Halo Combat Evolved Review

Introduction

    Halo, a franchise that defined Xbox gaming and greatly improved console shooters. It was one of the first games to be released on the system, originally that wasn’t going to be so though. The original plan was to release it on Macintosh, and was going to be an RTS (real time strategy) game. This would later be acquired by Microsoft and used for the direct x machine itself. Steve Jobs was furious and Bill Gates got the dough. E3 of 1999 highlighted the game in a somewhat primitive state, however it looked like it was going to end up being an awesome game. Now was it? Let’s find out and delve further into Halo Combat Evolved. Spoiler warning is issued now, because the story is revealed in the story section (duh), so play that game if you don’t want to spoil yourself, it’s a short game.

Story

             

                The story of Halo takes place in the year 2552, and follows the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) starship The Pillar of Autumn after fleeing from Reach, a colony planet that is relatively close to Earth. A massive group of Aliens called the Covenant had attacked Reach a little earlier, prompting the ship to make a random slip space jump away from Earth to prevent an invasion. The novel The Fall of Reach elaborates more on the events leading up to this game, which I may review at some point in the future, but for now I am focusing on the story of the game.

                As the crew exits out of slip space (by the way that’s this games version of warp or hyperspace), they come across a planet called Threshold, and in front of the planet is a strange metallic ring world in its orbit. It’s not long before the captain, Jacob Keyes, is informed by the ship A.I. Cortana that the Covenant ships followed their slip space coordinates and are about to wreak some havoc on the ship. With that being said, the ship is set on red alert and the captain has Cortana wake the Master Chief, your character, from cryo sleep to join in on the action to repel boarders until the crew is off the ship. After a brief tutorial on how to look around, move and jump, you make your way up to the bridge to meet captain Keyes. He along with Cortana explain what is going on, and Keyes informs the Chief and Cortana that they are going to be working with each other to keep Cortana out of Covenant hands. Should the Covenant take possession of Cortana, they could learn everything about humanity, including the location of Earth. So, the two of them make their way through the ship to a life boat, escaping the ship and landing on the ring world. The life boat makes a hard landing on an earth like cliff head, killing everyone on board except you and Cortana (gotta love the luck of the protagonists). You make your way across the map to find other life boats with survivors and are tasked with helping them. After wave upon wave of covenant dropships come by and attempt to kill you and the survivors, a dropship comes by, flown by the lovely (?) Foehammer, and picks up survivors as well as drops a Warthog (a beef up Jeep with a chain gun) to help you find more survivors. Along your travels Cortana informs you that she is hacking into the covenant battle network to locate captain Keyes. After finding three life boats and saving their survivors, you are picked up and sent on to a canyon to board a covenant cruiser where captain Keyes is being held. You and a squad of marine’s travel through a canyon in the dark of the night to board the cruiser using its gravity lift. After utilizing a sniper rifle to make your venture easier, you eventually get sucked up the ship with your squad and proceed to fight through the ship till you find Keyes in the brig. Keyes informs you that he overheard the covenant talking about the ring world, calling it Halo. Cortana analyzes the information and uses the battle net to learn that Halo is believed to be some kind of weapon linked to covenant’s religion, and they are looking for the control room of Halo. Keyes then makes it their mission to find the control room before the covenant, and they escape the ship using a covenant dropship, due to Foehammer picking up enemy bogies. The next level has you and two dropships full of marines storm an island installation that houses a map room called the silent cartographer. After a beautiful beach battle, you drive off to find the map room and just as you enter the installation and find the door to the main installation, you are locked out. The chief then must find the security room to the installation further around the island. After deactivating the security, a dropship carrying heavy weapons to you crashes outside, leaving you with some rocket launchers to take care of some of the bigger aliens. Making your way back into the installation, you fight your way to the map room, and activate the map. After acquiring the location of the control room, you radio for an evac, when Foehammer tells you that contact with captain Keyes’ team has been lost, speculating that they may be out of range (this comes up later). Once your back on the dropship, Cortana has Foehammer go within the island to the next destination, how they get there I have no idea because these two places are two completely different environments in and of themselves. The chief and Cortana are dropped off on this ledge inside an underground building, and make begin their trek to the control room. Along the way they get word from Charlie team, another group of marines on their way, and get their assistance in fighting off the covenant along