Halo 1-2-3

[Nod]

Halo

 

Halo is a science fiction video game series, created by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The main trilogy of games center on the Master Chief, a cybernetically-enhanced human super-soldier, equipped with technologically-advanced battle armor and an artificial intelligence (AI) companion, Cortana. He aids the humans of a futuristic universe in battling the Covenant, a theocratic alliance of alien races. In this science fiction setting, the term "Halo" refers to Halo megastructures: large, habitable ringed structures, similar to Larry Niven's ringworlds.

 

Developer Bungie originally developed Halo as a real-time strategy game for the Apple Macintosh platform. When the company was bought by Microsoft, the game became a Xbox launch title. Halo: Combat Evolved was released for Xbox on November 15, 2001, and was later ported to both Mac and Windows PCs. Halo's success lead to two direct sequels: Halo 2, released on November 9, 2004, and Halo 3, released on September 25, 2007.

 

The trilogy video games have been praised as being among the best first-person shooters on a video game console, and are considered the Microsoft Xbox's "killer app". This has led to the term "Halo killer" being used to describe console games that aspire, or are considered, to be better than Halo. Halo's sequel, Halo 2, broke sales records for a media release, and Halo 3 sold more than US $170 million worth of copies in the first 24 hours of release, breaking Halo 2's record.As of October 4, 2007, games in the main Halo trilogy have sold over 20 million copies.

 

Strong sales of the series have led to the expansion to other mediums; the franchise includes five bestselling novels, two series of graphic novels, and numerous other licensed products. Spin-off games have been announced, including the upcoming real-time strategy game Halo Wars and Halo: Chronicles, which is being developed by Peter Jackson. The series' award-winning music has been composed by Martin O'Donnell, and soundtracks have been released for the three main games. The cultural impact of the Halo series has been compared by Brian Bendis to that of Star Wars.[10] The collective group of fans of the series is referred to as the "Halo Nation".

 

Story

 

Halo is set several centuries in the future. After the development of the "Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine", the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) began a program of traveling across the galaxy and planetary colonization. Over 800 planets are colonized in 200 years. Planets are categorized into "Inner Colonies" and "Outer Colonies"; the Inner Colonies, being closer to Earth and therefore older, are more developed and politically stable. Due to the older planets' need for the raw materials and supplies the Outer Colonies provide, tensions and outright civil war foments. The UNSC creates the SPARTAN-II Project in response to these rebellions. Twenty-seven years before the events of the main trilogy, communication with the colony Harvest is lost, and the ship sent to investigate is destroyed by the Covenant.[12] The Covenant Hierarchs declare humanity to be an affront to the Gods, and order its annihilation. By 2535, almost all of the Outer Colonies have been destroyed by the Covenant. The Covenant possesses a significant technological advantage, and proves nearly impossible for the UNSC to defeat in space engagements. These events are only alluded to in the video games, but their full descriptions are outlined in the novels Halo: The Fall of Reach and Contact Harvest.

 

 

A costume of the main protagonist in the Halo series, the Master Chief.The main story arc of the game trilogy begins with Halo: Combat Evolved, and is set in 2552. The Covenant arrive at Reach, which is, along with Earth, the UNSC's last stronghold; they vitrify the planet, leaving very few survivors. However, Master Chief, the last SPARTAN-II thought alive, escapes on the ship Pillar of Autumn. The Pillar of Autumn proceeds to supposedly random coordinates selected by the female AI, Cortana, which she has deciphered from ancient Forerunner hieroglyphs. The ship arrives to find the titular Halo, Installation 04, and they are attacked by the Covenant. Battle damage forces the Pillar of Autumn to the surface of the ring, where the Flood, a parasitic alien species, are accidentally released by the Covenant. The release of the Flood prompts the Monitor of the ring, called 343 Guilty Spark, to convince the Master Chief to activate Halo's defenses, so that the Flood can be destroyed. The Halo is designed to starve the Flood of their food—sentient life—by exterminating all life for thousands of light-years in every direction. Upon discovering the Halo's purpose, the Master Chief detonates the fusion reactors in the crashed Pillar of Autumn, destroying the ring; he then escapes in a fighter spacecraft.

