The Conduit

Halo wasn't the first shooter. Halo wasn't the first to introduce online multiplayer. Halo wasn't even the first Bungie game to feature an armored peacekeeper and sexy female AI battling aliens in outer space. Halo, in many ways, is unoriginal.

Yet no other series – with the possible exception of Grand Theft Auto – has had such a clear, obvious and indisputable impact on the videogame industry over the past decade. To welcome the release of Halo: Reach tomorrow, which also marks the end of Bungie's involvement with their best-selling creation, here are seven of the franchise's biggest influences...

We began this year full of hope for software success on the Wii, the little system that did. As it entered its third year on the market, fans dreamed of seeing the end of shovelware, as developers had now had plenty of time to make great games for the console. Maybe we’d see some great original content at last? No more PSP ports and half-finished releases, now that developers had come to understand the console so well?

We’re ecstatic that The Conduit is about to march some proper alien-shooting onto the Wii, and as a little pre-release teaser, we’ve got a pile of exclusive screenshots depicting some of the game’s Washington DC locales. Our favorites are below, but you can always jump over to our screenshot viewer to see them all.

This time last year we only had Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii to fend off the baby sims and Mega Party Game Blasts. Nintendo was tight-lipped about E3 and the third party offerings were slim as usual – in other words, there was no respite from the casual flood in sight.