I feel somewhat apprehensious writing a review of Halo: Combat Evolved. Why? Because I have an opinion, and that opinion seems to differ from much of what the established press thought of this game, and even from a sizeable portion of the gaming scene. The Halo games are Big. 12.8 million units of Halo Series games have been shifted since the original Halo made its X-Box debut over three years ago – that's some serious commerical success. Nevertheless, I still do not fully understand this success and how so many people have been able to overlook flaws that to me are major and hugely detrimental to the experience of actually playing this game.

A year ago, the Gearbox Software developed, PC version of Halo finally appeared on the PC. Before this time, I jealously eyed the game, read a few reviews and was altogether annoyed that I wasn't getting to play this marvellous game outside of a handful of (immensely fun) X-Box LAN sessions. Two things had made the wait particularly long and irritating: Firstly, I had had to endure the "BEST GAME EVAR!" talk of foaming fanboys in too many conversations about games both on and off the Internet. Yeah, it's great that it's great but you can't actually tell me why? But secondly, and most importantly, I was jealous of these X-Box owning upstarts – Halo was a PC game, but Microsoft had stole it from us when it was still in development, and secured it as an X-Box exclusive. For all too long, it seemed that I was never going to get a chance to see what the fuss was about.

Then I actually played the game, and I still don't really know what the fuss is about.

Now, a bit of a disclaimer. By my own judgement, I do lay into Halo quite a bit in this review. Perhaps some of the things I say you'll agree with, but how much these matter to you is down to individual taste, your wider experience of games and any of the other thousands of things that make any review simply an opinion (though as I feel this is still a good review, I hope that you can accept the logic behind my reasoning). But considering how much of a vicious poking I feel I give this game, it may surprise you to hear that I actually enjoyed it. Hell knows my free-time is slowly but surely shrinking away, but nevertheless I played and completed Halo PC twice. That's certainly no gargantuan achievement, but that's two times more than I've completed many (often lesser) games than Halo in the last two years. In essence, it's important to remember whilst reading this review, that my problem is with Halo's excessive critical and commercial success. It's a good game, but I don't feel it's the classic game that popular opinion often holds it as.

I just don’t "get" the design work in Halo. The enemies are for the most part, non-descript generic races and the levels don’t particularly feel like anything. By far my favourite moments in Halo PC are those spent fighting on the Human Space Cruiser, the "Pillar of Autumn", during which I actually felt I was in some kind of designed location. In fact, the human elements of Halo are almost certainly a brilliant homage to James Cameron’s Aliens, easily one of my favourite movies. Just try to tell me that Al Matthews' Sergeant character isn’t replicated in Halo, right down to the "Move it Marines! They ain’t paying us by the hour!" line. The Aliens inspiration lends the human elements a logical, believable, futuristic atmosphere – Lesser games would adopt themes that are unbelievable as Human futures, simply because the future is a grey area and you can just make any old thing up.

It is a shame then, that they couldn’t have learned a thing or two about more exotic antagonist designs from H.R.Giger’s bizarre and famous creations. By contrast, those moments fighting on the Covenant ships are among my least favourite. Now, don’t get me wrong. I like the colour Pink. Anyone who knows me will confirm that. Furry things, cute things, candy and all things good and proper in this world look great in Pink.

It’s an unwritten rule. The Covenant Fleet should never have been allowed to look like the contents of Barbie’s Accessory Catalogue. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps people really do find the rainbow coloured enemies of Halo scary. Perhaps it’s comparable to the fear that macho guys feel when faced with a Gay-Pride March or a particularly formidable episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Perhaps Halo is just some bizarre homophobic metaphor, with Earth’s Masculinity threatened by an overtly flamboyant alien race, bent on well… making everyone bent. As it is, I just find it unbelievable. The well-written Halo backstory clearly paints the Covenant as some kind of evil alien race that fills us all with fear. They really don’t look the part. The Covenant are basically a generic, throwaway race, devoid of any real inspiration. Perhaps this is a limitation of the story (Halo 2 is said to flesh out the Covenant considerably), but it’s a considerable shame.

And then in the second half of the game, a new alien race appears. What began as an amusing homage to Aliens, becomes a unimaginative rip-off of the entire series, and countless other Sci-Fi books, movies and games. Frankly, the whole concept of the "subversion entity" has been done to death. I suppose the Flood does at least try to be different in that they’re bland and about as scary as a dead woodlouse. Really, just picture some kind of space-mushroom that walks up to people and sticks onto them, turning them into some kind of blobby-freak thingy. Not scary. Actually, they’re kind of cute really. Of course, they’re dumb (which is convenient from the developers point of view), so they’re usually found in swarming hordes – the numbers of flood you fight are definitely impressive, but not vast enough to distract you from an underlying feeling of repetitiveness.

