Reviews from

in the past


Listen, I get it. Halo is a very influential game.
But when I shoot at boring enemies in boring environments, I can really only call a spade a spade.

THE OG. Really fun, love the weapons here. I didn't play the MP too much. A lot of minor bugs

Halo: Combat Evolved é um clássico, mas infelizmente desliza muito em sua qualidade. Com uma gameplay divertida, uma história bem legal, o jogo se perde muito da metade até o final. Quando você chega no nível do Flood, é rezar e chorar de tão chato que fica, as fases se tornam repetitivas e com pouca atenção, visto que eles só tacam qualquer tipo de inimigo e os cenários são completamente iguais. A última parte quase me fez desistir de tão maçante que estava. Acredito que as futuras instalações do jogo devem ser superiores, já estou ansioso para ver!


An unfortunate miss for the Halo franchise. Play with the original graphics only because CEA's remastered graphics do a significant disservice to the CE campaign and are in no way faithful to the original. Areas which were intentionally dark are bright and lit up, which ruins the atmosphere and tone and many models do not actually match up with their original hitboxes. There are sections of levels which appear to be walled off in the anniversary graphics which were completely open in the original, and you can just walk through the walls! It feels sloppy and like it was made with very little care to the original Halo.

Está bien, es entretenido y la historia es interesante. Eso sí, no ha envejecido tan bien, niveles abiertos llenos de enemigos por todos lados, un poco caos.

The anniversary version makes a classic nicely playable again, with the great graphics swapping option. Playing with pc controls also is a big plus, but the game has still aged heavily.

An interesting release that I played quite a bit of. The Reach multiplayer was a great choice but the map selection for both PvP and PvE is limiting. The campaign still aged poorly, even in 2011.

This cave is not a natural formation, someone built it, so it must lead somewhere

The Halo series is one of those franchises that's reputation sort of overshadows the actual quality of the gameplay and narrative. For the longest time it was seen as the dude bro shooter (before getting dethroned by Call of Duty in that respect), which is a shame because this series under Bungie's direction was quite ambitious. You don't really see these sorts of stories in first-person shooters anymore. I've long since fallen off with the franchise, but the Bungie led entries will always occupy a certain corner of my brain.

Halo CE has a really strange start to its story when you think about it. You're already well into the convenant war, and it doesn't really explain what exactly is happening outside the most pressing matter. The Pillar of Autumn is on the run from a Convenant fleet, and eventually crash-land onto the ring world known as Halo. There you discover more secrets about the ring as the story and danger unravels in front of you. The game isn't especially long, but it utilizes its short run time to tell a pretty compelling story, while also planting the seeds of stuff that wouldn't get developed until much later. It's simple and effective, while also keeping a lot of the intrigue that Bungie's older games had.

Halo is arguably the game that made FPSs on consoles viable and incredibly popular, and for good reason. It laid the groundwork for a ton of mechanics that other games would implement in an attempt to capture even a fraction of Halo's success. Regenerating shields, once a novelty and very innovative, are basically the default nowadays and so many games use them. I can't imagine what the gaming landscape would look like without this game's existence. But that isn't the only reason why this game was successful. This game's first half is incredibly strong, with a good sense of escalation and forward momentum. The level design alone and approach to combat is what makes this game, and the rest of the Bungie led games, so special. Levels are open-ended enough where you can approach combat scenarios in a multitude of ways. The enemy AI is really something to behold, and on higher difficulties always keeps you on your toes with how aggressive and tactical they can be. The arsenal presented to you is diverse enough where most guns will provide a unique role, however some guns kind of feel underpowered and redundant. The Assault Rifle is especially guilty of this. Meant to be the human mid range weapon, your more often then not better off replacing it with the Covenant Plasma Rifle, or even the Plasma Pistol, which in this game is absurdly powerful. I'd also be remiss to not mention the Magnum Pistol, a gun so powerful that you're almost always happy to have one on hand, and that completely invalidates an enemy type. I'd say where the game falters is in the second half of the game. Once the new enemy type is introduced into the game, the levels become a horrible slog to go through and the difficulty spikes up quite intensely. It's somewhat redeemed by a very memorable final mission, but getting to that point can be an exercise in frustration.

