I'm going to review the game based on the singleplayer mode only, for now. This for 2 reasons: It's the 23rd of December and I don't have much time left until the festivities begin ,when I won't have any time left. I bought the game yesterday... And, the retail version of Mac Halo is 1.02, which is one step behind the current PC Version (1.03). A patch is in the works, but it's not ready yet (sounds familiar). The point is, 1.03 brings a host of improvements to the multiplayer part of the game and it is pointless to review an outdated version of this game, which would obviously only give it a lower rating than necessary. I'm going to review the multiplayer part as soon as the patch is released, assuming the PC Version won't have updated by that time again.

Test machine:
PowerMac G4 MDD, Dual 1.25GHz, 2MB cache each, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB, Mac OS X 10.3.2.

Halo - First things first
The story of Halo, which should be widely known by now, is basically another variant of the old "Save the universe" theme. But, since it's originally a Bungie game, the story comes with twists and turns, similar to the Marathon series and with a lot of parallels to it. This is a great feature of the game. However, the story is nowhere near as deep or engulfing as the one of the Marathon series. Some things just can't be improved.
So, you're a bio-engineered and mechanically augmented super-soldier, known as "Master Chief". Your ship has been ambushed by alien forces known as the "Covenant". After a futile escape, you have to abandon the crashing ship and land on a strange ring-world called Halo. It then turns out that Halo is in fact a weapon that can be used to destroy almost all life in the universe. To prevent the Covenant from using it, you have to destroy it, while not being killed by the Covenant, and the "Flood", a genetically engineered weapon-species isolated on Halo, which the Covenant released. Why Halo has to be destroyed, given it destroys all sentient life, and thus also makes it deadly to the Covenant, is beyond me, but that may be cleared up in Halo 2 (announced for Xbox). How all these races and plots interact with each other shall be left to yourself to discover. Keep an eye open for Marathon parallels and hints while playing.

Graphics
The game has, from the very first unveiling at MacWorld, been hyped to the get-go about its great graphics. And they are good indeed, however, they're no longer as good as they'd have been back in 2000. The game has extremely steep system requirements (Minimum: 800MHz, 256MB RAM, 32MB AGP graphics card of the second generation, recommended: 1GHz, 512MB RAM, 64MB AGP graphics card of the 3rd generation). But even surpassing these specs, your machine will still be hard pressed to deliver. Lacking even the least form of dual CPU support, even Dual Mac owners won't profit from the extra horse power their machine has. Then again, the game is heavily GPU bound. Ideally, you have a Radeon 9600, 9700 or 9800 to play this game. They're currently the only cards to support the advanced PixelShaders the game supports, which is the only way to really make the graphics in Halo look superb. If you have a third generation graphics card, such as the Radeon 9000 Pro, you will be able to use vertex shaders, which also look good, but nowhere near as good as the per pixel shaders the more expensive cards support. The good part about the Mac version of Halo: It supports FSAA (Full Scene/Screen Anti Aliasing), the PC version aparently doesn't. Of course performance is going to suffer, depending on your card and screen resolution. All in all, Halos graphics are good to very good, depending on your graphics card. Whether it lives up to expectations is up to you to judge.

Gameplay
One thing that stands out in Halo are the physics and animations. They're hands down the best I have ever seen in a first person shooter. Blowing things up and around, driving vehicles and aircraft is THE main fun factor that makes this game great. This is something done really well and continues Bungie's lead in physics design that started back in the Marathon days.

In Halo, you are only able to carry two weapons at a time, plus two kinds of grenades. This is an element that gives the game a great touch of tactics and right (or wrong) decisions. Are you going to combat the next round of enemies with the Assault rifle with 180 rounds left, or rather with the fusion pistol the last critter dropped? Finding the right combination is vital to winning here.

The enemies are smart too, the AI is nothing short of astonishing, they will seek cover, jump away from grenades, attack in packs, try to surround you etc. This is another big plus for Halo, where others continue to fail miserably.

Halo is also famous for its "one-world" design, in which you seemlessly transition from one "level" to another, creating the impression of moving around in a single huge level. Saving and loading happens extremely quickly and at certain spots in the game - automatically. Hate it or love it, but it's the best implementation of that save/load scheme I have seen to date. (a lot of players wish for a save game at any time (vs checkpoints) option, but like many console ports this isn't an option.)
Unfortunately the level design itself isn't always as convincing. While most outdoor maps are generally simply awe-inspiring and fun to play, the indoor levels are often repetitive and a bit too simplistic at times. The repetitiveness comes from the story, which leads you deep into Halo and back out, obviously taking the same way back and forth. Still it's an unnecessary bummer for an otherwise great environment.

Sound
Halo's sound is great. Although I don't have the luxury of 5.1 speakers, the sound in the game, as well as the music is great. Atmospheric at times, thrilling here, or outright funny there. I can't really say much about it, you have to hear it yourself. If you liked the sound in the Marathon series, you're going to like the one in Halo too.