the way (well halfway there anyway, marines don’t follow in this game like they do nowadays). You go from a metallic installation setting to a huge snow-covered canyon, and have access to warthogs, ghosts (an alien hovercraft with plasma guns) and the oh so lovable scorpion tank (your average human tank). You will need these vehicles if you want to traverse these places in a meaningful time, especially the tank, because the covenant have their own mortar tanks which can cause a lot of grief along your way. Eventually, the chief and Cortana, after running and gunning through more alien guarded rooms, you come across a snow-covered bridge right in front of the control room, a giant temple looking installation that you need to get to before the covenant (even though the covenant appear to be there already). You have two ways of getting there, one being going across the bridge and fighting a metric butt ton of covenant till you get to the bottom and make your way up the walk ways of the control room temple, or if you are quick enough, you can grab a banshee (an alien plane with plasma guns like the ghosts) and fly to the doors of the control room to cut out about 5-10 minutes of gameplay. Once you reach those doors you can fight your way through the last bit of covenant and access the control room. Cortana is uploaded to the control room and begins gathering information about Halo, stating it was built by some species called the Forerunners, and begins to explain Halos purpose before discovering something that captain Keyes was looking for when they lost contact with him. She becomes very concerned and orders you to leave her in the control room and go save captain Keyes. Without knowing what you’re up against, you are taken by dropship to a swamp filled with eerie green glowing trees and fog that goes on forever. Upon starting the level, you see some covenant troops running from something, however we won’t find what they are running from for a while. Along the way you find a downed dropship, as well as a downed covenant dropship. Something is up around here and the environment does a great job of letting you know that. Eventually you come across an installation that is assumed to be the one captain Keyes and his men went to discover. An explosion can be seen along with human gunfire behind some covenant troops running out of the installation. The chief goes inside, taking a large elevator down. Along the way, you fight covenant and find walls splatter in covenant blood, corpses of covenant soldiers, a mysterious green goo dropping from the ceiling at certain points, and eventually come across one of the marines. This marine will shoot at you with his pistol as he crouches against a wall. He shouts at you, screaming about monsters that killed his fellow men and how they aren’t going to get him. When I played this back in the day, it was kind of unnerving and although I normally shot him to put him out of his misery, it’s a good touch to what is to come. After exploring more, you come across a hall with human blood splattered everywhere and marine bodies along the way. In the cut scene the chief approaches a locked door where the blood leads too. Hearing something behind him, he turns around, only to see nothing but allowing the player to get a sense that something different is around. He unlocks the door and a marine body slumps over him. He turns around again, gun at the ready and backs into the room. There is blood everywhere, and a marine helmet with a camera on it. The chief takes the footage card out of the helmet and watches it, revealing the mission Keyes and his men were on through the eyes of a marine called Wallace Jenkins. They traverse the installation, coming across dead covenant with their insides scrambled. Eventually they come across the room the chief is in, and begin to hear noises along with a screaming marine over their radio. Suddenly the noise is revealed as a door is bashed down by spore like creatures which begin attacking and latching themselves to the marines and Keyes, ending the video with Jenkins falling over and presumably dying. Chief throws the card away and readies his weapon, and when the cut scene ends, in the letter boxing you read the tagline, “The Flood”. You are now in the room and are trapped as doors are bashed down by these same creatures. Fortunately, the chief’s shields are more than capable of stopping and killing any of the spores that get past your gunfire. The spore creatures go down quickly, but soon the door you came through gets bashed down and reveals not only more spore creatures, but zombies. You heard me right, zombies, or at least zombie aliens. Your new objective is simply to escape. Sounds easy, but when you get to the room where the nearest elevator is and activate it to come down, the elevator comes crashing down in a fireball. My young self was shocked when I saw this, and the music that accompanied it made it even more horrifying. Hope seems to be lost, but you must go on. You traverse through the rest of the installation and come across another elevator, taking you further down, showing alien blood splattered all along the walls as it goes down. As the elevator stops, you find the zombies, now with guns, but now you see zombie humans as well. Fighting through the onslaught of zombies you make your way to the next room with an elevator, and finally make your way up and out to safety. Up above you find marines that are hiding from the creatures. Foehammer asks what’s going on in the area, and informs you that there is a large structure not far from