{"id":1290,"date":"2004-08-19T10:44:01","date_gmt":"2004-08-19T10:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-1290.html"},"modified":"2005-08-28T00:26:50","modified_gmt":"2005-08-28T00:26:50","slug":"halo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2004\/08\/19\/halo\/","title":{"rendered":"Halo"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finished playing Halo<\/i><\/a> last week: wow. Despite some annoyingly repetitive sections about three-quarters of the way through, it was an enormously satisfying game. The climactic ending was the best I’ve come across since Ico<\/i><\/a>. It wasn’t as emotional (I didn’t cry), but it was adrenaline-filled, rousing, and pleasingly cinematic. (I had been half expecting an Alien-style final encounter with a Flood creature on board the escape ship.)<\/p>\n

By rights, Halo<\/i> should have been the game that made me go out an buy an XBox. The best multiplayer fun I’ve ever had was playing 8-way split-screen Halo<\/i> on two XBoxes and two big LCD wall projectors. I had enjoyed playing through some of the early single-player missions on friends’ boxes, both alone and in co-op mode. The choral opening music still gives me goosebumps.<\/p>\n

For a long time, I had an XBox + Halo<\/i> on my wish list, in case anyone was looking for ideas for a Christmas or birthday present. But for an equally long time, Halo<\/i> was the only<\/em> XBox exclusive game that held any real interest for me. I already had a PS2 and a GameCube, so I had multiformat games covered, £150 is a lot of cash to lay down for just a single game. I had thought I might get it on the PC when it came out last year, but performance issues convinced me otherwise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the end it was Rainbow Six 3<\/i> that was the tipping point for me to buy an XBox. Or, more specifically, the XBox Live<\/a> multiplayer aspect of the game. Tactical squad-based shooters don’t light my candle, but co-operative team-based play does<\/em>. And when you can slip on a headset and enjoy a lively shared experience in the comfort of your own home, well, that’s a whole new ball game. <\/p>\n

So would Halo<\/i> alone have been worth the price of an XBox? Good though it was, I don’t think so–especially as I already had<\/em> plenty of games hardware. If I hadn’t had a PS2 or a GameCube, it might have been different. Having said that, I have Halo 2<\/i><\/a> on pre-order, and I’m planning to take the release date off work to put in some quality time with the Master Chief. Oh yeah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finished playing Halo<\/i><\/a> last week: wow. Despite some annoyingly repetitive sections about three-quarters of the way through, it was an enormously satisfying game. The climactic ending was the best I’ve come across since Ico<\/i><\/a>. It wasn’t as emotional (I didn’t cry), but it was adrenaline-filled, rousing, and pleasingly cinematic. (I had been half expecting an Alien-style final encounter with a Flood creature on board the escape ship.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}