Bummers
One of the main things that bothered me after having finished the game, was that certain scenes and items that had appeared in the various teaser-movies and sneak-peeks over the years simply are missing in the final game. You never get to wield the covenant enery-sword, you never run through a herd of dinosaur-like animals etc. These are things that I dearly missed, because I had anticipated them. I assume they were cut out or lost during the transition from the original Mac/PC title to the somewhat streamlined Xbox title that targeted a different audience than the one it was originally developed for. I admit that I'm not free of sour feelings towards Microsoft and that may increase the negative feeling I have about the lack of these features. But still, wielding a Covenant sword would have been too cool.

The game is also astonishingly short. I was probably wrong, expecting a long storyline and more than 20 hours of gameplay, as I experience in all 3 Marathon games, to which I like to compare Halo to. I finished it the first time in roughly 12 hours, maybe a little more, almost in a single swipe. Considering Quake2 (the shortest singleplayer game I know, after MDK) only takes about 8 hours on the first run and maybe 5 after you know the levels, Halo doesn't offer too much more in terms of playtime. This too may be a consequence of the pressure that was surely put on Bungie for releasing their game in time for the Xbox launch. Hopefully Halo2 is going to offer more of that, should it ever be released on something else than the Xbox.

Summary
So, that leads me to the usual conclusion and the weighing of pros and cons. Halo definitely is a game you want to play, if you have the machine to do it. It's one of the best games I have played in a long time and has certain elements that no other game has ever had before. Still, it doesn't quite live up to the expectations I and probably other people had. However, it's debatable whether that is because of the lack of features or rather due to the fact that this game simply was totally overhyped for four years. Eventually things fall back on you. Too much hype hurts, especially on titles that get "delayed" for such a long time.
Interestingly, it ran rather well on my machine, with barely ever any noticeable hickups. Turning down resolution and some of the options (that don't hurt graphics quality too much) helps a lot. So I'm not going to say this is the best game I have ever played or seen, such as others have. It's great and "more great" than all other titles I have purchased this year. But I don't suffer from extreme short memory, so I remember things that impressed me more.
PS: I also quickly tested it on an iBook G4 933MHz, 256MB and it ran playable. More RAM may further improve the experience. Haven't tried it on the 12" iBook yet.

SinglePlayer Pros:

• Great graphics, sound and music
• Superb physics and AI
• Support for FSAA (and shaders*)
• Adjustable options, controls
• Driveable/flyable vehicles
• Good storyline/plot
  (* - 10.3.2 drivers fix some graphics card issues, but not all. Current Halo code does not enable shader support w/Nvidia cards, but that may also change. It was reportedly disabled due to performance impact.)
  
  Cons:
  
• Very high system requirements
• PixelShaders only on Radeon 9600 and better
  (current Halo code requires later (opengl) shader support found in 9600 and up models. 8500/9000 models support a shader mode not currently used by Halo. That may change in the future.)
• Missing features (compared to original Halo movies)
• Partially repetitive level design

Screenshots:
For Halo screenshots (w/FSAA on/off, etc.) see this reader page of Mac Halo Screenshots w/9800 graphics card.

System Requirements: (from Macsoft's Halo page)

Minimum:
Macintosh computer with 800MHz G4/G5 or faster processor, Mac OS X v10.2.8 or higher, 256MB RAM, 32MB AGP Video Card (GeForce 2MX/ATI 7500 or better), 1.4GB hard disk space. Internet or LAN connection required for online play.

Recommended:
1GHz G4/G5 or faster processor, Mac OS X v10.3 (10.3.2), 512MB RAM (or more), 64MB AGP Video Card (GeForce 4ti-ATI 9000 or better).

Review of Mac Halo: Combat evolved (version 1.03, Multiplayer)
by Bensch "G-News" Blaser
Feb. 2nd, 2004

This is the promised review of the Mutliplayer part of the game, since the update to 1.03 has been released for the Mac too now, and is therefore up-to-date with the current PC version again.

I've played quite a bit in the past 2 weeks and also had some games with members of the Swiss National Halo Team, so I've seen quite a bit of what's possible in this game, regarding mutliplayer mode.

Modes
Halo has a wide variety of multiplayer modes, the most prominent one most likely being "capture the flag". There are 12 standard modes (Slayer, Oddball, Juggernaut, King, Crazy King, Race, CTF, Assault, Team Slayer, Team Oddball, Team King, Team Race) and 32 so called classic modes, which all build up on the previous 12 modes, but with different settings, rules etc. King of the Hill is some kind of domination mode, where a Team or an individual has to control one or multiple hills in succession for a certain amount of time, usually 2 minutes. Oddball is a variant of "Kill the Man with the Ball", where an individual or team has to carry a skull for a certain amount of time, in order to win, with the other players or team trying to keep them from reaching the required time.
Juggernaut is some kind of "Tag", where one player is "it" and has more power than others. Kill "it" to get his/her powers.
Assault is another team-based offense vs. defense game, where teams have to invade the other teams base.
In Race, you have to follow a set of waypoints and complete the race in as little time as possible. Using vehicles of course.
Slayer and its various variations are basic deathmatch, where kills make up the score.

