Okay so I'm slowly catching
up on all the games I've missed over the last
several years. Haven't really played anything
since 2001, apart from Unreal 2. I got a new
computer this year (March) so I'm started from
2001 and playing all the good FPS since then!
Already done Undying, WOT, SOF2 and this week
played through Halo.
I was expecting it to be ugly
and repetitive, but gave it a chance. It didn't
feature very good level design; there was alot
of copy/paste of rooms and corridors, made worse
by incredibly bland textures. But, the outdoors
levels were good, and huge. Especially given
this was released in 2001. I absolutely hated
no quicksave and having to wait for checkpoints.
Not because it was too hard, but some of the
outdoor battles, eg. flying ships, gun turrets
and rocket tanks with a dozen aliens on foot,
can take up to 10min of strategy gameplay to
get through. Getting 90% of the way through
only to get hit by a rocket and having to start
all over again is inexcuseable. I actually found
most of these outdoors battle scenes (particularly
in level 8) to be much harder than the final
2 levels. Where's the big finale aswell? A lame
poor-handling buggy ride is the finale.
Only carrying 2 weapons at
a time was also a rubbish idea. But with the
machine gun and shotgun combination, some of
the close range combat against the Flood was
surprisingly enjoyable.
Still, with ugly indoor level
design and only say 30% of the gameplay being
enjoyable, I can't say I'd ever sit through
the game again. Very, very overrated. And while
the story was decent, it was nothing truly worth
being made into a blockbuster movie.
