Halo: Combat Evolved Review ([ME] etneveL)
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is the second game in chronological order of the Masterchief Collection, but the first released game in the series (although technically Anniversary is the 6th game in the main series in the release order, but this is just a remaster of the first game).
You play as a spartan named Master Chief, who wakes up from cryosleep on a ship called Pillar of Autumn, which heads towards a Halo like planet, which would serve humans attempt for rebuilding, but the ship gets attacked by the Covenant, an alien group who want to demolish humans. Your objective is to take the ship’s AI named Cortana and get down to the Halo, finding more about it, fighting against the aliens and making sure Cortana won’t be captured.
First of all, the remade graphics look really good on the surface, also there are some visuals which helps the player to navigate, which at some places it’s really good to have. If you play with mouse and keyboard, you can press TAB to change to the original graphics which is a cool addition. Soundtrack and the sound design is pretty good, the controls are handy. Enemy AI is interesting and each enemy behaves their own way, which makes them distinguished from each other. Friendlies in the game are mostly helpful, at least they are much better than in Halo: Reach. Story is alright which has its twists and the whole campaign has some really good moments and places, which are quite unique and cool to play in. Campaign’s playtime is around 5 - 7 hours, which might seem short but it did not feel that way to me, however this is highly dependent on the difficulty you play.
CE’s multiplayer does not have many people and difficult to find any matches, but those who remain are quite good and therefore difficult to get into the whole thing, it is not newbie friendly. Also, if you play outside of the US expect some latency in your matches, which can be really annoying. You could give it a go, but don't expect a whole lot from it.
Gameplay wise it’s safe to say that Halo: CE was revolutionary in its time, thanks to its big campaign maps, decent multiplayer system, and overall fun FPS elements this game had in the early 2000’s which a lot other game could not replicate this good, but if I want to be honest playing this game nowadays is giving me mixed feelings, and it's mostly because of the base difficulty of the game. Don't get me wrong, most FPS games are not providing enough challenges for the player which makes the whole playthrough bit dull, and there is Halo which has enemies which require certain strategies to take out, but these strategies can be effected by the numbers game or because of the area you have to fight in and this is all done without any scripting, which I'm amazed of, but this also makes the game hard to like, because you can't find a proper difficulty level which would good for your experience as there are so big gaps for the difficulty levels too and you have no idea which would be good for you and can be problematic.
There are also some elements which I somewhat disliked in the game, like the slower pace of the gameplay, the too slidey car driving, the sometimes repetitive map design for indoor maps, or how "platforming" works in this game, but these are somewhat managable.
However, there are other problems which are hard to ignore, like the already mentioned newer graphics. If you play on it, you can notice that certain walls, props have different hit boxes than how it looks, because the maps still have the older hit box models, which on the newer graphics do not align visually, so sometimes you will hit invisible walls or can’t get into certain places. Another weird thing with it is the occasional 1-2 second of freezes which happens at mid level loadings, but only in the newer graphics. Some animiations, character models looks so wrong in this new engine, that even the older graphics looks better than that. And also, this graphics sometimes takes away from the authenticity of the older levels, best example is 343 Guilty Sparks which is a dark, foggy level with a scary atmosphere, and the newer graphics just adds lack of fog, splatter effects and more lighting, which is taking away from the level’s horror factor, but there are other levels which look different than what it should in general.
I can understand why many people likes this game and says it is the best thing ever, for it's time even with the additional short comings it is a really good game, and on some parts it is a cool experience to play it nowadays, but for me it is just a decent game due to some game elements and the questionable remastered. After Halo: Reach it feels a less stronger continuation, but if you expectations are in check and you know what to expect, I'm sure you can enjoy this one.