Halo is the #1 game that I just cannot understand the reception it gets. It's constantly being touted as an aged, clunky mess, which baffles me.
In nearly every sense, I'd describe Halo as a masterpiece. The gameplay itself is easily the most notable aspect. It's heavily focused on strategy, planning out your approach to combat and causing you to constantly shift and adjust for your everchanging predicament. Rather than just having a stock number of guns you switch out on the fly ala Doom, the game gives only two slots to work with, which creates this constant trade off of guns, either using anything available or salvaging any ammo you can find, in every fight. People will describe the combat as slow paced, but I think they're missing the point. Sure, there's little movement options for you to use, but how you move around is but a small part of your options. You have to use anything you can, whittling down the enemy numbers in a smart way until you've won. This is the key aspect that makes Halo's combat work.
Despite this focus on strategy though, the game is also surprisingly open ended on what you can do in combat. The guns are just one small part of a much wider range of tools to use. There's multiple vehicles, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's environmental things like turrets and shields, or even just the landscape itself and it's features that you can take advantage of. Later on, the game just dumps a bunch of options for you to use and allows you to run wild. Despite this though, you can't just use any option you want to win. As with its gunplay, you have to use each tool strategically. It's very impressive how well the game keeps its core strategic feel even with such a wide array of options to choose from. There's no catch all, you have to put everything together and decide your best course of action in battle.
However even then, Halo throws multiple curve balls at you, the biggest being The Flood. Compared to the small numbered, strategically minded Covenant, The Flood rush at you with at incredibly high volumes over extended periods of time, completely changing how you tackle combat. They're generally weak and dumb, but their constant bombardment and numbers is the true threat. Rather than the typical plan and execution, The Flood brings you straight back to more classic shooters, being thrown wave after wave of enemies. While not as deep or strategic, there's definitely some thinking that has to be done to make your way through. The Flood fights brought some of the biggest rushes in the game.
To settle this all down, Halo has one of my favorite environments in any game. The Halo itself is this simplistic but endlessly beautiful spectacle. It's hard not to stare out at the ring in the sky, or the vast skylines around the maps. It's not just visual, the world itself is endlessly interesting. The story isn't anything too crazy or complex, being a rather simplistic tale, but has just enough depth to make the world unique and immersive. The cutscenes themselves are also pretty brief, giving you all the information and some nice character moments before sending you right back into the fray, with nearly every being under 3 minutes. That white flash always put me on the edge of my seat, wondering what was about to happen.
To top it off, the atmosphere is incredibly heavy. Each locale has a great grasp of space and color, and creates this universal alien feel to the entire game. The swamp is a staple at this. The cutscene just before gives the first real piece of tension and stakes to the game, but it's left incredibly vague outside of a obvious huge threat. Your thrust into this dark, alien swamp, where you find corpses of humans and Covenant. This area, and generally the entire chapter, is terrifying and constantly intense. There's obviously a greater threat at play, you just have to go deeper. Even places like the grassy mountains or the beach, easily the most Earthlike parts of the world, not only just feel slightly off in geography, but are filled with these strange, blocky alien structures that are clearly not human nor Covenant. One final one I'd like to mention here is the Library. The entire facility has this larger than life feel to it. It makes you feel incredibly insignificant to the bigger world around you, almost like your stepping into a chamber of Gods. Everything is foreign and clearly made for something much higher than you, and I love it.
There's also the music, which exemplifies everything I just mentioned before. Halo has one of, if not my favorite main theme of any game. It completely encapsulates the feel of the game itself. The rest of the soundtrack is more atmospheric, punctuating the most iconic scenes in the game. Outside the obvious main theme, Shadows is a great example of this. Every time it played, I got on full alert. While I couldn't tell what the game was exactly using it for sometimes, the effect it has cannot be overlooked.
I think the biggest point of contention comes with the level design. Generally, I had no issue with it. Halo is a game that relies much more heavily on the enemies and players, rather than the environment in which the battle takes place. What, where, and how enemies are placed can completely change how you take on a fight. Even for The Flood, who are more repetitive in nature, can get by due to the variety of options you have against them. Sadly, I can't say it's void of issues. While I generally didn't mind the repetitive nature of the blocky environments, especially in the first snow level and the Library, I can't lie and say I wasn't sick of it when I was forced to go through the snow level backwards. Was it presented in a unique way while throwing The Flood in to make it more diverse? Yes, I'd say so, and the cross Covenant and Flood fights were pretty fun. But it wasn't fun to go through all these again, especially since the snow level was one of the longest in the game already. Outside that though, I have no issues with the levels.
