Played with my partner, giving me the best possible chance with this one. Playing games with her is always wonderful and Halo 1 is really special to her, whereas my memories of it basically boil down to some silliness on Blood Gulch.

This lies a bit awkwardly at the midpoint between the Unreals and Half-Lifes of the world and the then-newly solidifying modern shooter conventions, serving as one of the earliest examples of them present in one place. You've got your two equip slots, your obnoxiously self-serious military theming, your narration / guidance from an NPC through ever-present comms, your dedicated vehicle sections, etc. While that is all the case and is most interesting when thinking about Halo's place in history, what makes it truly stand out is its flirtation with the trends of the late 90s / early 00s that aren't so familiar today...namely the hilarious sandboxyness of it all. Everything is a physics object and constantly flying around the screen, with little thought given to how that can break levels (either in ways that benefit or completely fuck over the player), vehicles are so mobile and also floaty that they're constantly flipping over, being boosted into places they're not supposed to, and otherwise being extremely silly.

The best moments in Halo are when you're pushing the limits of that sandbox and being rewarded either with actual progression or with humor. The worst parts are when you're going step-by-step dryly doing whatever the voice in your head tells you to do in that moment. Strange to think that the latter is what stuck and became the default for shooters.

Listen, this game is great as it is significant and pretty much every individual that doesn't live under a rock knows that. But going through this game again with a critical eye, this game has shown its age while remaining great.

First off, bonus points to this game for starting this whole lovely franchise and creating such an iconic aesthetic. From the sound, the detail of the covenant mannerisms, music, and atmosphere, it's all here.

My only real problem with this game is the level design takes a nosedive in the back half of the campaign. Compared to levels like Silent Cartographer, the missions in the back half really come off amateurish. This is most notable in the ambitiously redundant Library but also still exist within 343 Guilty Spark and Two Betrayals. It feels rushed and nowhere near as meticulously designed as the greater levels in this game or even any other Bungie Halo campaign.

Still, despite that, Halo Combat Evolved is seminal game in history and its significance shouldn't be under-appreciated.

Disclaimer: I played this on MCC

this game was my first introduction to Halo: CE
and now CE is one of my favorite games
but if were looking at the anniversary edition
everything anniversary about it kinda sucked ass
at least its still a great game at the end of the day

Very solid shooting mechanics and impressive AI that aged really well. I think that around the mid point of the game the campaign starts to drag a lot and the missions map design and enemy encounters become repetitions of themselves. On top of that the interiors are not very varied and you get the feeling that you are running around the same stuff over and over again.

I dont have any emotional attachment with the original, but it is very clear that 343 took some weird liberties with the art style, lightning and graphics in this remaster that become very obvious specially with the option to switch original vs remake with a press of a button (which I think is a very weird option, maybe they weren't very confindent with the changes?).

Don't really care about the story, I think its serviceable for the power fantasy action hero sci fi FPS. Don't enjoy much the traditional cinematic narrative. And the soundtrack is excelent.

I understand why this was so groundbreaking for its time, the soundtrack is beautiful, the combat is really fun, the lore is deep and interesting and the graphics in this remastered version are really well done, still keeping it true to its original form. However it does have some BIG flaws. The levels get very repetitive, you keep seeing the same rooms over and over, sometimes with confusing designs and it's very easy to get lost. But I was willing to ignore that cause I was having fun, I love all the different vehicles and using them in the open areas feels very ahead of its time. But then I got to the last levels... The library was already a chore to get through, and when I got to Two Betrayals I just couldn't deal with it anymore. There's no way to get more hp other than health packs and there are wayyyy too few. If you get stuck in a checkpoint with 1hp that's it, either restart the level or go all the way back until you find one. Which I did, but I still couldn't get past one of the checkpoints and I just gave up. I understand this is a product of its time but it's just bad game design when it gets so frustrating, so that's it for me. Maybe I'll catch up on the lore on youtube and try the second one

Finalizei recentemente a campanha da versão remasterizada de Halo: Combat Evolved, um dos maiores jogos do gênero first-person-shooter (FPS) de todos os tempos, por meio da coleção Halo: The Master Chief Collection, e aqui vão os meus principais pontos:
⚠ | Lembrando apenas que esse é a minha opinião sobre o jogo, ok? Você não é obrigado a concordar com ela :)

Comparando com o jogo original de 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary teve uma melhoria gráfica e no áudio visível. No próprio jogo, conseguia perceber que os gráficos foram remasterizados e melhorados, já que conseguia alternar entre o gráfico remasterizado e o gráfico original. Aparentemente, para mim, o jogo também estava fluído também. A história é bem boa, e considerando o jogo original de 2001, é complexa. Porém, achei a jogabilidade meio datada comparados com outros FPS (não sei se é possível alterar) e até difíceis, como o do Warthog (é muito difícil controlar aquilo, principalmente quando ele for extremamente útil). Também achei o jogo meio repetitivo no geral, com assets e inimigos repetitivos - às vezes tinha a sensação de "demora" por "estar passando no mesmo lugar nas mesmas vezes" e não acabar "nunca".
Halo: Combat Evolved tem um grande legado na indústria dos videogames, é inegável, sendo a sua versão remasterizada boa no geral, mas tem alguns problemas até que significativos, como a jogabilidade e a repetição dos jogos. Apesar de entender que estamos falando de um jogo de mais de 20 anos atrás, ele é certamente datado comparado a hoje em dia, inclusive o remaster, mas isso ainda não tira a grandeza de Halo: Combat Evolved, e a parte boa de seu remaster.

Se você fica curioso, quer saber mais sobre Halo e quer jogar os primeiros jogos, recomendo esse jogo - aliás, recomendo não só esse jogo, mas a coleção (Halo: The Master Chief Collection), que contém outros jogos mais antigos de Halo também.

The first half of the game is straight up gold. The weapons are fun and unique, the enemies are cannon fodder on lower difficulties but feel cunning and dangerous on higher difficulties, and the level design is genious. The second half is spottier in terms of quality and contains some really repetitive level design to the point of being boring. The game overall is a classic, and remastering it was a good idea, but the anniversary graphics just make the experience worse by muddling the aesthetic and harming the readability and visual clarity of the original graphics.

I played the first Halo back when it wss first ported to PCs a few years after its XBox debut, and back then I found it an enjoyable enough romp that wasn't anything new to someone who'd already been playing FPS games for years on PC; to this date my lukewarm take has been that a significant part of Halo's smash success is because it was a functionally playable FPS on a console. Coming back to revisit it now - under the Anniversary title - it's actually quite striking just how badly it has aged. All of its issues were present on the original release as well, but in 2023 they come across especially bad. The level design is bland and full of copy/paste corridors (and half the levels are recycled in the first place), the checkpoint system feels erratic, the combat starts feeling like a chore once the Flood have appeared and are in full swing, and the two-weapon mechanic somehow feels even worse now than it did originally. The sad thing is that there is a great game hiding underneath all of that, because it's full of so much potential and great ideas - but it feels barely finished despite its (at the time) AAA presentation.

I had to push myself to finish this because I've made it a mission for myself to play through the Master Chief collection, but I think in this day and age - especially if you come from a PC gaming background - this is a game only an established fan could love while viewing it through nostalgia-tinted glasses. That's completely valid and I don't discount those opinions (god knows how many mediocre games I have a fondness to because of when I originally played them), but without that attachment the original Halo feels like a relic left behind.