I understand that first games in an extremely successful franchise tend to be rough but lord almighty I was not expecting to be this drained when playing this game for the first time. Halo 1 is repetitious to the Nth degree. You wander around fighting enemies in the same looking empty hallways leading to the same looking arenas for the 50 billionth time over and over again, and that’s not even an exaggeration. The amount of recycling CE does is borderline ridiculous, sometimes it recycles other parts of another level in a LATER level with little to no changes added. And what makes the whole thing worse is that these levels can drag on for an eternity. Just when you want it to end, you find yourself in yet ANOTHER copy of the similar room you were in like 5 minutes ago for the 15th time and you silently beg for the sweet sweet release of death (No Halo 1, haphazardly dumping the flood in a level we were just in a couple of missions ago is not an excuse to force me to play the exact same level we juST PLAYED A COUPLE OF MISSIONS AGO, IT'S STILL THE SAME FREAKING LEVEL).

Gunplay itself is slow and somewhat clunky compared to the other Halo games but it’s to be expected, the enemy design and AI is pretty decent and sets the stage for what will be standard in the future. Music and atmosphere carry this game HARD. I don’t think I’m ever gonna go back to this one ever again.

Reviewed on Jun 20, 2021


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