Halo by Brandon Smith, Damien Waples, Mario De Govia (2001, Paperback, Illustrated)

When you get past all of the chatter about the potential of Halo looking better on a PC, and all of the yip-yap about Halo being "just another" first person shooter, and all of the lip-flapping about Halo not being able to compete with the very best games on PS2 or GameCube and you actually sit down and play the game on your Xbox...you're in for one hell of a game.

The only thing people need to be concerned about when it comes to Halo is how soon they're going to get it and where they're going to find the time to play. With a story good enough for a full length novel, audio and visual elements as detailed as any you've ever seen and excellent pacing, Halo is the reason for Xbox and vice versa. Bungie has brought to the Xbox the game that will prove hundreds of thousands of naysayers wrong (about the system and thegame) and bring sweet relief and joy to those who've been biting their nails and pacing in circles waiting for Microsoft's machine to arrive. Hype is one thing; reality is another; Halo on Xbox is one of the best things to happen in videogames.

Features:

* Situational First and Third Person perspectives.
* Role-based, cooperative multiplayer team game
* Play story mode as a single player or cooperatively with another player.
* Choose from a variety of conventional human and powerful alien weaponry
* Vehicles include marine jeeps and tanks to alien flyers and hovercrafts.
* Squad based combat.
* Enjoy the action with 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound and Widescreen playback features.

The Story

Halo takes place in the far future where mankind is locked into a brutal war against a race of aliens known as the Covenant. These dudes are seriously evil. They wipe out entire planets at a time, and they are so fast at doing so that we poor humans are unable to get much information on them before they nuke us into oblivion.

The horde of aliens is getting closer and closer to Earth with the clock quickly ticking down before they completely annihilate our race. Finally the line is drawn. In a massive battle near a human planet, only one ship survives: Pillar of Autumn. The commander of the ship decides to lure the Covenant as far away from Earth as possible so she programs the ship's AI to jump to some random location in the opposite direction of the home system.

Eventually the ship arrives at a distant area or space where they find both a gas giant called Threshold and its small moon known as Basis. This wouldn't be so strange except for the fact that they find a giant ring construct floating between the two objects, which is about 10,000 miles in diameter. Unfortunately for the small ship, the entire Covenant battle fleet had followed them and arrived in the system shortly before.

When you boot up the game, you're knee deep in the middle of the Autumn being evacuated. That giant ring construct is Halo and the secret that it holds is the part of the story that will be up to you to discover.

Gameplay
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how Halo plays, I'd like to share a few of the quotes blurted out in and around the IGN offices and other places as passers-by were enraptured by a glimpse of Bungie's first person superstar.

"Are those guys fighting with you?"

"Drive the Jeep! I wanna see the Jeep!"

"Damn, this feels like a movie!"

"I thought the fun part happened already."

"How come the enemies speak English?"

Lol it's pretty funny and entertaining.
Overall Rating- 10/10

This is a great book about Halo, good for any hard core fan, written by Brandon Smith, it is highly recomended.

Covers every level with complete walkthroughs with tips on how to defeat every enemy and descriptions on every weapon and vehicle.

I didn't buy the book for codes or for cheating. Just to better understand the story line, and it does a nice job explaining that. I least like about the game is driving the Banche (jeep) it stinks.