Halo: Combat Evolved is a bit of an odd game, it is definitely not the turning point of the FPS genre by a long shot but more like a more bizarre take on it that involves adding a lot of new things into the mix that would become mainstays for some games in the future or be the selling point for others. To what I'm referring to is that this game isn't some kinda breed of Doom or at least it doesn't really show much in its DNA as a game (because it was inspired by everything Doom). It also came way before any Call of Duty would popularize linear campaigns in their video games, and its development history is but a messy one, considering that this was supposed to originally be a real-time strategy game is pretty explaining of its open-ended nature.

Combat Evolved is a sci-fi first person shooter set in the future, you control a super marine™️ as you venture your way into the titular Halo space "ring" thats inhabited by the Covenant. This all means that it's pretty different from the average FPS as the weapons, vehicles and locations are all pretty much extraterrestrial and odd in their own way, everything in Halo is simply odd considering the amount of weird little things that this game offers in many areas. A lot of the times, if the levels aren't linear enough you'll be tasked with finding your way from point A to point B with an intermission or many in between, and that would be part one of the mission as you then have to fight your way through a herd of even more aliens to find a point C or having to activate many things surrounding a pretty large map.

And this is probably its biggest demise as it sometimes can be really expansive and large with no clear indication as to where to go except for when they put the actual way as a big red dot in your screen, the rate when this happens is real inconsistent and many times you have to go places hoping for an event flag to actually trigger and continue on, besides a pretty weird campaign with a story that makes you senselessly go back and forth between places or tricking you into thinking you're done with it when something messes up and you have to go to another place to have another level, this happens a lot and without co-op it probably would be my biggest deterrent. The co-op experience however is great, even with one other person a lot of the things that would make it a pain become quite fun as you divide and explore for checkpoints.

And honestly, this review only goes out for the campaign, but I love the multiplayer in this thing. That would go more for Halo: Custom Edition though since that version allowed modifications in the maps themselves which is pretty much where a lot of my childhood went back in the day messing around with cousins in Skype calls. I think Halo was the very first games to actually have a proper "battlefield"-esque multiplayer aspect to it where the map would be rather huge and you would choose to go out and get into fights with people like so, which in turn probably inspired some Star Wars: Battlefront with both its shooting and in-vehicle (and airship) fights or the later-stage Battlefield games which consisted of that over the more arcade-y deathmatch craze of Call of Duty.

Also, as a footnote, those remaster graphics are ugly as hell and really just betray the whole artstyle of the original, I get that it was time to be COOL and RADICAL in the early 2010's but making everything look like overdesigned and brightful MCU suits just makes it all so much uglier in comparison. Really wished they didn't waste probably all those resources into it because it really, really does not do the original justice at all.

Kirby's Dream Land is the first entry to feature the then-monochrome titular mascot Kirby and is pretty much the foundation of every single other 2D platformer to come out of this franchise, a simple yet bubbly and cutesy adventure through Dream Land that doesn't last very long, but it feels right at home with the hardware is in with its very accessible controls and softer curve of difficulty. It's short and sweet, but there's not much to it besides the variety of scenarios you're put in, the bosses themselves or beating the game again in the harder Extra Mode you unlock after beating it for the first time.

Ground Zeroes is a bit odd to talk about and review in isolation, since it's pretty much tethered to the main game's story and its too short in itself to actually go out of your way to dissect all its mechanics, it really just serves as a technical demo showcasing the newest and final era of Metal Gear running on the all-new Fox Engine. It doesn't try to be more than that, and honestly if I was excited for The Phantom Pain back in the day getting a fully-featured demo with pretty much the exact gameplay as the main game and a shocking and thrilling couple of cinematic cutscenes of that caliber following the events of the Peace Walker Incident, with those dreadful and honestly pretty dark moments, damn, I would be sold with getting TPP the day it released no matter what.

The only real complaint is that they actually charge you a pretty penny for it, and while yeah you can get some mileage out of it considering that there's multiple missions to do and whatnot, it's way better to get it nowadays bundled in with the main game for dirt cheap.