An alien threat’s growing, the human race is in jeopardy... but fear not, for the Earth’s got an über-elite super-h4xx0r genetically-souped-up soldier that’ll keep us out of harm’s way.

There’s no doubt that the plot in Halo seems like every other sci-fi game out there. Then why the hell is the franchise so damn popular? I guess you’ll never know until you try the games out for yourself.

Now that may be a bit of a problem for some of you who’ve not played Halo 1 & 2 and don’t want to go back to those hoary games, since you’ve probably been run over by the next-gen wagon already.

With Halo 3 just around the corner, this is your chance to catch up with the franchise’s storyline – here’s a gist of what’s gone down in the Halo franchise so far, to help you get acquainted enough to not feel alienated when you start up your copy of Halo 3.

After all, being alien-ated puts you in the bad books of Master Chief. And you don’t want that now, do you?

Since we’re on the subject, let me tell you a little about the aliens in the Halo Series. If you’re looking forward to being abducted and anal probed (you sick b**tards!), you’re gonna be a little disappointed here. The aliens here aren’t of the kinky kind and Halo isn’t that kind of a game.

The aliens here call themselves the Covenant (maybe they were inspired by the crappy horror flick of the same name), which is basically an alliance of many like-minded extraterrestrial species that share an appetite for destruction and a hatred for humanity.

The leaders of the Covenant mask their terrorist mentality under a cloak of religion, misguiding their followers by stating that the humans are an affront to their Gods.

In case you’re wondering what the humans have to do with them, here’s a bit of trivia – the game takes place in 25th century (by which time our great-great-great grandchildren will probably be playing Final Fantasy MCMXXVII), when humanity has expanded its reaches to the far corners of the universe, colonizing many different galaxies.

Their expansion into uncharted territory brings them into contact with the Covenant, who aren’t exactly thrilled to see them. A war erupts between the two, with humanity suffering defeat after inglorious defeat. Desperate to survive, the humans start the SPARTAN-II Project to biologically engineer elite soldiers to fight off the alien scum. Before the project can be completed, however, the planet that housed it gets attacked and destroyed by the Covenant, leaving only a few of the elite Spartans.

Our protagonist Spartan-117 (a.k.a. Master Chief Petty Officer John SPARTAN-117) is one of the few subjects of this project that survived the attack, and he now has his armor souped up to crush those space maggots with the butt of his gun.