Because, Halo’s major downfall is just how repetitive it is. The single player campaign is divided into 10 chapters, but it is easy to get the distinct impression that you have already played the current chapter – Mission 9 is basically a retread of Mission 3, Mission 8 of Mission 5 and the last contains a sizeable section of the first. This wouldn’t really matter – from a story point of view, it is often interesting if not critical to return to key locations – but the occasional mediocrity of the whole shooting experience, and the relative blandness of the locations create an escalating feeling that Halo is half a finished game, copied and pasted (with a little bit of texture work) to give you the other half of the game.

Mission 7, "the Library" is by far the worst of the lot – a 4 tiered, apparently 2-axis symmetrical level where you’ll run down the same corridors into the same room more times than you’ll care to count, shooting the same combination of enemies, probably with the same guns and tactics. Yes, even the enemies are repetitive. Before you’re even a quarter of the way through the game, you’ll have seen all the covenant enemy types. All 4 of them. The Grunts (Weaklings), the Jackals (Weaklings with shields), the Elites (Sleek and Strong) and the Hunters (Massive guys with Massive guns). Oh sure, each type comes in different colours with varying hitpoints or the occasional invisibility equip, but they all act the same and thus offer no variety in actual gameplay, beyond the fact that you have to shoot at some of the "ranks" for longer than others. Then the Flood appear and… well, it’s kind of hard to work out the difference beyond 3 types. What strategy was involved in the Covenant sections – because the Elite AI in particular is very good and best taken unawares - is lost in the Flood sections, as the game is reduced to shooting wildly at everything on screen. Some interesting 3 way battles not withstanding, these flood moments get old quick.

In one way, the PC version of Halo should be the superior: Multiplayer. As the X-Box version launched with the console, support for X-Box Live (X-Box’s Internet multiplayer network) wasn’t available simply because the network hadn’t launched. The PC version fills in this gap, offering all of Halo’s competitive multiplayer gametypes with a few extras here and there – 6 new maps, 2 new weapons and 2 new vehicles. However, the transition to PC has resulted in a few things getting "lost in translation". Co-op is one of the most sorely missed options, because Gearbox were unwilling to create all new network code to accommodate it (Co-Op was limited to split-screen 2 player anyway, so it never had any network code associated with it).

For me, the loss of split-screen is perhaps one of the biggest. Ok, so PCs aren’t split-screen gaming machines, it’s just a basic difference between console and computer gaming. I just defy anybody who has had a decent "four-friends round one TV" Halo game to say they don’t miss that sort of party atmosphere when playing Halo PC multiplayer. I’d go as far as to say that Halo was defined as a Multiplayer game by that type of experience – without it, it feels empty, slow and stale next to PC heavy-weights like Unreal, Quake and the rest. The new additions to the core multiplayer don’t do anything to change this. The new maps are nice, but hardly phenomenal. The new Flame-thrower weapon seems like filler material, whilst the Fuel Rod Gun, Rocket Warthog and Banshee just serve to unbalance the previous version’s multiplayer experience.

The biggest difference is naturally the control method. No longer are you forced to play Halo with an X-Box controller. Bungie nailed down a pretty impressive control configuration for the X-Box version, but nothing beats the accuracy and versatility of a Keyboard and a Mouse. All of Halo’s maps were clearly designed around the controller, which is a limiting factor to the PC version. The biggest problem is that many maps feel a little flatter, and again more repetitive than those of other PC games. That said, Halo is not as bad in this respect as other made for console FPS games (flying vehicles and some rather large chasms work in its favour), and it may well be that only a veteran of this type of game is going to notice this.

The game’s graphics are undoubtedly competent, but they’re trailing behind more recent graphical engines (The Unreal Engine 2, Source and Doom 3 engines are probably among the best current examples). What is surprising however, is just how demanding the game is on all but the best PCs. Booting up first time with Anti-Aliasing (a method which smoothes out sharp, unrealistic edges on 3D objects) on, for instance, results in slide-show framerates, so it has to be turned off. When compared to better looking games, you get the distinct feeling that you’re getting similar performance from an inferior looking game, which suggests somewhat poor optimisation. Worse cases have been noted (Deus Ex: Invisible War looks far worse than UT2004, though it runs slower and uses the same core engine) but it was somewhat odd to be playing what is essentially a 2001 game on a 2004 PC and experiencing a little slowdown. Halo PC has been held back a little by its X-Box heritage (texturing is pretty dull, relying on "ooh shiny" surface properties all to often)

Despite the tagline, Halo was never an evolution of any kind. In fact, I’d be inclined to say that Halo is perhaps even heading backwards. Changes to the core FPS gameplay are minuscule, but enough to give Halo a certain uniqueness about it: Things like your shield, that recharges after a certain amount of time since it sustained damage or the fact that rather than equipping the player character with as many guns as possible, they get just two weapons. The biggest evolution was probably the addition of vehicles, but even back when the X-Box version was released, FPS series like Tribes had featured vehicles for years. Now that the PC version of Halo has finally been released, vehicles are old news and arguably better implemented elsewhere. The PC version has made the vehicles easy enough to control, with the exception of the Scorpion Tank, which really could have benefited from having Steering and the Main Gun controlled independent of each other.