The human character models look pretty outdated, even by 2001 standards. Stiff animation, puppet like mouth flaps, it's the one thing that holds this game back visually, which is a shame because the rest of the game still looks quite good. The Covenant designs are truly excellent, with great animations and audio barks. The environmental designs are also great, even if some of the textures can look outdated. At its worst, it looks of the time, but at its best I would think I was playing a modern game. On that note, I wouldn't recommend playing this game with the remastered graphics. While the attempt is noble, its way too overdesigned and often times would kill the mood of a given level. They make everything way too bright, and would add unnecessary flora to certain levels that actually has gameplay ramifications, as certain lines of sight become unusable,

The music in this game is simply put, legendary. Martin O'Donnell's score is at this point iconic, and once you hear it, it won't be leaving your head. There's a good reason why Gregorian choirs are so heavily associated with this game. It'd be one thing if the music was simply excellent, but the way it's implemented is what really elevates it. Bungie knew exactly when to play his score, so when you hear Truth And Reconciliation Suite kick in, you knew the moment was important.

Halo CE remains a really great first attempt at a 3D FPS by Bungie. They had years of experience with Marathon to get this right, and it paid off big time. It would launch them into levels of success beyond their wildest imaginations, and would lay the groundwork for their trajectory as a company. A lot of the ideas they had for the first game would be later refined in future entries, and while it might not always shine in the context of modern gaming sensibilities, I still think even more than 20 years it holds up.

I've never been much of an FPS guy, and I've had no interaction with Xbox consoles. I always had either a Nintendo system or a PlayStation console.
And the reason why that is simply because I never was too interested in what Xbox had to offer. Just wasn't for me.
But in the last few years, I've begun to have an interest over playing the Halo series, especifically the Halo: The Master Chief Collection, to get an idea of what the games are like.

While my PC can barely run these games, I was able to get the collection on Steam, and I was able to play through the 1st game, using the old graphics. I should note that this review is only based around the Single-Player Campaign, as at the time of writing this review, I have not experienced the Multiplayer.

Halo: Combat Evolved revolves around Master Chief and Cortana's mission to stop the Convenant (an alien species) from causing havoc and investigating what this Halo is.
While the story isn't complex, it does have some twists here and there, which I won't spoil here. One thing that I did like was the dynamic between Chief and Cortana. While they don't always interact, the moments they do were nice to watch, and I hope to see more of their conversations in future titles.

For the presentation, I did play with the older graphics, but I was surprised that, for a 2001 game, this game doesn't look half-bad. Sometimes, it even looks pretty beautiful! Of course, there are definitely low-res. textures and models that haven't aged gracefully, but I think the game looks decent overall.

For the music, of course everyone knows of the main theme of the series. So much so, many guys have sung it in a school bathroom! But I was also surprised that the rest of the soundtrack holds up pretty well.
There's a part of it that is pretty atmospheric, but there's another that can be really catchy. It strikes a nice balance between being atmospheric, tense, blood-pumping, and epic!
Like, the moments where you hear the main theme got me hyped, not gonna lie.

Now, the biggest part of the game, the gameplay! It's a first-person shooter, and one of the most influential out there, alongside its older sibling, Doom. Since I was on PC, I decided to play it with mouse and keyboard, which felt pretty comfortable. I assume using a controller would also feel nice, but I am not the greatest at using a right analogue stick to aim.
This might be because I am noob when it comes to FPS's, but I was surprised that this game does not have a run button. And sometimes, I did really want to run in the game's missions.
Oh well, if this is the case for now, then I'll get used to it.

Besides that, you can crouch, switch weapons, use a flashlight, and jump. You know, the usual stuff.
I'm glad to say that Master Chief controls great!
The game also has some vehicles for you to control, and they were fine. The Warthog was a bit slippery at first, but I got used to it.

As for the level design... it's alright, but it definitely gets repetitive the further you go.
It's not all bad, because I did like revisting some locations later on in the game, but Mission 7 was one of the worst when it comes to that. It kept on going and going, and did not change its level design much, which annoyed me.
Other times, I feel like the game's world was a bit too big, and going on foot was simply too slow. Thankfully, most of the time they give you a vehicle, but the world could've been a bit more "used", if you catch my drift.
Thankfully, I don't think this is a game where you'll get lost much. It's pretty linear and objectives are easy to figure out.
Rule of thumb would be: If it feels like you are backtracking, but you're seeing new enemies spawning, then you're going the right way.

Overall, I came away from this game pleasantly surprised! While the game's level design could've been better, I had fun playing through Halo: Combat Evolved's campaign!

Played through the series with some friends who wanted to revisit Halo in anticipation for Halo Infinite. I didn't grow up with these games, so my FPS intuition is nonexistent (I am bad at them), but it was fun experiencing such a historical game with them. The Flood levels were a bit of a slog.

this game unfortunately aged awfully bad. although the anniversary edition is nice, I think it is really just really boring all the way through, halo is an amazing franchise, and we shouldn't deny this as a bad game, rather an amazing game that revolutionized the gaming genre... sadly, it is not as worth playing anymore, however the rest of the halo games are insanely good

Très solide premier opus qui pose les bases de la série, le remake est sublime même si je trouve que l'ambiance de la vanilla reste meilleur avec de la vrai tension et un meilleur jeu de lumière qui donne un intérêt à utilisé la lampe torche.
Concernant le jeu en lui-même ce dernier est plutôt court et prenant, l'histoire est sympathique, gameplay agréable, une diversité de gameplay pas deconnante, les environnement sont plutôt varié amis malheureusement il y a énormément de recyclage dans les décors et le level design ce qui peut être très vite redondon

I've played this game roughly fifteen or so times throughout my life. And no joke, this is the first time I've ever managed to run out of time during the warthog run.

This series playthrough with my friend is going to be very fun.

Halo CE is a certified classic. The campaign does an excellent job of establishing the universe while providing amble variety in level design and gameplay variety. From linear corridors to large open areas, to sniping across valleys the first half of the campaign is everything you want from an FPS campaign. The mid game twist adds both to the story and gameplay in equal measure, However it is from here that Halo begins to run out of steam. The last few levels have you going through the same areas as eariler missions just with hordes of enemies, which is the only major blemish on this games legacy. Thankfully the game picks up again in the last sequence to end on a high.
The multiplayer of this game feels like the most fun alpha ever created. The gunplay feels as good as modern shooters but wonky weapon balancing and spawning into bullets stops me from saying its objectively great but I had lots of fun regardless.
Overall while showing its age in places CE is still Awesome.

Since it's the first, alot of things are more primitive compared to Reach and some sections like the ending car escape were kinda bullshit and hard. Still enjoyed myself with the one that started it all, just was frustrating too as well.

Campaign is fairly good for what it is in the first half, second half is kind of mid with too much levels being repeated but its fine.

The Library is probably the only shit level in this game, and that's because it encapsulates everything wrong with CE which is rehashed level design that goes on for way too long.

As always the weapons aside from the plasma gun are good, the sandbox elements to fuck around in are there, the music goes hard and the vehicles are especially great.

Personally I always thought that the HL2 Buggy was good for its time but honestly after revisiting CE like this I'm really starting to doubt that, the vehicles have aged incredibly well.

All & All I can see why so many people hold this up for be a masterpiece, even if it has some glaring issues.

Funny thing is how I'd always think about using the new graphics with a better PC but once I got that I still stick to the old graphics haha!

The updated graphics of anniversary are rough and lose a lot of the fun style of the original in exchange for a fairly soulless modern sci-fi look. The props I'll give it are its lighting is significantly better, still knowing when to go darker for drama but holding it at a playable level. I can't really get too salty at these graphics considering how piss easy it is to toggle between them and the original style.

Combat Evolved has quite an interesting story that misdirected me at certain points. At the start it felt like it was going to something hyper-militaristic with the marines invading Halo out of fear because they believe it's a religious idol for the covenant. However once you meet the Sparks and the Flood it's more sinister existence becomes clear. I was over the moon with a story that didn't feel overly predictable, it was really fun to watch those cutscenes.

Core gameplay is awesome and the level design has a natural flow to it. All the weapons and vehicles feel so nice and can easily be thrown around, the floaty jumps are also a great time. Level design is very solid, there's clearly some limitation imposed on them likely by the system it was originally designed for although I don't know that for sure, resulting in you going back through places you have already gone through. The game doesn't make this feel unnatural, it feels pretty good and makes the settings feel a lot better explored.

However The Library remains utter garbage. It's a shame that a level that's set up to answer a lot of questions falls so flat. It's just an extremely bland circle you run around for far too long. This is just a sore moment in an otherwise great game.

Played with my boyfriend, Master Chief Collection has excellent co-op that worked pretty much flawlessly.

Played it first time in 2019 from Halo:MCC and it became one of my favorite fps of all time and personally my favorite halo game despite its flaws.
What makes gameplay so special are AI enemies, environment, climate, perfect gunplay and this music OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
But yeah there are some elements that can make people go insane, even myself. This one mission with bridges, which never ends, some flood enemies cough, cough with rocket launchers are painful on every difficulty level.
I appreciate this game even more after replaying campaign alone on legend. Its one of those games that gets better when playing on the highest difficulty.
Split screen is nice. Multiplayer can be fun, but I think every other halo game is better in that aspect. Everyone use magnum and nothing else.
No matter what I will love this game forever.