Halo: Combat Evolved Review (mister chef)
I always thought that Halo was a 10/10 game... Until I recently replayed it. And while it's great, it's definitely flawed.
The game starts out strong with levels like The Pillar of Autumn, a good introductory level. Halo, DEFINITELY lives up to its name. Great level. Then The Truth and Reconciliation a fairly good level, then The Silent Cartographer, this game's highlight in my opinion. Brings out the best this game has to offer.
Then, right after the best level, comes a mediocre one. Assault on the Control Room starts off strong. Then turns into repetitive corridors, just copy pasted, then good again. It was the first sign of things to come.
Then comes 343 Guilty Spark... it has great environmental story telling. And the Flood reveal was great. Then you actually fight the Flood. The absolute worst part of this game. In fact, any Halo game. Fighting the Flood is sooo boring and awful that I wonder WHY DO PEOPLE REQUEST THE FLOOD TO RETURN ALL THE TIME??? All the good enemy design, AI and enemy target prioritization, all goes out the window for horribly designed enemies. You get to meet interesting enemies such as: Rush down enemies that explode (Infectors), rush down enemies that melee you, rush down enemies that explode (Carrier forms), stand still enemies that shoot you with various weapons, the brain-dead decision to add Rocket Flood.
Flood are great in concept, story, danger, etc. NOT in gameplay. The worst thing to come out of CE.
Then after Guilty Spark you get to The Library the worst level in the Halo franchise. Copy pasted everything. Shoot a ton of enemies. Hold here for no reason. Ride the elevator, do the same thing. Repeat. A lot of the "hardcore" Halo fans call this "The pinnacle of human endurance." and other brain-dead things like that. No, it's just a horrible level. Even the original CE devs know that this level is horrible, and every time they talk about it, see a speedrun, be asked about what to change in CE, they immediately say The Library. Sometimes it's "We shipped at least one level we shouldn't have", others it's "One Level Made The Cut That 'Probably Shouldn't Have'" other times it's "I blame Tyson for this whole thing he said "let's add another level." *laughter*... "Oh, he glitched again. -Even through there, the level is still too long. *laughter* *All say Yeah.* -I think we could have probably cut a floor or two. ... This is um... this is grueling to watch, even with all the cheats. -Yes. -Well, this is a great example of how we didn't know how to self produce. Like, hey this is too long. The mission feels over like 45 minutes ago. *laughter*", etc. I am not gonna quote the whole thing, but the clearly hate, or at least are very critical of this awful level. The words of the people who created the whole game, not me.
Then after going through that awful, awful mess. You get to Two Betrayals. An actual level. And it's pretty great. Very fun. Reuses the annoying parts of Assault on the Control Room, but this level has a lot of twists and turns that the awful parts don't bring down the whole experience. Then you get to Keyes. A good level. Then you get to the final level. The Maw. I would have disliked this level, if it didn't change the Pillar of Autumn so much that it feels like an entirely new level. Then the Warthog run at the end is pretty great.
Overall, without The Library, Assault on the Control Room, and the Flood, this game would have been a 10. With those, it turned to around 7.5.
I started playing Halo back in around 2014 when I didn't play much FPS games beside a few ones here and there. And I pirated this game, making the game have no music, played on easy, skipped every cutscene and just played for the gameplay. After playing the game this time, I can finally feel the great impact that the music has on the game. And I could finally listen to the characters. And I'm very mixed about them.
Cortana is the worst. Feels very awful in this game. Keeps calling Chief names, makes fun of his intelligence, and is generally just an annoyance. And that face...Ew. Keyes is cool. Great character. So is Johnson, but he doesn't exactly shine outside of a few lines in-game and the opening cutscene. He starts to shine way more in Halo 2 onward. Foehammer is alright.
The Grunts, Elites, Jackals, and Hunters are all great and very fun to fight. Unlike the Flood.
Music is fantastic. A lot of people consider Halo's theme to be the "gaming's anthem" and it definitely lives up to that.
As for the CE:A part, it's bad. It uses the very, very ugly Reach artstyle and ruins the game. And the MCC/PC port is bugged that it has weird dots all over the screen on Anniversary graphics.
One thing that I kinda dislike about Halo is that after it became popular, it (indirectly) caused that kickstart of console elements in most FPS games. Two weapon limit. Regen health. FPS games becoming console-first, etc. These things work in Halo, but it becomes a problem when it starts affecting other games. Hell, Duke Nukem, one of the most popular FPS of the olden times, had its last game, Duke Nukem Forever, practically affected by all of these..
Overall, I really like this game. Exceptions do exist the Flood, and the two levels mentioned above. But, I like the Halo franchise as a whole, and this game is to thank for that.
And thanks for CE:A for having one of my all-time favourite track that I don't think I actually ever heard in game outside of MCC's menus, and had to find someone who decompiled the game files to listen to it. (Halo CE:A selection music in MCC, basically the end part of Brotherhood, Bravery, which is a remake of Brothers in Arms.)
Sources:
https://youtu.be/9ndZbg8Mr-Q?t=2618
https://www.gamesradar.com/original-halo-devs-reveal-how-much-had-to-be-sacrificed-to-create-the-iconic-shooter-we-shipped-at-least-one-level-we-shouldnt-have/
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/10/original-halo-dev-admits-one-level-made-the-cut-that-probably-shouldnt-have