Well, what can be said about this amazing game that hasn't already been said? Halo is the game that I personally bought an Xbox for. After getting it home, setting it all up and putting the disc in I was really anticipating something special.

The game starts with your character, the 'Master Chief' being woken up! from cold storage and a brief interactive scene familiarises you with the controller and what buttons do what. Every button on the Xbox controller is used for Halo and the way it teaches you is very intuiative and user friendly.

I will be honest though, after playing through the very first level onboard the Pillar of Autumn, I was a touch disappointed, but after I landed on the Halo ring I was totally blown away.

Without spoiling anything at all for anyone who hasn't played it, the start of the game sees you crash land on the giant Halo ring and you have to escape an alien (the Covenant) search party and try and meet up with any other survivors. After taking out some grunt aliens and some bigger badder ones and twisting your way through some narrow ravines, you make your way to a level that contains your first big battle and prepare to be blown away! If you've played it, you know what i'm talking about, and if you haven't, well I dont want to ruin anything for you.

Lets just say that this section, and when your warthog jeep is first dropped off for you is the reason many of us play games. I actually had goose bumps by the sheer beauty of Halo.

Throughout the course of the game you can only carry two weapons and grenades so choose carefully. You start off with a handy pistol, and an assault rifle and along the way get to deal death via shotguns, sniper rifle (with night vision), rocket launchers, alien plasma pistols and other energy weapons, needle guns and plasma grenades. It would have been nice to see some kind of alien rocket launcher but hey, i aint complaining!

But heres the thing.. to assist you in your battles against the covenant, there are a number of vehicles to help you out. From time to time you'll come accross an abandoned Warthog jeep or get one airlifted to you and then the real fun begins! If you hop in the drivers seat and take the jeep for a thrashing, other marines will jump in with you, one into the passenger seat and one onto the back to man the giant gatling gun/assault cannon mounted on the back! The controls for the jeep take a little bit to get used to but after a while youll be ripping slideouts to take out alien grunts and jumping over ledges and cliff faces all while your marine passengers help you out. Turn up the volume too or you'll miss all the back chat from the other marines :-)

Later on in the game you get to drive the Scorpion tank, the covenant Ghost which is like a kind of hover cycle armed with twin plasma cannons and also the Banshee flyer, an alien aircraft that you can fly around in. Theres no other way to explain it than Halo is just incredible fun.

My only complaint with Halo really, is that towards the end some of the levels get extremely repetitive (and the Halo development team agree) but a major surprise 2/3rds of the way into the game (which I am not going to spoil) keeps you on your toes and there are so many cool points in Halo that I would need too much room to list all of them. Keep an eye out for little touches like the aerial on your tank wobbling, the sunlight filtering through trees, the macho chatter of your marines, and the screams of the alien grunts when they see you! theres some truly funny moments.

Also of enormous fun are the multiplayer modes, via split screen or system link you can deathmatch with and without the vehicles (all except the banshee) through 13 different multiplayer maps. There's heaps of modes and you can customise them to suit your own tastes. Plowing around Blood Gulch in a warthog jeep with your mate as a passenger, letting rip into your mates with the chain gun is incredible fun. Getting two televisions and a couple of Xbox's together for some Halo capture the flag, deathmatch or any of Halo's other multiplayer modes is some of the most gaming fun that i've had in years.

Also included in Halo is a utterly sublime co-operative mode. You can get a mate to help you play through the single player story! It is just incredible fun ganging up on Covenant and outflanking them and hooning around in a warthog together.. its almost gaming perfection.

I can really only finish off by saying that after playing through Halo twice and then once more in co-op mode, if you're a fan of First Person Shooters and own an Xbox you really must buy Halo.. It's that simple. But seeing as 88% of Xbox owners have also bought Halo, chances are you have it already.. and rightfully so.