Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

I still fondly remember my legendary co-op run of this game with my neighbor from across the street. Each day after school we would beat one of the levels on legendary before starting our homework or eating dinner for the night. It was a fun way to spend a few weeks after school and felt like a legit accomplishment from how challenging it was. We also did this in preparation for Halo 2 which we both were hyped for. Even now, I got to say the co-op campaign is awesome. Is this game flawed? Sure. But it still overall has excellent design and gameplay that more than make up for its shortcomings. And most importantly, there's no denying it's influence on the FPS genre that is still felt to this day.

I see a lot of people praising the story and I got to be real. The story is honestly kind of gibberish. There is loose motivation for why you are going to each level, but it jumps all over the place the more you think about it and feels like a mess. Broad strokes are fine. You discovered a secret alien weapon that you want to acquire before a competing alien faction does. In the process you unleash a super weapon that could destroy the universe. Cool. The problem is in the details. It really doesn't make any sense why the Flood is trapped on the very weapon that is meant to destroy them. Very silly. Also it seemed pretty easy to unleash the flood and activating the super weapon is significantly more convoluted. Then there's the "Two Betrayals" mission. Apparently in the original script the "two" betrayals was supposed to refer to both the droid and Cortanna betraying you. Good thing they scraped Cortanna's betrayal because that wouldn't have made any sense, but kind of amusing that they didn't change the title or description of the mission after cutting that story beat. That all said, if you don't think about the logic or motivation of the story too hard, it ends up being a fun pulpy adventure.

For me what's most important is the gameplay when it comes to video games. Halo absolutely delivers. It's honestly an impressively ambitious game given the time it was released and the limitations of the Xbox hardware. The levels are huge and the designers do a good job masking the barriers of the game with canyons and walls, maintaining immersion. A lot of modern games honestly do a pretty bad job with this. A ton of large open world games will have invisible walls and when you cross them, you get a prompt of some sort of bullshit about needing to turn around. Which breaks immersion. I always appreciate it when designers go the extra mile to maintain a sense of realism within a game world. The game also does a great job mostly guiding you where you need to go without it getting too frustrating. This does change as you get to the later levels, where the overall quality of the design does take a notable hit.

The game is at its best with its large sandbox levels that can be completed non-linearly. It was impressive to achieve levels with this flexibility. Not every level is like this mind you. In fact, all the interior levels are notably more linear in comparison. Still there's enough open non-linear sandboxes with vehicles to shake up the gameplay. While the vehicles are certainly janky, I still think they control reasonably well even by modern standards, which is impressive since this may have been the first console game to incorporate vehicles with foot movement and make it so fun.

The weapon arsenal and enemy variety are great. Each weapon does feel like it has a utility, with one big exception. The pistol is so OP it's just silly. That hand cannon can take out elites with ease, it can kill Hunters by shooting them in their orange back in a few hits (trivializing them), you're often given plenty of ammo, it's semi-automatic and it's very accurate. So yeah it makes a ton of sense why they nerfed the pistol into the ground in Halo 2. But a part of me still misses how absurdly imbalanced it was.

The enemy variety is interesting. Each enemy has a specific role. Elites are powerful and smarter than most enemies. Grunts are the fodder enemy. Jackals are more tactical and take care to eliminate since they effectively have mobile cover. This cover can be countered with grenades, sniper fire or the plasma pistol, which they conveniently use themselves. Hunters are mini-bosses, but once you know the pistol can kill them in a few shots in their bright orange spot in their back, they honestly are pretty easy. The flood completely changes gameplay and has their own variety. The small little bulbous fucks that annoy you. The zombies that can either smack you or shoot guns (with frustrating accuracy) and the fat blobs that explode releasing a group of the bulbous fucks. Then there's covenant in vehicles adding more challenge and variety to the large open maps. What Halo does exceptionally well is design enemy encounters by using different combinations of enemies to create engaging combat.

