Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (2011)

Played on the Master Chief Collection on PC.

I'll be talking about the experience of playing the campaign solo. FPS games aren't typically my genre of choice. I'm unimpressed. I like that you can toggle between the classic and updated visuals easily. It's cool that there is minimal loading even though the maps are big. Story twists were pretty interesting. That's about it for pros. As for cons, I found the story interesting, but wasn't invested in any characters. Master Chief is pretty stoic and uninteresting and there aren't many personalities to latch onto. Missions are stupidly long, confusing, and boring. There are several missions that don't indicate where you're supposed to go or what you're supposed to do so it's very easy to wander aimlessly. I found myself repeating the same actions several times in different rooms that looked nearly identical thinking to myself "am I going in circles?" The updated visuals mitigate this a bit by adding arrows showing where you're supposed to go, but it's easy to miss them. For the most part, the updated visuals is just a different art style rather than looking like the old game, but better, which is disappointing. I found myself having more fun when I was running past enemies rather than engaging in combat. The driving controls are clunky, but thankfully I'm pretty sure they improved the controls slightly in later games. I'm honestly surprised this got a whole series because man I did not have fun.