People really need to come back to Halo: Combat Evolved. While there are many games I like that I can understand the lack of general appeal for, Combat Evolved just feels generally overlooked. It seems to be regarded as the awkward and clunky start of the true franchise, when rather it feels like a triumphant achievement of game design, having an incredible amount of thought put into each and every aspect of the game. Go into this game on Heroic with an open mindset, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. (also please do not play with the god awful remastered graphics)
In nearly every sense, I'd describe Halo as a masterpiece. The gameplay itself is easily the most notable aspect. It's heavily focused on strategy, planning out your approach to combat and causing you to constantly shift and adjust for your everchanging predicament. Rather than just having a stock number of guns you switch out on the fly ala Doom, the game gives only two slots to work with, which creates this constant trade off of guns, either using anything available or salvaging any ammo you can find, in every fight. People will describe the combat as slow paced, but I think they're missing the point. Sure, there's little movement options for you to use, but how you move around is but a small part of your options. You have to use anything you can, whittling down the enemy numbers in a smart way until you've won. This is the key aspect that makes Halo's combat work.
Despite this focus on strategy though, the game is also surprisingly open ended on what you can do in combat. The guns are just one small part of a much wider range of tools to use. There's multiple vehicles, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's environmental things like turrets and shields, or even just the landscape itself and it's features that you can take advantage of. Later on, the game just dumps a bunch of options for you to use and allows you to run wild. Despite this though, you can't just use any option you want to win. As with its gunplay, you have to use each tool strategically. It's very impressive how well the game keeps its core strategic feel even with such a wide array of options to choose from. There's no catch all, you have to put everything together and decide your best course of action in battle.
However even then, Halo throws multiple curve balls at you, the biggest being The Flood. Compared to the small numbered, strategically minded Covenant, The Flood rush at you with at incredibly high volumes over extended periods of time, completely changing how you tackle combat. They're generally weak and dumb, but their constant bombardment and numbers is the true threat. Rather than the typical plan and execution, The Flood brings you straight back to more classic shooters, being thrown wave after wave of enemies. While not as deep or strategic, there's definitely some thinking that has to be done to make your way through. The Flood fights brought some of the biggest rushes in the game.
To settle this all down, Halo has one of my favorite environments in any game. The Halo itself is this simplistic but endlessly beautiful spectacle. It's hard not to stare out at the ring in the sky, or the vast skylines around the maps. It's not just visual, the world itself is endlessly interesting. The story isn't anything too crazy or complex, being a rather simplistic tale, but has just enough depth to make the world unique and immersive. The cutscenes themselves are also pretty brief, giving you all the information and some nice character moments before sending you right back into the fray, with nearly every being under 3 minutes. That white flash always put me on the edge of my seat, wondering what was about to happen.
To top it off, the atmosphere is incredibly heavy. Each locale has a great grasp of space and color, and creates this universal alien feel to the entire game. The swamp is a staple at this. The cutscene just before gives the first real piece of tension and stakes to the game, but it's left incredibly vague outside of a obvious huge threat. Your thrust into this dark, alien swamp, where you find corpses of humans and Covenant. This area, and generally the entire chapter, is terrifying and constantly intense. There's obviously a greater threat at play, you just have to go deeper. Even places like the grassy mountains or the beach, easily the most Earthlike parts of the world, not only just feel slightly off in geography, but are filled with these strange, blocky alien structures that are clearly not human nor Covenant. One final one I'd like to mention here is the Library. The entire facility has this larger than life feel to it. It makes you feel incredibly insignificant to the bigger world around you, almost like your stepping into a chamber of Gods. Everything is foreign and clearly made for something much higher than you, and I love it.
There's also the music, which exemplifies everything I just mentioned before. Halo has one of, if not my favorite main theme of any game. It completely encapsulates the feel of the game itself. The rest of the soundtrack is more atmospheric, punctuating the most iconic scenes in the game. Outside the obvious main theme, Shadows is a great example of this. Every time it played, I got on full alert. While I couldn't tell what the game was exactly using it for sometimes, the effect it has cannot be overlooked.
I think the biggest point of contention comes with the level design. Generally, I had no issue with it. Halo is a game that relies much more heavily on the enemies and players, rather than the environment in which the battle takes place. What, where, and how enemies are placed can completely change how you take on a fight. Even for The Flood, who are more repetitive in nature, can get by due to the variety of options you have against them. Sadly, I can't say it's void of issues. While I generally didn't mind the repetitive nature of the blocky environments, especially in the first snow level and the Library, I can't lie and say I wasn't sick of it when I was forced to go through the snow level backwards. Was it presented in a unique way while throwing The Flood in to make it more diverse? Yes, I'd say so, and the cross Covenant and Flood fights were pretty fun. But it wasn't fun to go through all these again, especially since the snow level was one of the longest in the game already. Outside that though, I have no issues with the levels.
People really need to come back to Halo: Combat Evolved. While there are many games I like that I can understand the lack of general appeal for, Combat Evolved just feels generally overlooked. It seems to be regarded as the awkward and clunky start of the true franchise, when rather it feels like a triumphant achievement of game design, having an incredible amount of thought put into each and every aspect of the game. Go into this game on Heroic with an open mindset, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. (also please do not play with the god awful remastered graphics)