Some of the bigger flaws to the game would be the repetitive level design and the infamous Library level. All interior sections recycle the same assets which can make them feel repetitive. Also it can make navigation confusing because the levels can be labyrinthine. There were plenty of times when my friend and I had to go back and forth to figure out where we needed to go. There's also multiple levels that are a repeat of an early level. They do vary it by including new enemy encounters, but I can understand how that could be seen as padding. These repeated levels didn't bother me since I found the gameplay loop to be fun regardless, and removing these recycled levels would have meant less game play. So it's a compromise. The only level I had a real issue with was the Library. It's just such a long slog and very difficult. There are so many sections where the Flood relentlessly swarms you for long stretches that are exhausting. And given the constant recycled assets, the level really wears out it's welcome. If it was cut in half I would have probably liked it.

In spite of all these flaws, Halo still stands up. It's a lot of fun, was heavily influential on the gaming industry and is a ton of fun to play with a friend. I'll probably give the multiplayer some time with the Master Chief Collection for some more nostalgia.

Playing this again all these years later (in the Anniversary form no less) cemented this game as being one of my favourites of all time. The gameplay loop feels incredibly tight and engaging. The campaign is focused and feels organic in its progression. This is all before we even bring multiplayer into the conversation.

Booting up the game will forever take me back to the relative carefree moods of December 2001.

(Played on Master Chief Collection on PC). Held up surprisingly well in 2023. I chalk this up mostly to the generous checkpointing, lack of bosses to get stuck on, and generally low difficulty of Normal, which I played it on. When firing up a 20+ year old game I often brace myself for "some bullshit."

It felt laborious at first, with the levels being longer than I like. And there are no combat puzzles, it's just running and gunning (not a knock, just an observation). And the level design was of its time, meaning I got lost a few times in a way that felt a little frustrating. And towards the end you die randomly to explosives that you have no clear way of predicting. However, I still had a good time with it. I wouldn't rush to play it again, though. Sometimes I play games in "historian" mode, where I don't have a true desire to play a game but want to see what the fuss was about. This was one such experience, but it worked out this time. I want to play Halo 2. Halo: CE only needs some minor tweaks to be a much better game, and I'm assuming we got those in Halo 2 and 3.

I replayed this last year but fancied another quick spin through ahead of replaying Halo 2.

Two main differences this time. For one, I played with the original graphics and sound instead of Anniversary, and I’m very glad I did. The original graphics are obviously dated, but I find the atmosphere they produce to be much better. The updated visuals are overbright to me, and while nostalgia is certainly a factor I find the original makes Halo a much more foreboding and compelling world.

Second, I played through a good chunk of it on the Steam Deck. It didn’t improve the game in any way, but it was delightful all the same.

I felt much more aware of how much scenery is repeated this time round, and I’ll still never understand why they designed the epic final escape in just the right way to maximise Warthog jankiness, but I’ll always love this game.

I'm currently trying to beat all halo campaigns with a friend, and i never expected this game to be what it is.

Halos a fun game so I'm only here to talk about just how confusing (to be fair the confusing part comes from it being an older game that's missing a lot of QOL content) and repetitive the level designs are. It's an older game so I can forgive it, especially since it's alota fun to play in co-op with friends which personally saved the game for me. If I was solo i probably woulda dropped it.

The game copy pasted a lot of it's maps and levels and just stretched the crap out of them making certain parts of the campaign feel endless, there's also sections where you backtrack through the levels so you get twice the fun of an already boring map. Having each map just be the same over and over meant me and my friends would get easily turned around or just think we're doing something wrong lmao. It's also awkward how the music cuts in and out, though the music itself is awesome.

I can see the charm and their were alota great moments in the game (the flood run, while annoying was also the best since my group was just tense and screaming which made it crazy). Multiplayers great but not much else to say about that. If you can get a group together i recommend the campaign 👍.

Halo Infinite is out. It's on my Series S and I'm playing the multiplayer consistently over the past 10 days. But I'm not touching the campaign for a while yet because I want to know the story better than my poor memory can make up for. So I'm starting at the beginning and playing through the nonsense of the series before getting on with this new campaign. At least, that's the goal.

