Halo Completed

Ok, a mere 4 days after buying Halo Ive completed it, it was a fun few days but this game really *is too short* and Im not known for completing them particularly quickly I can assure you. In fact my favourite game ever, Deus Ex took me months to complete. Mind you I have been on holiday so I have maybe been hammering it a tad. From what Ive heard Halo 2 is even shorter, or at least quicker to complete. Anyway, a few other minor points for me - I really didnt feel that I had explored the Halo world very much, it felt like maybe 1% of the Halo was experienced and i was really left wanting more, especially as there is only a few different environments in Halo and these were repeated ad nauseam just varying slightly if The Flood were around. There was lots of room, corridor, room, corridor, room, corridor, bridge, room, corridor, room, corridor, bridge, goto 10. I guess this maybe relevant to the Halo world but I did feel cheated somewhat, particularly considering the underground hype that surrounded this game before Microsoft bought Bungie.

On the plus side, the online element seems pretty good (not that Ive tried it too much) and the little grunts screaming "Another enemy!" or whatever is funny. The vehicles are good, although I never got a go in a Covenant tank as I had to blow it up each time. Load speeds are fantastic and despite the _odd_ moment of slowdown or freezing it did run pretty well on my 128mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with pretty much everything upped to the max and on full screen resolution (1280x854 I believe).

What this game does make me realise is that games like Unreal Tournament 2K4 whilst maybe not having such an immediate pick up and complete effect, can be left and gone back to again and again, indeed the original UT still seems to have pretty busy online servers.

Its worth noting that Bungies 3 Marathon games are now released free for all to use, theres a PC app and an OSX one too.

*My potted rating:* 7/10 (could try harder).

BTW, Heres a page of old Marathon info.