Rating of
4/5
The LeBron James of video games
Jonzor - wrote on 08/27/11
The title of the review is a joke about this game carrying the original Xbox like LeBron carrying the Cleveland Cavaliers, if you were wondering. It's not related to any feelings I have for either LeBron or Halo one way or the other.
If I had to compare this game to any other video game, I'd compare it to Final Fantasy VII. What both of those games did best was convince a bunch of people that hadn't played a lot of video games that this was the best game ever made.
The difference is that this game is much more polished than Final Fantasy VII and just more fun. It doesn't have nearly as many annoying flaws as Final Fantasy VII did. While that game was a mediocre RPG, this was at least a good FPS.
It wasn't really anything new, but everything it did, it did well. Great action, with a helping of vehicle combat to keep it fresh. An excellent score topped off by a theme that's going to go down as one of the most memorable pieces of video game music ever made. A good, but not great story that kept the game moving forward at a decent pace. And also solid multiplayer with what was at the time a fairly rare co-op story mode that really increased my own enjoyment of the game.
I have one major complaint against this game, which accounts almost entirely for the game not getting a higher rating: level design. This had some of the most boring level design I've played in FPS games. The action was always good, but sometimes it was like they just built a section of a level with the intention of copy-pasting it to create the "final" version of the level.
It doesn't really try and be a Half-Life or Deus Ex type FPS, but is content to be more like the big-budget summer blockbuster of FPS games, which I actually think it did pretty well.
