Halo: Combat Evolved

It's a damn good thing that the gunplay is as awesome as it is, because the level design really hits the skids at the halfway mark. Such a shame, as the parts of Halo that were cutting edge back then still hold up today. The enemy AI and design is just really good and leads to a lot of tense and dynamic shootouts, and a wealth of weapons leads to a lot of options in combat...at least with the Covenant. The Flood and Sentinels are much more one-dimensional to fight, even if the in-fighting between all factions leads to some great setpieces. And although the music is surprisingly awesome and dynamic in its own right, the rest of the presentation is nothing to write home about, with a setting that only hints at a great wider story and otherwise features dialogue as stilted as any other game from 2001.

But it is the excellence of the game's combat which is testament to how much fun mulitplayer was. Both co-op and versus were the bee's knees back in the day, and it holds up near as I can tell. Other FPSes of the day had more solid campaigns, even stuff like Red Faction, but what Halo ushered in it did very well, even if the campaign has aged like milk.

It's all been correctly said before: this is such an influential game (somewhat from its genuine innovations, more so from its commercial success) that made the Xbox a thing, Microsoft and Bungie big industry players, defined the console multiplayer scene for more than a decade, and helped elevate first person shooters to be the most popular genre of video game. Halo: Combat Evolved was influential on more subtle things as well, such as character design: it's easy for players to self-insert into the always helmeted, always first person super soldier that is Master Chief.

I'm not saying the gunplay, level design, or story and lore is the best or the best for its time, but it's all generally high quality in Halo: Combat Evolved and it's a fact that Halo franchise multiplayer was all the rage for the majority of the 00s. Many insults were uttered and many noobs were tea-bagged; lots of 20 and 30 somethings have nostalgia over calling their friends and strangers slurs on the internet in their parents' basement as preadolescents, rest assured. But really, it's a good game and the campaign is memorable. I personally thought the flood was an excellent twist, although not as dynamic as fights with the Covenant aliens.

The original Halo is a massively influential action game that essentially defined how console shooters play, but as a single player experience it leaves a lot to be desired. Its gameplay is solid, but is coupled to some of the blandest, most repetitive level design you'll ever see in a game that isn't procedurally generated. What could be a very evocative setting is wasted endlessly traversing and back-tracking through anonymous copy pasted corridors. The remaster in the Master Chief Collection makes it a little prettier (and adds some poorly-written, poorly-integrated attempts to create continuity with the newer Halo games), but the basic issues remain.

It's kinda bland and spening 30 minutes in corridors trying to find keyes nearly ruined it for me

definitive best halo game because its the only game the magnum is the best weapon

Being someone who was primarily a PlayStation player for their whole life I never had much of an opportunity to play much from the Halo franchise, a franchise that is pretty much the poster child for the XBOX and it's the franchise that largely gave Microsoft a hold in the gaming world. It also happens to be the game that spawned what we know as the modern FPS, with features and ideas that would be crossed over into many famous FPS games and franchises going forward, and you just have to respect what Bungie did on that level. I've played many FPS games but of course I never got the opportunity to play a Halo game up until recently, and I decided to go through the whole franchise game-by-game to see what the hype was about, and of course Halo's journey begins with the first entry in the franchise, Combat Evolved.

By today's standards Combat Evolved has aspects about it that are fairly dated, but there's so much here that Bungie got right and they managed to craft it in a way that still feels great to this day, for example the gunplay which is easily the best part of the game as expected, each weapon in the game feels unique to itself and how they can effect certain enemy types adds an interesting dynamic to the gameplay. I know there's a lot of people who despise the newer graphics but I don't mind them, I think they're good for what they are and there's some genuinely great landscapes to be found throughout each of the campaign levels. Combat Evolved makes the player think about what to do next, particularly with the enemy types and how to exploit their weaknesses since each type is designed to function and be killed in a specific way, and like I said earlier that adds an interesting dynamic to the gameplay. Of course the very iconic soundtrack is amazing and is placed perfectly among certain missions, and the world that Combat Evolved builds is truly immersive even if I'm not fully with the story just yet.

But for everything that this game does right there's a lot that doesn't hold up. For one, the vehicle gameplay is very janky, this is to be expected considering how old Combat Evolved is, but it's a very noticeable flaw when it comes to ground vehicles, I had no issues with the air vehicles though. The level design is at times pretty lazy, particularly with some of the indoor map settings where it just seems like I'm walking through the same rooms and corridors over and over again, it can get confusing at points and while it's also an aspect that can be forgivable, it's still noticeable. But one of the biggest and probably the most unforgivable gripe I have with Combat Evolved is the mission entitled The Library, which is honestly one of the worst campaign missions that I have ever played in an FPS title. The map layouts are at their worst on this mission, the swarms of The Flood are complete bullshit and all you're really doing in the mission is waiting to get swarmed by them and it's extremely difficult even on Normal difficulty, it's barely a progressing mission at all and it's frustratingly bad in my opinion.

Even despite its shortcomings and poorly aged aspects, Halo: Combat Evolved is a very solid game that is incredibly admirable for what it achieved during its time. I had a decent enough time going through the campaign (I still need to give the multiplayer more time) and I only hope the following games get better.