 

In Halo: First Strike, the Master Chief returns to Reach, located in the Epsilon Eridani system, and rejoins the survivors of the vitrification. He and other SPARTAN-II's—who had survived the destruction of Reach—attack a Covenant space station and rendezvous point, where a fleet is massing to attack Earth. The space station is destroyed, giving the humans time to prepare for the invasion. Soon after, in Halo 2, a small Covenant fleet arrives at Earth. Badly beaten by the humans, the Covenant commander, the High Prophet of Regret, flees to Halo Installation 05, taking the human ship In Amber Clad with him. At Installation 05, the Master Chief kills the High Prophet, leading to the replacement of the Elites with the Brutes as the preferred soldiers of the Covenant. This changing of the guard causes a schism within the Covenant. The Elites, realizing they have been betrayed, ally with the humans. One of the Elites, called Arbiter, prevents the firing of the Halo by the Brute Tartarus, with the aid of Miranda Keyes and Sergeant Johnson. However, this inadvertently puts all the rings on standby: the remaining installations can be activated remotely from "The Ark".

 

The Master Chief stows away on a Forerunner vessel headed to Earth, which was conquered by the Covenant. The invaders excavated a Forerunner artifact in the Kenyan desert, leading to the events of the final video game in the trilogy, Halo 3. Despite the efforts of the now-allied Elites and humans, the High Prophet of Truth activates the artifact, which opens a slipspace portal to the Ark. The Master Chief and the Arbiter travel through the portal aboard an Elite ship, and prevent the Prophet from activating The Ark. They then activate a new Halo ring—intended to replace the recently destroyed Installation 04, but not yet fully built—in an effort to destroy the Flood, while still sparing the rest of the galaxy. Because the ring's construction was incomplete, the resulting pulse destroys the ring and damages the Ark. The Arbiter escapes the explosion, but the Master Chief and Cortana are left drifting in space; trapped in the severed rear half of their ship. The Master Chief cryonically freezes himself, as he and Cortana wait for rescue.

 

 

Games

 

The covers of Halo: Combat Evolved, the Halo 2 Limited Edition and the Halo 3 Legendary EditionAs of July 2008, the Halo series includes a main trilogy of games; the games were released in chronological order, with each new installment following the events of the previous title. Four additional games, one stand-alone and a "new trilogy", are planned to continue the series. The Halo series features recurring science fiction and action game elements. Ancient structures, alien races, and cyborgs appear throughout the series. The games of the main trilogy are first-person shooters, with the player experiencing most action from the protagonist's perspective.

 

Main trilogy

Released on November 15, 2001, the Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved is the first Halo video game. The game introduced many common gameplay and plot themes in the series. Players battle various aliens on foot and in vehicles to complete objectives, while attempting to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo. One concept introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved, is limiting the number of weapons players could carry to two, forcing them to carefully select their preferred armament. Players fight with ranged and melee attacks, as well as a limited number of grenades. Bungie refers to the "weapons-grenades-melee" format as the "Golden Triangle of Halo", which has remained fundamentally unchanged throughout the trilogy. In Halo: Combat Evolved, the player's health is measured in both hit points and a continually recharging energy shield. A PC port was developed by Gearbox Software, and released on September 30, 2003; a Mac OS X version was released on December 11 of the same year.[24] A stand-alone expansion, entitled Halo: Custom Edition, was released as a PC exclusive, and allowed players to create custom content for the game.

 

Halo 2, the sequel to Combat Evolved, was released on the Xbox on November 9, 2004, in two different editions. The standard edition has traditional Xbox packaging, and includes the full game on a single disc. The Collector's Edition has a specially designed aluminum case, along with an additional bonus DVD, extra booklet, and slightly different user manual. Halo 2 introduced new gameplay elements, chief among them the ability to hold and fire two weapons simultaneously, known as "dual wielding". Unlike its predecessor, Halo 2 fully supports online multiplayer via Xbox Live. The game uses "matchmaking" to facilitate joining online matches by grouping players looking for certain types of games. Upon release, Halo 2 became the most played game on Xbox Live. It would retain the top spot for two years—the longest any game has held the spot. A PC port for the Windows Vista operating system was later released.

