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Halo
Bungie / Bungie /Mac/PC

Finally something to make your Imac worthy.

Bungie has long been the champion of Mac gamers who have, otherwise few games to choose from, most of which are typically year-late ports of successful selling Windows titles. Bungie has remained true to their Macintosh Marathon roots and simultaneously released their stand-out games on Windows and Mac OS. What makes Bungie's Chicago based team, led by Jason Jones, special is that they have never been content to stay with success. They want to make all kinds of great games. Marathon was a top notch first-person shooter, every bit the equal of Quake, but rather than rest on their laurels Carmack or Romero style and spend all of their lives trying to outpace everyone else with incremental improvements on their original success, Bungie broke out with Myth, a completely different look and style of game, ground breaking in its genre and internet play.

Now Jason Jones looks to do it again. His latest, most ambitious title, first announced last year and first shown at MacWorld this spring was easily one of the most stunning presentations of E3 2000. Most of Bungie's E3 presentation was a demo film that displayed the most glorious graphics of the show and indicated the care that is being put into the physics engine and once again convention crumpling gameplay that Bungie is preparing to loose on the world. Besides the film, Bungie also gave a quick demonstration of the actual game engine as it stands, brushing aside all doubting Thomases whispering from the wings that the released screenshots and films, too glorious to be actual real-time rendered game engine screenshots, were, in fact, rendered artwork and not in-game footage.

Halo sets the player in the roll of space marine taking a desperate guerilla stand against a numerically, physically and technologically superior alien race (the Covenant) on a Ringworld style halo discovered in deep space, the whole future of mankind hanging in the balance.

Halo distinguishes itself on all fronts. First, the game is not mission based. The player is free to wage guerilla war on their own initiative and according to information and events generated on the fly. The attempt is to situate the player inside a larger conflict and give him or her, based on individual initiative and preference, the opportunity to make a difference in the conflagration. The game should flow differently for each gamer, each time through with nary a break throughout the experience (unless you pause to eat, drink or pee).

Bungie is also working on a universal physics model, which allows each item in the game world, be it human, jeep, aircraft or projectile to follow accurate physics and respond realistically. The E3 movie shows space marines bucking with the recoil of their rifles, swaying even with their own breathing. It shows a fallen marine slide realistically over a cliff and vehicles move with amazing realism, jeeps demonstrating solid and responsive suspension. Those demonstrating the game engine emphasized that moving a marine, driving a jeep or flying an aircraft (the player can hop into any in-game vehicle and take it for a spin) is all accomplished with the same controls, yet also demonstrated some advanced maneuvers with the vehicles that someone specializing in their use might master.

Halo is being designed to support online cooperative multiplay, where gamers are encouraged to specialize. A skillful driver partnered with a good machine gunner and a quick marine riding shotgun will be a formidable force in online play and all specialists will garner points for skillfully executing their chosen tasks. Multiplay will also support more antagonistic play where some will play Covenant soldiers and some Human marines.

Everything about Halo looks to propel gaming beyond its current levels. Halo is graphically superior, gameplay innovative and technically astounding, a very strong contender for game of the show period. It's so good that everyone has nearly forgotten Bungie West's project Oni which also looks great and is much nearer completion. Halo is said to be about 60% complete and while Bungie claims that the game could still ship in 2000, given the scope and originality of the project, we'll be happy to wait and have it be the game of 2001 rather than the game of 2000.

Halo wasn't the only great looking Mac title at E3 2000, a number of publishers were demonstrating or at least speaking of Mac versions of some excellent games, some their first.

-Jules Grant

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