When you think Nintendo, you think Mario. He’s their guy, their mascot. Sure other series like Pokémon make more money or rate overall better (definitely not Pokémon in that case). But Mario is their icon, pretty much the face of the company. And while Sony has struggled for a long time to find a solid “mascot”, Microsoft hit theirs early on with Master Chief and Halo. I grew up with Playstations but whenever I thought about Xbox I saw Chief in my head.

But I never really understood why it was such a huge thing, it was just a shooter set in space. I would play Borderlands or Mass Effect and sure they’re great games but again I couldn’t see Claptrap or Shepherd carrying the branding of an entire console.

(I do want to clarify that I had played ODST co-op years ago but had no real idea of the story and I wasn’t playing Chief, what I’d consider to be the “main” Halo experience.)

That was until I played this game.

To start with the gameplay. Admittedly, the selection and overall feel of weapons is a little limiting. There are still quite a few options to choose from but it always felt like I’d be best off with the same rotation of 3 weapons (pistol, shotgun, and rocket launcher) and that any others were kinda useless. The lack of a sprint button is also something I think is frustrating, although the environments are relatively smaller to account for that there is quite a lot of backtracking that would have benefitted from some extra speed. Other than those criticisms, the gameplay is still very satisfying. Wiping out huge groups of enemies with a sticky grenade and seeing the medals pile up is great. The vehicles found throughout are also really fun to mess around in with a co-op partner.

The story, while mainly relatively simple, is still enjoyable and it’s lifted up tremendously by the lore surrounding everything. It’s cool seeing the origin of so many tropes and story beats that have persisted through to other games.

Despite this being an old title, I still found the level and sound design to be really good. I regularly switched back and forth between classic and modern graphics and while I admit modern is better, I can still see the charm of the original look of the game and appreciate it.

And leading from the sound design, the music is so so good. I had heard the main theme a bunch from random YouTube videos and always found it good but hearing it in-game was something else. The whole soundtrack is just so good and suits the world perfectly, having it play while in intense moments only made things more fun.

I understand as well that this was only the first in a series that has only evolved more. The gameplay is going to only get better, the story is only going to get bigger and better (until it doesn’t), and everything is going to look and sound better. And I couldn’t be more excited to continue my journey through one of the most revered series in gaming history.

Halo: Combat Evolved is a fun but flawed game that unfortunately shows its age in quite a few ways. This game shines brightest when it shows off its unique and incredible locations, each with their own incredible atmospheres, and ties it all together with its very interesting story. Unfortunately however this game is not always at its best. A good portion of the game is spent navigating tight corridors, often seeing the same rooms copy and pasted over and over again, and fighting the same bunch of enemies. Master chief is fun to control in combat, however a few controls feel a bit outdated or awkward, such as the vehicle controls and lack of a zoom button while shooting. This game also suffers from not really having a proper waypoint system. Despite all of the levels being pretty linear it's still very easy to get lost due to the often confusing and repetitive map design. Overall Halo's biggest problem is its repetitiveness. Whether it be enemies, weapons, or maps, after a certain point you'll start to feel like you're just doing the same thing over and over again. The story is definitely still interesting however and though repetitive it is fun. Despite its rough patches I'm very glad I completed this game and would still recommend checking it out.

Just as a note, I'm playing it on the master chief collection, and it's disappointing that they ruined the textures by losing the code. Unfortunately, that makes the game look much worse than it actually did even in 2001. Also the lighting is pretty atrocious so I had to switch back to remastered graphics a lot during dark sections, which was pretty much the whole back half of the game.
Gameplay wise though, this is a fun game even in the current day. Enough old school jankyness that it adds some flavor, but competent enough shooting mechanics for it to feel polished. Piloting a warthog has be purely nostalgia based though because those things are the devil.
All in all it's a solid game made even more fun with friends in co-op, and I'm looking forward to going through the rest of the story, as it feels like it's only really starting to ramp up in terms of lore building.

working my way through the games and i've already forgotten most of this game except for the part where you walk through the same room seven times in a row, also the sheer exhilaration from getting to drive a car for the first time, then driving a hover car (oh wow), and then a FLYING car (holy SHIT)
also cortana is purple in this game and that really threw me off because she is never even remotely purple in any other game or depiction of her anywhere
i dont have much else to say about this other than after i finished it i was really hoping halo 2 was better