In the film Willy Wonka and the Choclate Factory there is this moment where Charlie is in class and his teacher is asking everybody how many Wonka bars they’ve purchased recently due to the whole golden ticket thing.  He gets to Charlie and the number he gives him is low:  just two.  Assuming Charlie is as well-to-do as everyone else he says “okay, 200” to which Charlie says “no, just two." 

That’s about how I felt last week when I boldly proclaimed I had just finished Halo.  “You mean Reach?”  Nope, Halo.  As in the original.  As in “Combat Evolved.”  As in that game that has been out for nine years now.

So I’m not into shooters.  But hey, everybody loves Halo so it must be good…right?

It is.  Well, it’s not bad.  I mean it’s still a shooter, but it’s a pretty darn good one.  It has a few flaws that a lot of shooters succumb to.  The big one is everything looks exactly the same.  I can easily get lost when this happens.  It’s just like a big hall of mirrors.  It’s either a lot of grass, a lot of swamp and fog, or a lot of rooms that are all the same area repeating over and over.  At least put a number in there or something.  “Oh, this is room '3.'  Gotchya, now I know where I am.”

You know that part in the original Legend of Zelda where you get to the “Lost Woods,” which is essentially one “block” of the map, but made to seem like an area that has an entrance/exit on each side of the screen?  Yeah, that’s how Halo felt to me.  It’s like I was going around in circles, trying to find the right “up, down, left, right” pattern to make it to the next screen and keep progressing. 

Maybe I’m just an old man.  Also I must like to shoot a lot, because there were a lot of stages, thankfully most of them early on, where ammo was quite difficult to come by.  Again, maybe that one is just me, since I seem to have that problem in just about every shooter I play.

I will say some good things though.  The story isn’t that bad.  It’s got an interesting universe, nowhere near the amazing universe of something like Mass Effect, but I am curious about the story.  Hey, I’d even consider reading one of their many books.   I didn’t find the characters or races that intriguing, but I am curious about the world all this takes place in.

One thing that towers above all in this game though is the music.  The flood (no pun intended) of percussion is amazing.  Everything is very subtle and atmospheric, but it all makes you feel like you’re on a mission of incredible importance.  Which, I suppose you are.

So where do I go from here?  Well, I guess I’ll give the second one a try.  I did start it and I have to say right off the bat I feel like it’s going to be a slow one.  I should slog it out though and just do it rather than skip to the 360 releases.