 

Halo 3 is the third game and final game in the main Halo series, ending the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved. The game was released on the Xbox 360 on September 25, 2007, in North America and Oceania. It features several gameplay elements, including vehicles and weapons, that were not present in previous Halo games. The game also included a map-editing tool known as the Forge, which allows players to insert game objects, such as weapons and crates, into existing multiplayer maps. Players can also save a recording of their multiplayer matches, and view them as video, from any angle.

 

Spin-offs and sequels

The success of the main Halo trilogy has spurred the creation of spin-offs. Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game being developed by Ensemble Studios for the Xbox 360. Set in the year 2531, the game will take place prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. According to Ensemble, much effort has been expended into developing a control scheme that is simple and does not have issues like those in other console strategy games. The game was announced at X06, where a pre-rendered trailer was shown; at E3 2007, a montage of gameplay clips featuring many aspects of Halo Wars was shown, followed by a demonstration video on the official site. The game will be released in Spring of 2009. The other in-universe spin-off is Halo: Chronicles, a "new trilogy" of Halo games. Originally announced on September 27, 2006, at X06 as an untitled project, these titles are to be co-written, co-designed, and co-produced by Peter Jackson, with his recently formed development studio, Wingnut Interactive; the series will be episodic. A Halo-based character, SPARTAN Nicole-458, appeared in Dead or Alive 4, a product of the collaboration between Tecmo's Team Ninja and Microsoft's Bungie Studios.

 

Alternate reality games were used to promote the release of the games in the main trilogy. The Cortana Letters, a series of cryptic email messages, were circulated by Bungie prior to Halo: Combat Evolved's release. I Love Bees, an alternate reality game, was used to promote the release of Halo 2. The game focused on a website created by 42 Entertainment, commissioned by Microsoft and endorsed by Bungie. Over the course of the game, audio clips were released that eventually formed a complete five-hour story set on Earth between Halo and Halo 2. Similarly, Iris was used as a viral marketing campaign for the release of Halo 3. It featured five web servers containing various media files related to the Halo universe.

 

Development

 

Early development screenshot of HaloThe first Halo game was announced on July 21, 1999, during the Macworld Conference & Expo It was originally planned to be a real-time strategy game for the Mac and Windows operating systems, but later changed into a third person action game. On June 19, 2000, Microsoft acquired Bungie Studios and Halo: Combat Evolved became a launch title for the Xbox video game console.After receiving Xbox development kits, Bungie Studios rewrote the game's engine, heavily altered its presentation, and turned it into a first-person shooter. Though the first Halo was meant to include an online multiplayer mode, it was excluded because Xbox Live was not yet available.The success of the game led to a sequel, Halo 2, which was announced on August 8, 2002 at the Microsoft's New York X02 press event. It featured improved graphics, new weapons, and a multiplayer mode on Xbox Live. Halo 3 was announced at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo. The initial conception for the third game was done before Halo 2 was released in 2004. It utilized a proprietary, in-house graphics engine, and employed advanced graphics technologies.

 

Literary influences

 

A report published on IGN explores the literary influences present in the franchise, and notes Halo was influenced by The Culture and Ringworld, written by Iain M. Banks and Larry Niven, respectively. It comments on the similarities between characters in Halo and other science fiction series, most notably Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game: aspects of the SPARTAN Project and the design of the Drone species are perceived as reminiscent of the super soldier program and Buggers found in the novel. Other elements of the games such as Master Chief's name "John" have been suggested as originating based on a character named Jon 6725416 in Christopher Rowley's Starhammer. A report written by Roger Travis and published by The Escapist compares Halo with the Latin epic Aeneid, written by classical Roman poet Virgil. Travis posits similarities between the plots of both works and compares the characters present in them, with the Flood and Covenant taking the role performed by the Carthaginians, and Master Chief's role in the series to that of Aeneas.

