Halo: Combat Evolved

Now that my newly assembled quad-booting PC is working reasonably well, I decided it's time for me to catch up. Though I used to get together for Halo LAN multiplayer pretty often back in high school, I'd never touched the campaign mode until recently, and I have to admit that so far I'm pretty impressed.

The introductory cinematic left a bad taste in my mouth; the primary characterization isn't one of my favorite parts of the game. Master Chief, the player's robotic character, is made out to be some sort of mysterious superhero - which is stupid. He's a robot with a gun. Cortana, the narrative female voice who guides you through the game, highlighting objectives and so on, is sexed up in hologram form and is made to be probably the most 'human' character in the whole game. Meanwhile, Captain Keyes, the roughnecked military commander who's in charge of the whole affair, is made to act and sound like a standardized tough-love army dude.

Luckily, all this characterization disappears after the first level. Then you're just a guy shooting aliens with a female voice-over and some occasional AI backup. But that's not all: this game actually has a plot, and I'm starting to become mildly interested in it. The brainless shooter genre actually mates with trite sci-fi pretty well.

Back in 2001, Halo's gameplay mechanics - the two-weapon system, the emphasis on duck-and-cover combat, the fairly simple controls and vehicles - were pretty brilliant, and they're actually still quite relevant today. Unimpressive graphics (and restrictive vehicular control) aside, Halo has aged fairly well. One important thing the game nailed was accessibility. Learning how to play Halo is extremely simple, and the difficulty modes and checkpoints give the game both a great pick-up-and-play environment, and that "just one more level" nagging sensation in the back of your head.

Progress: The Silent Cartographer