Weapons in Halo are mostly satisfying and help mask the lacking level design. I’d like to emphasise that I’m no gun nut. I don’t particularly care that "the brass on my M249 ejects from the wrong side" or that "My MP5 would never come with an attached grenade launcher". I just care that a weapon looks, sounds and feels powerful. Most of Halo weapons achieve these criteria: The Pistol, Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Sniper Rifle and Plasma Rifle are fine examples of genre staples. The Assault Rifle and Plasma Pistol are somewhat less interesting (but aren’t exactly useless). It’s just a shame that the Needler (a kind of homing pistol) is just about the only attempt at something beyond the norm. Oh, and it’s not particularly good looking or satisfying anyway. All guns technically only have a single fire mode, but with grenades always available to throw and an excellent melee attack for each weapon you won’t miss them. The vehicles also vary the weapon loadout quite considerably, with machine-guns, plasma guns and cannons available.

Other than this, Halo brings no real innovation to the genre. The actual gameplay seems dressed in mechanics dating back to Doom (run down corridors, shoot, rinse and repeat) and certain design choices seem even more archaic. There is a beach level, a snow level, a jungle level, a space level and a green, hilly level. Frankly, the progression of themes through single player wouldn’t look out of place in a Sonic the Hedgehog game. You beat the ancient ruins level and the action suddenly switches to the mountains. Or the casino. There is no logical progression and I personally feel it has a negative effect on the story, especially when the genre convention has always been for fighting your way into each new area, instead of randomly jumping all over the place.

Which is a shame because Halo’s saving grace is its story. Right from the intro, you get the feel for the Halo backstory, that the characters on-screen have some kind of history, not least you: The Master Chief. The Chief is really a character you can be proud to be. A hardened Marine Cyborg that is strangely believable by FPS hero standards. Sure, he's the stereotypical coarse badass type but the way other characters react to you is a wonderful touch - "Hey look, it's a Spartan-II!" they say as you roll up in a warthog and get ready to hand some alien mutha his ass. Inevitably you feel bad when you mess up, or some of your AI pals bite the dust at the hands of the enemy, but this only furthers the idea that even the idolised cyborg that you play as isn't perfect like so many FPS characters seem to be. Where others wade through fire-fights and bring 12 weapons along for the ride, the Master Chief brings only 2 and has to take a breather once in a while to remain at his best: it's a nice layer of realism that at the very least ensures that Halo can stand apart from most games on some level.

Halo's voice acting is great for major and minor roles, bringing even the most generic marine to life at a level that has rarely been achieved elsewhere. The narrative is often exciting stuff – emergency landings, betrayals, search and rescues, assaults on enemy starships and explorations of the ancient facilities left behind by whoever made the Halo. The idea of the ancient ring-world is pretty original, at least in terms of its implementation into a computer game (Larry Niven may have a few grumbles but no-one ever turned Ringworld into a FPS). Just looking into the sky is pretty inspiring – seeing the land under your feet stretching up into the sky, round and back again. The trouble is that the actual game in between isn't really all that much to write home about – bad, or probably more likely rushed design work is the main fault of the game.

Is Halo 1 a good game? It's a competent FPS, well worth checking out if you're a fan of the genre. It just isn't the masterpiece that some people would claim it be.

Halo's "future" is a bit hazy, the obvious flaw in this section of the review being that the game is now getting on. Halo multiplayer on X-Box has seemingly been reduced to a nostalgia trip by the Live enabled Halo 2, though many prefer the balance of the original game. Halo multiplayer on the PC is still played, but could hardly be said to be thriving – a recent check says that it's the 18th most played on-line game, trailing the competition by some considerable way. About half a year after release, Gearbox released "Halo CE", a multiplayer only package that specifically shipped with the design tools necessary to create levels and other content – but very little was ever created and only a dedicated hardcore are creating anything at all. With a PC version of the Halo sequel looking increasingly unlikely, what started as an overrated but still enjoyable series may just end that way, simply fizzing out because of the Console promise of massive revenue and an all too cynical PC gaming crowd...