I bought the Master Chief collection but will be logging the games to their respective titles separately.
Halo 1 is an amazing FPS shooter, I have some nostalgia covered glasses on as this was one of the very first video games I played on the original Xbox way back when.
I played on Heroic and man the Library still sucks ass. I want to review this game but from the perspective of both from someone who has played it for the first time and have accumulated knowledge and skill of other FPS shooters that have come after it.
Halo itself is a very simple but great FPS game design wise. But it definitely is one of those games that you can definitely feel that its a product of it's time. With only 10 levels (with 3 levels being reused/reskinned environment assets, which was commonplace for games developed at the time, and still today) it does feel a bit short for someone who has sufficient enough skill to finish a first person game on that difficulty, possibly even worse on easy ones.
On a different level, the quality of the visuals when tabbing in to the "remastered" version, feels so different, but on some parts I find myself staying on one version than the other. Sometimes the remastered version makes it difficult to see enemies as they blend with the environment and it all becomes a blurry mesh of blasts, panel lines, and drab colors. Making it hard to see enemy, ally and pickups.
While the "classic versions" does offer some visual clarity and relief, it does feel a bit dated, and most of the times, hard to see some specific things. While it does use these old timey game development techniques with the classical version, even on a bright monitor, it's difficult to make out stuff because it's either too dark or it hasn't rendered in yet.
With all of that being said, Halo: CE is an overall good FPS game to start with.
Halo 1 is an amazing FPS shooter, I have some nostalgia covered glasses on as this was one of the very first video games I played on the original Xbox way back when.
I played on Heroic and man the Library still sucks ass. I want to review this game but from the perspective of both from someone who has played it for the first time and have accumulated knowledge and skill of other FPS shooters that have come after it.
Halo itself is a very simple but great FPS game design wise. But it definitely is one of those games that you can definitely feel that its a product of it's time. With only 10 levels (with 3 levels being reused/reskinned environment assets, which was commonplace for games developed at the time, and still today) it does feel a bit short for someone who has sufficient enough skill to finish a first person game on that difficulty, possibly even worse on easy ones.
On a different level, the quality of the visuals when tabbing in to the "remastered" version, feels so different, but on some parts I find myself staying on one version than the other. Sometimes the remastered version makes it difficult to see enemies as they blend with the environment and it all becomes a blurry mesh of blasts, panel lines, and drab colors. Making it hard to see enemy, ally and pickups.
While the "classic versions" does offer some visual clarity and relief, it does feel a bit dated, and most of the times, hard to see some specific things. While it does use these old timey game development techniques with the classical version, even on a bright monitor, it's difficult to make out stuff because it's either too dark or it hasn't rendered in yet.
With all of that being said, Halo: CE is an overall good FPS game to start with.
The start was good, but as the game continued, I became increasingly disoriented trying to traverse levels and figure out where I needed to go. Once I'd find my way, I would frequently perish and the checkpoints were the entire pathing back so levels became longer than anticipated, which killed some of my joy with it :/
I played on the Master Chief collection with a friend of mine, on Legendary difficulty. Played like I remembered as a kid and the story was fun to go through again having little memory of the events that occur. Definitely would recommend if you have a Saturday to kill and just want something fun to do for the day.
Just look at my CE review for a general overview of the campaign but in terms of it's own game CEA sits in a weird spot.
The new visuals feel pretty neat at best and incredibly out of place at worst, a big mixed bag on that front. Although the feature to switch between new and old graphics is incredibly good.
The multiplayer map pack for Reach was very nice though, added a ton more maps to play and all felt very good while having interesting renditions of the classics.
The new visuals feel pretty neat at best and incredibly out of place at worst, a big mixed bag on that front. Although the feature to switch between new and old graphics is incredibly good.
The multiplayer map pack for Reach was very nice though, added a ton more maps to play and all felt very good while having interesting renditions of the classics.
Great fun with a friend, kinda loses something if not, but is still worth your time.
Physics are a bit broken sometimes, game shows its age other times, game's really fun most of the time.
I played this game WAY too much on the Master Chief Collection version because of the achievements for par scores. Can't lie, that adds a ton of replayability, with the amount of skulls. If it was the original version I'd probably go lower, but that level of replayability definitely helps this release's case.
The story's meh, the level design is great in the first half then the second half is backtracking, the final level's kind of annoying with the Warthog physics. Getting thrown around by an exploding Flood is pretty funny though.
I can still recommend this one in 2024 for the most part.
Physics are a bit broken sometimes, game shows its age other times, game's really fun most of the time.
I played this game WAY too much on the Master Chief Collection version because of the achievements for par scores. Can't lie, that adds a ton of replayability, with the amount of skulls. If it was the original version I'd probably go lower, but that level of replayability definitely helps this release's case.
The story's meh, the level design is great in the first half then the second half is backtracking, the final level's kind of annoying with the Warthog physics. Getting thrown around by an exploding Flood is pretty funny though.
I can still recommend this one in 2024 for the most part.
Pretty fun at times, pretty monotonous at times. Felt like there was too much backtracking especially during the last few missions. Navigation sucks as a result. Heroic difficulty felt way much easier compared to Reach. I would have worshipped the game had I played it at the time of its og release cuz it's a remarkable thing to make something like this in 2001. My rating would've really been higher if not for the repeated segments in latter part of the game, I understand older game almost always reuse multiple segments via backtracking like resident evil but this felt like the game could've been really short if not for the repeated segments. Music was good I guess but the placement was very random. Also the most satisfying thing about the game is it's shotgun 🤌🏼, had so much fun blasting enemies with it and it's a shame the 2nd game's shotgun sucks in comparison.