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.
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.