halo

The winter-een-mas celebrations begin early this year.
For information on Winter-Een-Mas, go to www.ctrlaltdel-online.com

Celebrations kicked off with a run-through of the venerable Halo campaign, cooperative with Derrick.
We started at roughly 3.00 pm, blazing through the first two missions in a speedy 30 minutes, and rushed through Truth and Reconciliation. Silent Cartographer and AotCR proved easy missions as we circumvented large portions of both. The good bit, however, comes after these introductory sessions.

343 guilty spark brings back bad memories of my first time on halo - getting lost for hours is not fun at all. This mission set the pace for the next one - run-and-gun up close shotgun action, squabbling over shotgun ammo, and many, many many "oh SHIT" moments when flood combat forms drop in behind you. Nasty.

Following that, everybody's least favourite level. The Library is the product of some twisted mind, with its repetitive corridors, numbing colour scheme, and hordes and hordes of flood. Combine that with a Gargravarr-esque little floating ball of light (follow the humming) and cheesy scenario names (wait, it gets worse!) and it's little wonder that Nobody really wants to play this level. Unfortunately for the purposes of our run through we had to do it, and with grit and sweat we did, hating every moment. Curse you, Bungie!

After the furious up-and-close shotgunning of the last two levels things quickly got tactical in Two Betrayals. Twitch reflexes no longer suffice in this very open mission - often we had to re-play a certain section due to incompetency in the field of tactics. A multitude of different enemies and sometimes three-way-conflicts makes prioritising targets a very strategic affair. Also the large areas mean you are easily outnumbered which makes cover a very important consideration. I think this area counts for the majority of our deaths.

The penultimate level, Keyes, shows a combination of the above two styles of gameplay. It's got several open, tactical sections, and much corridor-crawling blasting action. A slog across kilometres of covenant ship and we escaped for the final mission. But first, dinner. I have a glass of wine and Derrick tells me that I'm not driving the warthog. Bugger.

We excused ourselves early and rushed back for the final mission, the Maw. A frantic finale, this mission returns to the earlier style, diverging from the more cerebral Two Betrayals and Keyes back to corridor crawling. While the style is similar, the action certainly isn't. Even returning to the ship that opened the first mission, we're no longer casually shooting covenant grunts and lobbing grenades to clear out elites. In fact, a testament to Bungie's skill at making games, this level is one of the most horrendous nerve-wrenchingly fast-paced ones, a fantastically satisfying ending. Twenty minutes of up-in-your-face with the flood gives way to the grand final section, a warthog race against the clock across kilometres of exploding ship infested with flood. Derrick drove, of course, and I rode shotgun, and we finished with a minute to spare, ending our run-through of one of the greatest campaigns in gaming history.

A bit on the game itself. Halo is revolutionary because firstly it brought the FPS genre to console gaming, something before considered impractical. Secondly, it introduced the concept of vehicles to FPSs, and indeed has some of the greatest vehicle sequences in any game. While not a pioneer, Halo re-established the credibility of not only the science fiction genre, but the story-telling capability of FPS, of which some earlier ones lacked. (Doom, hehehe. Doom.)

Lastly, the master chief is just badass.

Thus starts Winter-een-mas 2005-2006. Watch this space for more tribute matches and run-throughs of the greatest computer games ever.


adam