In CTF the players are split up into two teams, Red and Blue and the goal is to get the opposing teams flag and capture it at your own flags recepticle. Depending on the settings, when the enemy has your team's flag too, you'll have to return it first, in order to capture and score. Played with experienced teams, this mode is highly challenging and a lot of fun, online in public servers, it's often more like FFA Team Deathmatch. See if you find a server with decent people online and play there, in such a case.

Gameplay
What reallly stands out for Halo in multiplayer mode is the fact that a lot of maps have a whole arsenal of vehicles at your disposal. The use and mastering of vehicles as a team and an individual is key to winning in many outdoor maps, especially in CTF. It's an awful lot of fun.

While singleplayer may have been repetitive at times and rather straight forward, multiplayer will keep surprising you with new ways of going at a certain problem, of combining attacks and tactics. I haven't had so much fun with a multiplayer game in a long time.
Level design in multiplayer is great too, more interesting than singleplayer in most cases, leaving a wide choice of tactics and approaches.

The 1.03 patch also brought a number of improvements to weapons balance. The sniper-rifle now needs 2 shots to killl, unless you hit the player right in the head, which can be rather tricky, given the netcode of Halo is still a bit "warpy" if players' pings vary a lot. UT2k3 or Quake3 still have better netcode in that respect, but that may be subject to change in a further version.
The tank now takes longer to reload, reducing its destructiveness somewhat. The rocketlauncher forces a delay before launching the second rocket etc. The only weapon that is still unbalanced and far too strong is the Fuel Rod Gun, which is only present in multiplayer mode. It's heat build-up is too slow, allowing for a rate of fire that is too high and it has too many shots to be fired. Often people will just run around "rodlaming" for the whole time of the game, which is little fun for all but the ones with the gun in their hands. I hope this issue is going to be adressed in a further update.

Another issue that has been discussed a lot is team killing, which still happens far too often, even after the update, which introduces an automatic kicking/banning mechanism for teamkillings. So if you shoot someone of your team with a gun and he dies, you can be suspended for a certain amount of time, depending on the server settings.
However, most teamkills stilll happen with grenades and, most importantly, with vehicles. Touching a moving vehicle, friend or foe, even the slightest bit, will instantly kill you. This is not only unrealistic, it's a pain in the ass, since often enough, you spawn right in front of a moving vehicle or a vehicle is spawned upon you. Here I'd welcome a more sophisticated damage system that differentiates more between a slight hit, and a full running-over.
Bumping into a teammates car laterally should deal some damage, not kill you entirely. Maybe team damage could be turned off all toghether, as it is done in Quake 3 CTF. I don't think that would have a negative impact on the game. It would reduce the number of teamkillls and the time spent waiting for the respawn a lot, making the game more fun to play for everybody.

Other than that, gameplay is mature and fun, with a lot of different approaches to victory. As such, I see a great future for Halo as a multiplayer community platform. First tournaments at the CPL and similar leagues speak the same language.

By far the weakest point of Halo Multiplayer remains the "game lobby" and server searching tool. It has roughly the standard of a Quake3 or Quake3 Team Arena interface. It finds server quickly, but if you fail to join a server, you have to start all over again. There is no find players or server names function. There is also no chatlobby, unlike Unreal Tournament, for example.
The system works, but it is far from a worldclass solution, it's minimalistic.

Ending with a positive point: there is no known cheat or hack for Halo yet, which is a pleasant change, compared to games like Battlefield 1942, Counter-Strike or Quake3, which have all been ridden by cheats and exploits shortly after their initial release. This bodes well for Halo as a multiplayer game with a future.

(MultiPlayer) Conclusion:

Pros:
• Great multiplayer gameplay, I mean really fresh and fun!
• Great level design
• Great weapons, with one exception
• Cheat free
• Lots of great folks online
• Runs well (if you had no problems in singleplayer, you won't have any in multiplayer too)

Cons:
• Laggy netcode with high ping differences between players
• Minimalistic multiplayer/server search interface, no lobby
• Fuel Rod Gun too strong still
• Too many teamkills due to unclever handling of vehicle damage
• Lots of stupid people online
• Slight advantage for team-blue, due to color*

*Red players are easier to spot in most maps, it might be a good idea to change the color of the enemy team for each team to the color of choice (like in Slayer) and only keep your own teams color blue or red. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Noteworthy: