*Played as part of the Master Chief Collection

So the original Combat Evolved was one of the two Halo games I played, as it was the only one I knew of that was on PC at the time. I was just never an Xbox kid, so I completely skipped this series back during its heyday. Thankfully most of the series is on PC via the Collection (which I have definitely taken way too long to get around to as well), so are now more easily accessible (Halo 5 PC port though? When is that happening? I would like to eventually complete the series).

As a game, this is a pretty fun FPS experience, but it definitely feels dated now. The lack of accessibility options such as sprinting and weapon iron sights makes it feel like more of a slog to get through than it actually is, especially when redoing checkpoints. The level design is interesting though, with many large sections and maps that you circle around completely. This is something that I don't think I've really seen before in a linear game such as this. The vehicles are also fun to play with, although I hated driving the Warthog. For some reason, the Banshee handles like a dream, but the Warthog is this unwieldy thing that flips over every time you hit even a slight pothole or elevation change.

Overall, the story is enjoyable enough, but is still pretty bland and by-the-numbers. You also don't get much lore at all during the course of the game, with a lot of questions just left up in the air - I suppose for the later games to answer. Who are the Covenant? Why are we at war with them? Why is Master Chief such a unique badass? Why is Cortana so sassy? Who the fuck are the Forerunners and the Monitor? Anyway, I'm sure I'll get more answers as I go through the series, so I'm not too worried about these questions.
We continue onwards to Halo 2, which will be the first completely new game in the franchise I'll have played, so I'm looking forward to that.

Ill prefix that I played this through the Master Chief collection on Xbox Series X. Similarly as to what I did with the Metal Gear collection I will review each game individually and then talk about the collection at the end.

Despite growing up with an Xbox 360 I have never played a Halo game properly. So I figured while i'm on a bit of a break from playing through the Zelda franchise I would play through some of the Halo games to cleanse the pallet a bit. While overall I did enjoy this game, there is no question that it is showing its age in the modern day

Story is simple enough, the humans versus the covenant, which I think is theme I can expect from each game. This game of course introduces Master Chief, without a doubt one of the most iconic gaming characters of all time. I actually believed that Master Chief was a silent protagonist in this game as he literally doesn't speak for the first half of the game and then just starts talking randomly which I thought was funny. I really liked Cortana, I like that they didn't make her just a tutorial voice and had her speak like a real human. No missions really standout as most are just the same environments repeated over and over again, which cant really be knocked in this case due to the games age.

The gun combat hasn't aged amazingly but is still playable. I do quite like the large crosshair aiming feature which gets rid of a ADS button as it makes mowing down enemies a lot easier. Ammo I found was quite scarce in places especially for the non covenant guns which are the ones that you start with normally. I really did not like the driving controls, a big pet peeve of mine is when driving controls use the joystick instead of the triggers, obviously age plays a factor here so ill let it slide. Also some missions were very hard to navigate even with the floor arrows but normally I would end up finding my way accidentally. I feel like a simple mini map would of fixed that issue.

My biggest gripe is the checkpoint system. Not that there are too many or too few, its that it is extremely inconsistent. I found that there would be times when I was walking through random hallways and hitting checkpoints at a usual pace but then almost entire missions would go by and I wouldn't hit a single one. Two biggest moments I saw this was in mission 9 & 10, in mission 9 there is a cutscene where a big spoiler takes place, you would think there would be a checkpoint after the cutscene right, nope, it put me back to well before the cutscene which I found very weird. Lastly in mission 10 during the driving segment, there were no checkpoints at all even during the moment the timer is paused. I get it a bit more in this sense as it is the games climax but its still something that is very annoying especially paired with janky driving controls.

Visually the anniversary edition makes a massive change up in graphics. I really like the feature where you can switch between the old Xbox graphics and the new remastered ones. This game saw the first use of the Iconic Halo theme so it gets good points here for that.

Overall not a horrendous first instalment. It is definitely starting to show its age but that is to be expected. I'm looking forward to playing through the rest of this series as its one that's been on the backlog for a long time.

Rejoguei o jogo de pouco em pouco e eu descobri uma coisa que eu não tinha percebido na minha primeira gameplay. Eu amo esse jogo, do fundo do meu coração. A atmosfera pode ter sido estragada pela versão Anniversary (graças a Deus dá pra colocar os gráficos originais) e ele é datado em várias partes mas eu genuinamente não consigo descrever o carinho que eu tenho por ele.
É até um pouco difícil pra mim fazer essa review porque esse jogo é sensacional e é muito íntimo pra mim falar sobre ele. Claro, o jogo repete muito cenários, a gameplay em algumas partes não é tão boa mas eu criei um apego tão forte que eu as vezes só quero rejogar esse jogo de novo e de novo.
É esquisito como a pouco tempo atrás eu só via esse jogo como um começo sólido pra franquia e isso acabou evoluindo pra ele se tornar um dos melhores jogos que eu joguei.
Esse jogo é apenas incrível.

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!

-undeniably so fucking jingoistic and patriotic it’s kind of sickening in like a /neg way. I mean I wanna give the devs some excuse here, 2001 was a wildly diff time in American history and hopefully the sequels calmed down politically but also I doubt post 9/11 games do at all and by the time they do they’re so caught up in their silly goofy lore. also idk I have had to excuse right wing/libertarian art I like a lot more than I like this but still leaves a bit of a gross taste in ur mouth.
-suppose it helps that the actual plot here is a fucking bore. master chef and blue minx Cortana boring fucking characters, idc about them or what happened to them or why ur fighting aliens lol. which sucks cuz the world here is so fully formed and fleshed out but I’m not watching rlly boringly directed cutscenes to figure out how we got here nor am I reading some nerd ahh book.
-environmental storytelling here hits though, like I feel like I’m able to glean enough from how the maps are laid out to come out w a more satisfying plot line than whatever is actually happening in the foreground. like rlly cool stuff implied about the balance between nature n tech which is like more apropos in ‘23 than ‘01. idk I live in a major metropolitan city w no greenery or nature to speak of whatsoever which is so diff than my rural upbringing. there’s a real seeming living breathing ecosystem here and that’s cute and smth more games should attempt to do.
-tbh I don’t even mind that the back half of this game is just more or less the same maps from the first half slightly tweaked. I like it like thematically, Ie the effects of war and how nothing ever rlly changes, everything is cyclical. real ending of watchmen/beginning of guns of the patriots wave. btw I don’t like watchmen I’ve just read it and think silk spectre/nite owl are cute.
-played through the middle chapters on my phone w game pass while watching the sex and the city reboot w my bf….and I was wearing new brandy melville shirt….life is good
-consistently felt like Michael Cera in Superbad when he’s playing ps2 game and he keeps complaining about how unfair it is.
-the vehicle controls are actually so awful omg, why would accelerate ever be anything other than the triggers or the action button, actually so evil

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.

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.

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.

Me and my Co-op partner managed to destroy our banshees on Two Betrayals and had to back track to the starting area to get one. After one and a half hours of watching Youtube videos and attempting to get the banshee through the door that breaks. We did and screamed, clapped, and laughed.

Halo: Combat Evolved is that level of jank to the T, as a longtime player who was there for the first title, it feels just as wholesomely scuffed as it did so many years ago. Playing it with someone who hasn't experienced Halo before was a real treat. I got to be there for their first experience with the flood, their first melee teamkill, and their first time running through the library.

The first Halo is decidedly not perfect, but it is a great introduction to the greatest first person shooter franchise of all time.

(Played via Halo: MCC)

It was okay. Can't say much negative about it, other than some of the levels being repetitive. The lore was a highlight for me. Really dislike the Flood, but that's kind of intended.

I think the final levels were a bit more entertaining than the earlier ones, but I played it a while ago so my memory isn't too clear.

Next playthrough, I'm using my Xbox ONE controller and the original graphics, and playing the game the way it was intended. :P