Save the world and be home for breakfast..again.

Those of you who have read my various art attacks, that is reviews, will probably not have me pegged as a console gamer, and in general Im not. However I first experienced the original Halo a few years ago and found it to be one of the most fun ways of sitting on your backside for hours on end wasting your life away. When due to a bit of a windfall I found myself with a bit of loose change in the bank, I decided to invest in an X-Box and reacquaint myself with Halo, this time in is sequel form Halo 2, and Im glad I did. For the uninitiated Halo is a first person shoot-em up. In non-gamer speak that means that you play through the eyes of your character, looking at the world down the barrel of your gun. In the same vein as Medal of Honour and Doom, Halo 2 is a futuristic version of the idea, think of Starship Troopers as a mainly solo affair and you are not far from the mark.

DON'T FIRE UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES, IF THEY HAVE THEIR BACKS TO US THEN WE ARE IN TROUBLE!

Last time around you played Master Chief the one man killing machine that defends humanity against the evil covenant, and he is still the starting point for the game. You have to act out his mission through a series of scenarios, usually involving lots of shooting to reach certain parts of a level, or find a special item relative to the mission. Some of his battles take place on space ships, underground complexes and even on the streets of his home planet, which somehow seems to resemble a deserted Moroccan city a century ago. For the more intense scenarios this future shock trooper will be accompanied by regular marines and vehicles who help him wade through the action. Other parts require him to battle on in heroic isolation, both threads have their pros and cons but I must say that the larger battles for me are a lot more fun. Unexpectantly once you have got established as the human defender of the plane, you find yourself starting a second story line as the Covenant hero The Arbiter. His story is just as blood splattered as Master Chiefs and revolves around a civil war setting in the enemy ranks. The game play switches from one to the other as the two characters undertake their missions. To say how the two stories relate to each other or the specific nature of the missions would be to give too much away but the story lines are well thought out. They carry on the holy war idea first fashioned in the first game and impart the information needed to the players in the form of a series of video plays in-between the levels. The story is not overly complex, this is a shoot em up after all, no need to get too bogged down in information and thoughtfulness, if it moves shoot it, if it turns out to be one of yours then they must have got in the way, you are the hero after all.

HEADS DOWN NO NONSENSE MINDLESS VIOLENCE

The controller is fairly easy to master, triggers for weapons and buttons move things around, Master Chief still has a flash light for the gloomier places and the Arbiter has a limited duration invisibility but most things remain as per the first game or as I say fairly standard for most console games of this type. What is a new innovation is the ability to hold and fire two weapons at the same time, this applies to the smaller weapons only but obviously doubles your fire power. It does have the drawback of not allowing you to throw grenades but once you have played a while the art of dropping a weapon, throwing the grenade and then picking the weapon back up will become second nature. The satisfaction derived from wandering about with a submachine gun in each hand like Edward G Robinson on St Valentine's Day in Chicago is immense.

MORE GUNS THAN CHARLTON HESTON

Many of the guns remain the same as in the first game from the M6C Pistol up to rocket launchers and vehicle mounted Gauss Canons for the human and Needlers through to Fuel Rod Guns for the Covenant. One new weapon is a Covenant Energy Sword, very Luke Skywalker and very effective. The different weapons have pros and cons against the different enemies and it wont take you long to sort out what works where. Other familiar pieces of hardware are grenades, three types of ground vehicle and five different flyers for those long stretches of nothingness or when you want to get the hell out of an area. Some parts of the game require you to use these heavier weapons so it pays to play about with the different machines as soon as you can to train yourself up.

YES, BUT IS IT ART?
The playing of Halo is a dream, and that's coming from a very occasional player. It will take a while to become an expert, but you can master the skills needed for enjoyment in a relatively short space of time. The graphics are very good, flow well and art and design behind the game maintain a dark atmospheric flavour through out most of the game. The rendering is smooth and the attention to detail is beyond what is needed to make a good game.

ONE FOR ALL OR ALL FOR ONE.
The game has a split screen capability for co-operative playing with three other players on one monitor. Two players is fairly good but with the screen divided up into four it is actually very difficult to see what's going on around you. A better option is to link more than one X-Box together and play against each other using different screens. This obviously means that each player needs their own box and cables, but the end result is worth it. In this mode the game can be played as comprising a team that is all working together to fight the enemy or as a player only gladiatorial match with only the players themselves in the game.

ITS LIFE JIM BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT.
With the live on-line capability of the X-Box this game really comes into its own. You will need a live starter kit that gives you a head set for communications, and the necessary equipment to hook up to a broadband connection. There is an additional fee involved but the multi user aspect makes gaming a whole new experience. Playing against people that you have never met whilst communicating to people that you cant see and having the end results unravel on screen really brings this game to life and if you have the spare cash is an experience that I cant recommend to highly.

AND IM SPENT.
So for one of the best on line experiences or even just testing yourself against the X-Box itself Halo 2 is the place to be, its futuristic escapism with a violent streak, just what you need after a hard day at the office. See you in the arena.