Hopefully the subsequent games have aged better than this one, because it feels a bit rough in spots. The gunplay is great, and the enemy variety is impressive by any standard, and there are special feelings that pop up every now and then - like a well placed pistol whip, or finally getting past a particularly tough checkpoint. All of this makes the game absolutely playable and enjoyable to this day, which is an accomplishment 20 years later.

That said, I wouldn't recommend anybody give it a go. It is still very much a 20 year old game and you can see where the developers stepped in knowing they had space to grow.

A clear example is in the level design. I think it is belaboured at this point, and I think the issue was raised even back in 2001, but reusing assets or reversing entire levels feels like a remarkably lazy way to design a game - and actually just feels boring and sloppy these days. But the technical limitations of 2001, especially on a game that jumped from platform to platform before arriving on the Xbox as the flagship launch title, are pretty obviously at least some of the reason for what we are seeing. Still, there are entire levels I hope to never ever see again.

The second major issue is how the vehicles handle. None of the ones you get to play with in the campaign is actually a pleasure to maneuver - and I remember this being the case back in 2001 too. The Banshee is unpleasant, the Warthog is a weird chunkiness to it, and the Ghost feels like it is incomplete.

Thankfully, there are exceptional set piece moments throughout, and battles in scenery that really truly shine. They stand out as accomplishments to this date. It was a joy to play some of them over again - and I was amazed at the fantastic moments I had forgotten from my previous playthroughs. And the guns and their animations all reminded me of LAN parties in basements during high school, which were exciting and legendary when we could actually pull them all together.

I wouldn't recommend this game to anybody at this point, but I'm glad I played it and saw the subtle goofiness of the series protagonist, Master Chief - a part of his character that seems to have been erased. And it is impressive how much of what makes Halo still work was actually in the DNA at the very earliest moment. Thankfully, from this point on, everything that doesn't quite land here improves.

Halo: Combat Evolved is a classic. It is probably not quite a masterpiece.

So with the release of Infinite around the corner I decided to invest some time into the Halo Universe. Prior to playing this game I had only dabbled in a very limited amount of Multiplayer in the past.

So I basically knew nothing about the story or characters. Almost complete 0.

Before starting this I read the prequel novel, Fall of Reach, and it was actually incredibly good for a tie in. I felt like I understood more about the worlds characters and locations. I had come to realize that Master Chief wasn't just a silent meathead that shoots stuff good.

He had thoughts and ambitions, along with the other Spartans. RIP, poor one out for the brothers.

Fall of Reach basically ends right as this game starts. So I did find myself fairly invested in the games background story and thought that the gunplay still held up decently well.

I had a few complaints but I know that a lot of the issues I had with gameplay have been resolved in future games within the franchise. So I think its ok.

The worst part of this game is the level design however. The first few levels are ok, but some levels in this game are incredibly long and boring. In fact some of the levels are basically just rooms that almost look completely the same.

Multiple times I got lost and couldn't tell if I had already been somewhere, because all of the rooms were basically just mirrors of each other. After a while I realized I had just been running backwards.

I also thought that in general a lot of the levels were just kind of boring to play in general.

Surprisingly I was able to find some people to play a few online matches with. And while I suck terribly, probably because some of these guys have been playing for decades, it was still a fun experience even now.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Halo 2 has to offer.

A friend convinced me to pick up the Master Chief Collection on Steam this year during a sale, and I have not regretted a single cent. We've been playing through the campaigns on co-op (normal difficulty) in chronological order, and it's been a blast! While going from Reach to CE was a bit rough, the added fun of the weird physics "changes" and being able to Tab back and forth for weird graphics moments while re-living Halo's glorious first campaign made it well worth the 10-12 hours we spent on the campaign.

I haven't spent much time with the multiplayer this year, although of course I definitely had my glory days back on blood gulch pre-mcc - shout out to anyone who's ever been to Algebars in Burlington - but the campaign had some amazingly fun moments - busting around in a warthog while my buddy shreds the covenant in the gunner seat, then trying to jam the thing into hallways it's not meant to fit into in the library, for example.

While H:CE is past its prime as a "groundbreaking FPS", especially with Infinite on the horizon, the game's campaign, especially in the MCC with a buddy, is absolutely a riot, and the gunplay still feels fun and fast.

