the day. This is also called reaching a "checkpoint": a signpost or milestone of progress. But most games are stingy about handing out these opportunities to "save" your progress; you can play for a half-hour or more, praying that you have enough health or time to make it to the next checkpoint.

But in Halo, any reasonable step in the game is "checkpointed". Your progress is saved very often compared to most games. In fact, the game generally errs on the side of being overcautious when it comes to saving checkpoints. This greatly reduces repetition and frustration; you seldom have to repeat a long section of a level multiple times because you got killed.

5. Cool weapons and limited capacity of weapons: Obviously, with a shooter, you literally live or die by your weapons. Halo has a great weapon set. Actually, it has two sets: human weapons, and Covenenant weapons. They're very different from each other in form and function.

Human weapons are made from conventional metal. They fire bullets, shells, or rockets. They're very similar to weapons that exist now. They have clips that hold bullets that need to be reloaded.

Covenant weapons are made from some strange-looking metal. They're typically purple or blue, and often have irridescent markings on them. They usually have a battery installed in them that depletes as you fire the weapon. When the battery is empty, the weapon must be tossed. Not very environmentally friendly, but hey: they're aliens bent on eliminating the human race. Additionally, though most Covenant weapons don't need to be reloaded, they can overheat and must cool before they can be fired again.

Lastly, in a unique and somewhat realistic touch, you can only carry two weapons at any time (in addition to your grenades, of course). This flies in the face of most FPSs, in which your character is carrying around scores of weapons.

To mix things up, starting in Halo 2, some weapons can be dual-wielded (one gun in each hand), which makes for many interesting combinations: two sets of identical guns, two different human guns, two covenant guns, a mix-and-match of human and covenant guns...sounds simple, but it's a huge deal. For example, I can fire off the sub-machine gun in my left hand. When it is empty and being reloaded, I can start firing the plasma rifle in my left hand. By the time the plasma rifle has overheated and needs to cool, the sub-machine gun will have reloaded and I can rock and roll with it again.

This post has gone on long enough, but I think illustrates things nicely. I hope you all understand why I'm so crazy about this game now!