"Halo : Combat Evolved" on the X-box

So why do I bother writing anything about this game so long after its release, well there is no point really, except I have some cool images, and a mean feast version of the main theme...

So Halo then, well without going too far - its the best first person shooter on any console ever, in all time, ever, ever, Period. In years to come I'll look back at the graphics and think they are crap (actually they are already showing their age) but the gameplay will always kick mother fucking ass, the amount of hours I have spent destroying in deathmatches with the rest of the feast and our various acquaintances is enough to confirm this game as one of the best things to hit my joypad...this game beast all the opposition primarily because of the pace of the gameplay, its not too fast or too slow, I can always think my way out of a fucked up situation instead of just holding the trigger and just praying I can get more ammo out of my gun before the other guy... plus what ever weapon you have if you use it tactically you can win any battle...

Can Halo 2 live up to the awesomeness of this, well providing they don’t change too much about the play dynamics, the feast wont be playing any shows the month it comes out...

So let's get geeky, mother fuckers, if you a reading this you probably know most of it if not all of it, but here is the halo story, an increadibly convoluted way to make a game..

Bungie were an independent games developer, who concentrated on making games for the mac, anyway sometime in the 90's they started making halo, a mac based real time strategy game (yup like command and conquer) so you had an army that you moved around around and set attacking stuff, probably until you gained domination over areas, pretty standard stuff...I don't know how far they got with this but they did have it working as a game of sorts as this picture shows (but note the gameplay icons ripped straight out of photoshop!!)

those little things that look like trees are hundreds of mini master chief's running around kicking ass..

Somebody thought it would be cool to take the camera down and stick it behind individual units and follow them around (or take control of them it isn't known) bringing a whole new element to the rts genre, what they didn't bargain for was the fact that they would have so much fun playing it in this view that they would ultimately can the other view, and the other units, and eventually even ditch the third person view, changing it from a real time strategy game in to a first person shooter!, one thing I noticed about these screen shots is that there is no covenant, so at first I guess it was a human on human affair...

third person rts action, look a helicopter...	look at the super shit warthog, and the odd blue tank (maybe the enemy was blue and you were green or something)

so they eventually showed a movie of their game at mac world in 1999 read about it here , it generated a lot of interest, with its at the time amazing graphics, and ground breaking use of vehicles. they continued to develop the game, and eventually rockstar gave them some cash for the rights to bring bungie's titles to console, they successfully bought bungies game "Oni" to the PS2, and announced that halo would follow. Microsoft were in the throws of developing their new xbox console, and were struggling to find a killer ap for release with it, so they decided halo was it, and the purchased bungie, (I am guessing they had to give a sum of money to rockstar seeing as they owned console halo) the PS2 version was canned, the mac version got shelved, and development started from pretty much scratch on halo for the xbox (whether there was ever a first person version on the mac who knows) making this the third if not fourth version of the game to begin development! they had to close all their offices and move to redmond (microsoft's home)...

whilst the mac and PC versions development schedules were pretty much brought to a standstill, it appears that the PC one continued to be developed by gearhead (who would port the finally released PC version 4 years later!) as these screenshots released before the xbox version show...(these are damn similar to the final version, but have loads of subtle differences...)

look the chief has blue bits on his legs, and the trees look like shit...	there is ammo for the warthog gun??..	the bridge from the second level is loads bigger here than it was in the final game.

so after all the shit that went down halo finally got finished with a few bugs making it in to the final game (I am sure the a button dies from time to time in the menus on multiplayer), in dean takahashi's book about the xbox, he claims that the game finally got through testing at the last possible moment for them to manufacture copies in time for launch...the game is a fucking monster of awesomeness, and everything about has been super damn successful. the novelisation of the halo back story has so far sold 124,000 copies! fuck me, the soundtrack album seems to have been pretty fuucking popular too, anyway the most important thing is that I bought a halo mug, fuck yeah, coffee and videogames in one.

through the eternal development of the game loads of crap got stuck in to it and taken out again, here are some of those things...

that's the masterchief with a machete of some type, walking in the air like aled jones	the minigun, I guess they decided it should only be available as a mounted weapon on the warthog (puma)	Burn mother fucker burn, this flame thrower was taken out of the game just before the end, they couldn't get stuff to burn right...	they did actually add a flame thrower to the PC version, here it is doing it..fire..fire,,FIRE.
this is supposedly a covenant sniper rifle, looks like an early energy sword to me.	the early rocket launcher..	the original tank, possibly a light tank, there may have once been 2 in halo..	the ugly harpoon, maybe something to do with the water bits, but it looks really shit.
a covenant shadow, this looks cool as fuck, why didn't they stick in the game why, why, why? well at least its in halo 2	here is a concept sketch for the shadow in halo 2.	a concept sketch for a water vehicle, I dig the idea of taking halo to the high seas...	the boat actually got in the RTS halo, and here it is in all it's horrible redness..well at least it looks like it, but it's hard to tell.

Halo main theme from the macworld original demo, its a slightly different version to the one that appeared in the game...download it here at 4.03MB

Of course sludgefeast doing a guitar based superfuzz version of the main theme from the game would be nice? well here it is as for the singing monks at the start of the original version, we said fuck 'em. 2.05MB

Just before halo (and the xbox) came out microsoft sent a DVD out to retailers and journalists featuring lots of footage of halo, some windows themes and other crap, anyway packaged in a crappy polythene sleeve it looked like this:

the back (or was it the front?)

the front (or was it the back?)

I am so mother fucking punk rock that I bought the toys.

boring sludgefeast info - we have written songs about halo, yes it's true, get our album "noise action noise" to hear the delights of "sidewinder" about breaking a self imposed no sniping rule, and our future LP "virtua rock" features the song "deathmatch" whilst unspecific be aware that I am singing about the bungie masterpiece.

 

please don't post our images and MP3's on other websites or FTP servers, or we'll drain your overshield and shoot your face off, you covenant fuck.
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