One quirky little thing the game does when you're in co-op is that both players are Master Chief. My buddy and I spent the whole run going "Can you take care of that zealot, Master Chief?" "Copy That, Master Chief" which eventually devolved into dumb wordplay like "I'm cooking up a plasma grenade for that wraith!" "Copy that, Master Chef!"

I can't wait to start Halo 2! (I'm given to understand this is pronounced "Hay-low Doo-blay")

(Campaign only, playing Xbox Game Pass version included in the Master Chief Collection)

For its time, Halo CE was likely an amazing game (more for the multiplayer than this single player campaign). The initial stages of the game gave me some vague Half Life 2 vibes in regards to character design and story presentation. The guns feel pretty good for a game from its time. The level design in the first half of the game is solid, and does a competent job of organically guiding you to the objective without (usually) needing a bullseye to follow.

The voice acting is corny. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't really expect Cortana to be a sarcastic know-it-all. The Covenant enemies are goofy & cartoonish, and they speak English for some reason. And Guilty Spark 343 is basically Ghost from Destiny. Kind of an odd collection, but it works.

Then the second half of the game hits. Ugh.

It all starts with The Library, a level which many people have called the worst FPS level in not only Halo history, but possibly in videogame history. Waves and waves and annoying waves of enemies, across the same map repeated over and over and over.

And that's just your first taste of repetition. The remainder of the game is basically playing all of the levels in the first half of the game, but in reverse. It's laziness on the part of Bungie, and it's just not fun. All of the enemies in this part of the game look mostly identical. Unfortunately, some of them carry rocket launchers, which you don't realize until they surprise you (often from behind) with cheap, one-hit kills.

And as a cherry on top of the turd sandwich that is the back half of Halo CE, you get the absolute worst driving sequence in any game ever. Why somebody thought that the Warthog should control like a beach ball in a windstorm is truly a mystery.

Additionally I did run into an annoying bug regarding the terminals found in the various levels. These terminals, when activated, give you a major part of the story through FMV cutscenes. Unfortunately, about half of the terminals I found didn't seem to want to play their cutscene.

With ammo being scarce at times, picking up alternate weapons is too much of a chore. Not only do weapon pickups barely show on the screen, but the prompts to pick up these weapons are absolutely microscopic.

I never know how to end these reviews. Make believe that I said something really profound right here.

Never understood why people played on an Xbox as a kid. It had no Mario, no Pokemon, no Zelda. What was its purpose? You could play CoD on a Playstation so what was the big deal? Halo. Halo was the BIG DEAL. An epic sci-fi shooter with lore that rivals Star Wars and a fanbase just as devoted. Picked up the OG game from the flea market for a dollar and played it and yea, I enjoyed myself. The best part of the game is SHOOTING SHIT.

Different enemy types forced me to think about my next move, and this strategic gameplay was further emphasized by Halo's unique mechanic. The ability to pick up and use enemy guns. I don't know if other shooters before Halo had this, but I think it was a revolution for its time.

The Plasma Pistol is a weapon used by the Covenant, who are the enemy aliens in Halo and you can use it against them.

Having only two guns and grenades really forced players to use their arsenal effectively according to the situations.

The vehicles were also fantastic. The Warthog, Ghost, Banshee, and Tank were all so fun to drive.

The game also looks great, you could tell the Xbox was really made for pushing some impressive visuals for 2001.

Other than that and the soundtrack, the game is nothing special. The story is BLAND. I always thought Master Chief was a silent protagonist, but no HE SPEAKS and there is no personality what so ever.

Everyone else in the game is forgettable or a robot! I remember Cortana and 343 Guilty Spark more than the rest of the cast! I was expecting more than blow up the space ring to save the universe when it came to the story. I guess the epic lore is in the later games? Or the 99999 books and comics...

I guess a big portion of Halo's appeal is the multiplayer which I had no chance to play as I have only one controller.

So I guess the review is incomplete?

Conclusion Halo: Combat Evolved is a solid shooter and though I hopped on the train 15 years late I can say I sure did enjoy myself.