Many of you will know the history behind Halo. It was originally intended to appear on the Mac and PC and was also going to feature a complex multiplayer element as well as it's solid single player story. The story was related to Bungie's earlier FPS series, Marathon. Then of course came the Microsoft buy-out and the move to the Xbox.

So what's all the fuss about? Why all the great reviews? Why the ten out of ten from the notoriously hard scoring team at Edge magazine? Everyone has their own opinion on why Halo is so great but ours is quite simple. Halo is one of the most complete titles we have seen. By that we mean that every different element of the game has been carefully considered, polished and fits in with all the other different elements. Sure it's not perfect (nothing is) and time has revealed a few issues which weren't so obvious at launch -- but few games can stand up to the overall excellence of Halo. In fact we would say that in this console generation nothing stands up to it ... yet. We think part of the reason Halo excels is due to the fact that Bungie have thankfully ignored some unwritten rules that have ingrained themselves in FPS titles of the last few years.

The first rule being that you have to pitch your story at people with a reading age of about 8. Halo's has one of the smartest and most compelling stories of any video game we have played. It does rely on movie cliches in places and borrows heavily from a few sources but for the most part it's top notch. It's not condescending, it doesn't spoon feed you "these are the bad guys go kill them" garbage and it manages to maintain an air of awe and discovery the whole way through. We won't spoil any of the back story here as it's best experienced in-game. If you absolutely have to find out about this element of Halo hit the official site for some story details.

The second rule which Halo dispenses with (thank god) is the tendency to have an arsenal of ludicrous overpowered big guns. Your character can carry two weapons and two types of grenades. That's all. There are a number of different weapons in the game all with different advantages. Very limited ammo supplies are available for the more powerful weapons and more often than not you'll be ditching these in favour of weaker weapons with greater ammo supply. It adds a massive strategic element to the game as you need to weigh up what opponents you'll be facing and how long you'll think you need to go before you run out of ammo. A simple change that creates a radically different (and much smarter) gameplay experience.

The soundtrack also stands out as being majorly different from other FPS titles. Not a trace of cock-rock, no hints of hybrid techno-metal and no cheesy trance. Bungie obviously set out to create an absorbing cinematic experience and therefore you get a cinematic soundtrack. The epic sweep of the music goes a long away towards helping create Halo's amazing atmosphere. It's well balanced and well paced. Halo is one of the few games in this genre which has truly great musical score.