 

Music

 

Four Halo soundtracks, composed by Martin O'Donnell, have been released. The Halo Original Soundtrack contains most of Combat Evolved's music. Due to the varying nature of gameplay, the music present was designed to use the game's dynamic audio playback engine. The engine allows for the mood, theme, and duration of music played to change according to gameplay.[59] To afford a more enjoyable listening experience, O'Donnell rearranged portions of the music of Halo into standalone suites, which follow the narrative course of the game. The soundtrack also contains music not used in the game, including a variation on the Halo theme that was first played at Halo's debut at Macworld 1999.[60]

 

For Halo 2's soundtrack, producer Nile Rodgers and O’Donnell decided to split the music into two separate volumes. The first, Volume One, was released on November 9, 2004 and contained all the themes as well as the “inspired-by” music present in the game (featuring Incubus, Hoobastank, and Breaking Benjamin). The second release, Volume 2, contained the rest of the music, much of which was incomplete or not included in the first soundtrack, as the first soundtrack was shipped before the game was released; the second volume was released on April 25, 2006. Halo 2, unlike its predecessor, was mixed to take full advantage of Dolby 5.1 Digital Surround Sound.

 

The soundtrack for Halo 3 was released on November 20, 2007. O'Donnell noted he wanted to bring back the themes from the original game in order to help tie together the end of the trilogy.The tracks are presented, similarly to the previous soundtrack for Halo 2, in a suite form. Unlike previous soundtracks, where much of the music had been synthesized on computer, the soundtrack for Halo 3 was recorded using a 60-piece orchestra, along with a 24-voice chorus. The final soundtrack was recorded by the Northwest Sinfonia at Studio X in Seattle, Washington.

 

Film

In 2005, a script for a film adaptation of Halo was written by Alex Garland—which D. B. Weiss and Josh Olson rewrote during 2006—for a 2008 release. The movie was to be developed and released by Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox, under the creative oversight of Microsoft. Peter Jackson was slated to be the executive producer, with Neill Blomkamp as director. Before Blomkamp signed on, Guillermo del Toro was in negotiations to direct. The crew has stopped and resumed preproduction of the film several times; while Blomkamp has declared the project dead,[8Jackson says the film will still be made. Blomkamp commented the Master Chief worked from a video gamer's perspective, but dramatically does not hold much weight because of his faceless nature. The character as depicted in the film would have been "the most important supporting cast member". Instead, "other characters around him [...] did most of the emotional heavy lifting", with their story exploring their perception of the Master Chief.

 

[Nod]

I play halo online  (1)

i would give you link to a tracker to download it >.>

But ...the uploader  had probhlems with his pc and did format...

If anyone wants to play with me on halo 1 ;) my nick ingame is Sh@rk  and usually the maps i create have title =  >>HELLAS<<

So join and play ;)

have fun.

[Jess]

i play halo online it's so nice i love it i have a great time with this game and btw i would really love to play halo 2 but i don't have xbox360 and i don't really enjoy it on pc it's so much better on x-bo :D

[MoNaco]

I play Halo 3 its an awesome game :)

[mweinz]

Halo its one most cool games and original games for me i love play Halo online

[victorbruno]

I finished Halo 1 and 2 a long time ago... unfortunately i dont have X360, so Halo 3 is out of range...

 

And yes, Halo Online is great!

[worda]

not bad game

[sexy beast]

Halo i the best game alive (on X BOX)

[NickOmaniac]

great game

[aneos]

I've never played Halo, but a friend of mine recommended it to me, so I think I might start playing some online...

Hope it's good... :P

[N-line]

i tried Halo2 and it seems crap, i'll never play it again

[Georgekiato15]

nice photo :D

 

Wtf ??? ... this is a topic about Halo ... not for pic's ...

[Enable^^]

thx for this topik its real cool game i play with friend on hamachi

[Giorgaki]

I liked Halo 1-2 but Halo 3 is the best!!!!

[130270]

I liked halo 1 and 3.. didn't like 2 tho