"A wonderful little Halo based side scroller with some shortcomings."

I found Halo Zero while searching for "halo" on gamefaqs. I downloaded it and then played. All of it. Yes, thats right, it only took me about an hour to beat. But for the time that I played it, it looked, felt, and sounded like Halo. Except of course, for the short gameplay, weak multiplayer support, and odd sounds. While you can't expect that much from a game that was made by a fan, even though he was very good at programing, there still are some issues with the game but for the most part it is pretty good,

Graphics 78/100
This is a typical looking side scroller with all your 2d opponents. There are the grunts, jackals, elites, and hunters from halo and several weapons, and you can identify which is which easily. However, the graphics are not that good looking.

Sound 80/100
This game features the original halo music so that part of the sound is good. However, the enemies dieing sounds very awkward. The weapons seem more or less realistic sounding.

Gameplay 47/100
The single player is very fun at first but it gets very boring after you beat the game in one hour. You aim by pointing your mouse on the screen at the enemies and you fire by left clicking, throw a grenade by right clicking, and move with the w, a, s, and d keys, much like the original game. It even has the 2 weapon limit like Halo: Combat Evolved. The sniper rifle is rather odd though, because you click the fire button and then it goes into scope mode and you cant move while in scope mode, but if there are no enemies in your scope you still have to fire your weapon to exit scope mode. There is a multi player feature, which I haven't tried because I know no one with this game, but from what I heard in forums, there is only two player mode in multiplayer, and it is very hard to set up.

This game is very decent and has a few flaws along with a few features. You should definitely get this game if you ever find an hour which you are bored. But for dial up users you should download this when you do have something to do because it is about 25 megabytes.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/28/06