I’ll have to confess right off that I’m still in the first phase of my Halo addiction. I acquired a GameCube and an XBox at about the same time, and I haven’t had much time for Nintendo’s latest offering. Halo reached out of the TV screen, grabbed me by the lapels, and pulled me in. Willingly, I might add.

In a nutshell, here’s the story: You’re a cyborg, the Master Chief, unthawed from your cryogenic chamber to battle the Covenant, an alien race bent on the destruction of humans. Your ship has crash-landed on a strange world built on the inside of a gigantic wedding ring (apologies to Larry Niven’s sci-fi classic series Ringworld). Your fight is desperate; your cause is just.

It’s hard to believe that a convincing shooter is possible on a console, but Halo can make you forget your mouse and keyboard. Once mastered, the controls are sensitive enough to obey your instincts in tight situations. Most of the common FPS moves are available, including punching, pistol-whipping, circle-strafing, crouching and long-distance sniping.

Likewise, graphics are splendid. The nVidia chip is pumping out polygons at a prodigious clip — there are between 2,000 and 3,000 polygons in the vehicles and enemies, and some other video buzzwords you may or may not want to memorize: per-pixel bumped environment mapping, per-pixel specular lighting, up to four diffuse textures per pass, rendered-to-texture effects (blurring, convolution) ... you don’t have to know what it all means, trust me. Just sit back and enjoy it. The horizon blends in smoothly, so that the outside views of the far-off distant scenery are rich.

Just as the video is enticing and luscious, the sounds of the game are very high quality, wrought in the XBox standard Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. The soundtrack thumps and whirs along in the background, then comes to life as conditions warrant. The death cries of the enemy are pleasing and so are the explosions and weapons fire. The opening chants are superb, and the sounds of the various vehicles are amazing, especially while ripping up turf and leaping over small cliffs.

The gameplay options offer more variety than expected. The basic game types are Oddball, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, Rally and Slayer — you’ll have to try each one to discern the subtle differences on some of them. Bungie provides 26 variants on the five basic types. There is also the ability to create your own variants, although I didn’t get to it.

As for multiplayer options, up to four people are supported on one XBox, or up to sixteen people on four XBoxes via a LAN. Forgive me if I wasn’t able to pull that many XBoxes together. Finally, two players can go through the solo campaign in a co-op mode.

Weapons choices are a cut above the standard faire. Sure, you can thump some alien ass with the butt of your assault rifle, but there are plasma weapons just begging to be picked up after clearing a corridor. One classic newcomer is the alien needler — it fires little shards of glass into a victim. If you can place enough into an opponent, the entire collection erupts into a satisfying reddish mist.

So what’s missing? Some of the more tired clichés of the FPS world are erased. There’s no big Boss at the end of the game to outwit. You won’t be required to leap across pits, swim, climb walls, hunt for keys to locked doors or flip switches in the middle of nowhere. Your character gets two weapons at a time, period. Scavenging the battlefield is important, as is perseverance. The emphasis is on action, period. You against the AI. Crank up the difficulty and you’ll be muttering to yourself.

Since no Master Chief should be completely on his own, there are a few units to help balance the odds. Cortana is a sexy-sounding, form-fitted AI that would give Harrison Ford palpitations in Blade Runner. She spots waypoints and provides extra information via hacking enemy systems or overhearing their communications. Her voice is soothing and sweet; so is her body. Seeing more of her would be a definite plus.

More engaging are the various Marines who do their best to keep up with you. If you miss the occasional wisecracks of Duke Nukem, saying "Damn, I’m good" or something equally macho every now and then, you’ll like your support units. They make a lot of comments, sometimes cackling as they pump gratuitous rounds into enemy corpses, and occasionally whining about the odds. The Marines make up for any momentary lack of valor by fanning out with precision, mopping up carefully and covering for you as you regenerate body armor with a quick time-out. They lustily cheer a good shot whenever you make a long-range kill. Similarly, when you crank up a Warthog vehicle, the Marines gladly jump in to ride shotgun or man the vehicle’s powerful gun. You cannot command your Marines, but then again, you don’t seem to need to. They have enough guts on their own.

Some of the scenarios involve keeping Pillar of Autumn Commander Captain Jacob Keyes alive. Unfortunately, for a storied commander he’s tricky to lead around. He has no armor and little protection. He’s a one-shot accident waiting to happen.

Enemy units are well thought-out. The cast of the Covenant is as follows:

Grunts are weakly armored, use a variety of plasma weapons, and squeal or scream delightfully when they’re hit. There are lots of them, thankfully.

Jackals have a strong shield and fight well. They can be hard to kill.

Elites are powerful and smart. They come in different forms, but take a lot of hits to knock down.

Hunters are even bigger and more powerful. Sometimes the best you can hope for is to pick them off from long-range. They’re also smart, and can try to take you out with the very grenade you dropped on them.

Things I don’t like about consoles in general:

• can’t go back to different named saves, and can’t generate nearly unlimited number
• characters are still a bit chunky. Square heads, chins and elbows
• vehicle controls shaky, and need far more variety more marines! Let them man more pillboxes or bunkers with fixed guns
• better headphone support for playing in wee hours
• like to have a computer opponent