Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Game: Halo: Combat Evolved. Originally released for the Original Xbox on 11/15/2001. Developed by Bungie. Published by Microsoft Game Studios. Box includes: game disc and 30 page, full color instruction manual.

Introduction: Halo was one of the American Launch titles for the original Xbox, released on November 15, 2001. Halo would go on to be the biggest selling game for the original Xbox and is widely considered both one of the best launch games of all time AND the game that single handedly brought XBOX into people's houses.

 Halo was also the game that helped standardized the dual joystick approach to playing first person shooter games on consoles. Before Halo, most FPS games were released for PC as they could take advantage of the more powerful hardware as well the keyboard and mouse setup being more well-suited for the genre than the standard game pad. There were plenty of fps games for consoles before Halo but almost all of them have been rendered unplayable by today's standards without the option or mod for an updated controls scheme.

Story: Halo takes places in the distant future in the year 2552. Humans have mastered space travel. In the process of doing so we have discovered an entire religious order filled with at least 4 races of aliens that as part of their religion think that the human race needs to be exterminated.

You play as Master Chief, a human super soldier who is on board a military space ship called the Pillar of Autumn. Your ship had a run in with the covenant and in a desperate attempt to escape, the captain decided to do a blind jump into hyper space as to not let them follow us to Earth. You are awaken form your cryo sleep to find the whole ship is under attack and has come out of hyper space next to a strange ring shaped structure that has what looks like it has inhabitable surface along its inner rim.

You take the last escape pod and land on the mysterious structure. The game essentially has you discovering the secrets of this ring called Halo while, in the meantime, fighting to survive against a covenant armada and more.

 

Visuals: Halo is presented at 480p resolution with a 4:3 aspect ratio. When halo came out it had graphics that completely obliterated every other first person shooter on both consoles and PC. People saw screenshots and footage and said "whoa I NEED to get an Xbox". The areas you explore are absolutely stunning. Beautiful nature looking vistas and majestic alien structures built in a forgotten era. The enemy visual design is top notch here,the yellow shield and green plasma bullets or  the blue armor and plasma bullets from an elite really pop out against the backgrounds.

 

Sound: The music compliments things perfectly with its mixture of military percussion, new age sounds, strings and vocalized sections. The way harmony is used to build tension in the strings is instantly recognizable as is the iconic theme song choir chant and the classic upbeat DUN DUN DUN DUHHHH DUN DUN DUN DUHHHHH strings riff.

 The gun sounds are all  great. Each weapon has instantly recognizable firing sound effect. The aliens each have their own distinct sounds as well and the and the spoken dialogue the grunts say serve as a great sense of comic relief throughout the campaign.

Gameplay: Halo has two primary game modes: Campaign, which is the single player story and can also be played split screen co-op with a second player and Multiplayer which features a variety of maps and gametypes designed for PVP competitive play. You can play up to 4 players on a single console or if you have 4 consoles, 4 TVs 4 Xboxs 4 copies of halo and a network router with enough Ethernet cables you can play up to 16 player system link!

The campaign follows the story of the game. You play as Master Chief and use a variety of both human and alien weapons to get yourself through the 10 missions. The gameplay ramps up at a good pace giving you more and more of a challenge as well as giving you more and more guns and vehicles. I especially love how on the 6th mission the game switches genres to action horror and all of a sudden the "kill every enemy" mentality stops working and you simply have to get through the mission alive. The single player maps are massive and exploring them and looking around really makes the game a lot more immersive than simply shooting aliens.


Controls: It's weird to think about the controls of this game. What was once novel has become pretty much the standard controls for console shooters. Master chief has a certain weightiness too him that still gives Halo's controls a distinct feel. The analog stick controls still hold up to this day.

 

Personal Memories: My first memory of playing Halo was a demo. I don't remember if the demo was an Official Xbox Magazine demo disk or if the game was featured on another game but it included level 4 of the campaign for single player or 2 player co-op. My little brother and I would play that damn level over and over again. It was a rated M game and I was only 10 years old when the game came out so we had to pretty much plead and beg my dad to get us the game. we told him you shoot aliens not people so whats the big deal? 

Halo: Combat Evolved is one my personal favorite games of all time. I've played the campaign who knows how many times and I'm known among my friends as being the best at CE specifically (other halo games are another story LOL) After my original Xbox died I replaced it with the special edition see through green halo Xbox which I still have to this day.
 

 

Versions  and Other Releases: This version is the "Best of Platinum Hits" version. There is also The standard greenbox release, the standard platinum hits version, and the version that comes with the halo edition Xbox and has a green NOT FOR RESALE logo on the front cover. The original Green box version contains demos for other Xbox games but the other 3 versions have promo videos for Halo 2. 

A PC version and MAC version were released featuring online multiplayer and additional maps

The game was given a remaster for the Xbox 360 and is know as the anniversary edition. They gave the game basically a new coat of paint and its a bit of a change in art style. Thankfully you do have the option to play with the "classic" graphics uprezzed to 720P.

The Original Xbox version is compatible with the Xbox 360, however the Anniversary Edition is the better way to play on Xbox 360 due to its increased resolution.

 Halo CE anniversary was included as part of the Halo Master Chief collection for Xbox one/series and PC. This game further improves on the xbox 360 game by having better performance and up to 4k resolution. 

The original Xbox version is unique in some subtle ways from the future releases. Firstly it is a much darker game, I find myself need to use the flashlight on the Xbox version much more frequently than on the PC version. Secondly, there is a lot of flavor text in the menus from the original game that aren't on the anniversary, a lot of them are pretty funny.

 My recommendation for the best way to play Halo: CE in 2022 is to play on the MCC version on PC or Xbox series and use the classic graphics settings.

 A sequel was released for the Original Xbox, called Halo 2, in 2004.

 

Conclusion: Halo CE was a huge game for me when I was kid so its hard to be unbiased but I think anyone who is interested in the history of Xbox, first person shooters or even video games in general absolutely should play this game.