where you are, and that she can pick you up there. You and the marines make your way up to the structure, fending yourselves from the creatures as floating robots come out of nowhere and help fight them off with you. Suddenly you are teleported onto a pipe and are greeted by a blue glowing ball robot calling itself 343 Guilty Spark, the monitor (caretaker) of Installation 04 (Halo). He informs you that these creatures are the flood, and that it is his duty to assist you in stopping the threat. He teleports you to a large facility called the library, where you are tasked with recovering an item called the index, the key to activating Halo and stopping the flood. As you traverse through countless halls of nothing but flood (including a bulbous form called a carrier that explodes into spores), Guilty Spark tells you about how the flood will consume all if you don’t stop them. As you listen to him, and hear his signature humming, laughing, and talking to himself, you may start to realize that he isn’t exactly the sanest sounding guy to be around, but since he’s all you got to get through doors and get help from the flying laser shooting robots from earlier (sentinels), you get used to it. Eventually you find the index and take it, in which Guilty Spark takes it from you for safe keeping till he teleports you to the control room. Once you teleport into the room, you’re given the index back and plug it into the control panel. The startup fails however, and Cortana (“Remember me”) pushes Guilty Spark back to the ground, and scolds the Chief. Guilty Spark is angered at the fact that there is an A.I. in the system and demands the index back. Cortana says no and begins explaining Halo’s true purpose. Halo doesn’t specifically kill the Flood, it kills their prey. It sends a wave that wipes out any sentient life in the galaxy and erases them, ensuring that the flood can’t infect anything else and essentially starves the flood. The chief now identifies Guilty Spark as a threat and Guilty Spark demands the index back, to activate Halo with another “Reclaimer”. The chief plugs Cortana back into his head and declines, to prevent the activation. Now, you have not only the covenant and the flood after you, you now have the sentinels after you. You and Cortana both now come to the realization that Halo needs to be destroyed. Cortana devises a plan to delay and prevent the installation’s activation from another method. You are now tasked with going through the same level where you were looking for the control room, but backwards to destroy three pulse generators. These generators are in rooms three of the snow-covered canyons. Each one is in a room with a platform on the walls of the canyon. You go inside, and use your shields to overload the pulse, causing it to fry itself. This will drain your shields however, and there will always be some sort of resistance which can easily kill you, so be careful. Through the level you can see two interesting plot developments begin to unfold more fluently. One, Halo’s environments are constantly being damaged and destroyed by the flood, and two the flood and covenant are seen engaging in very large fights. Both are nice touches and show a coming end to the game. After the last generator is destroyed, Cortana now decides to teleport you herself to the covenant cruiser from earlier to rescue Keyes again, this time from the flood. Cortana explains earlier that they can destroy Halo by overloading the Pillar of Autumns engines. The ship crashed in a desert and is still mostly intact, all they need is the captains Neural Implants to initiate the overload of the ships engines. So, Cortana teleports you to the ship, which is now heavily damaged, and has you rescue the captain. You will go in and out of the ship as there are holes across the ship, forcing you to make your way back on the ship through that oh so trusty gravity lift from earlier. Upon finding the captain, you realize that the captain is now one of the flood (his case is much different however as he is turned into a form called a gravemind, which can be used to control the flood and command ships using its hosts memories, but I will get to this in Halo 2). Cortana urges you to be strong and end his suffering, in which the Chief punches through his face, into his skull and pulls out the implants. They make their way back to the hanger, and commandeer a banshee to take to the Pillar of Autumn’s crash site. The chief crashes his banshee into the side of the ship and climbs into one of the life boat bays. You are now tasked with making your way to the ships bridge to initiate the overload sequence. There are lots of covenant, flood and sentinels on your way so be careful, they are all high ranking and ticked off. As the chief gets to the bridge, Cortana begins a count down, only for Guilty Spark to shut down the sequence. Asking for plan B, Cortana mentions that the engines can be overloaded by cracking the engines shields with a big enough explosion, which to the chief simply means blow that stuff up with a grenade or rocket. Your now off to the engine room, but before that, look for the armory along the way, there are rocket launchers and grenades, just be careful of intruders. Now it’s time to blow some engines up and get away. Simply push the button on the corresponding engine shaft, throw a grenade in and blow it up, on the four that are highlighted. Once that’s done, run to the elevator, and get in a warthog. Cortana calls for Foehammer to pick them up at a junction on the ship. As you drive through a ship that’s blowing to pieces, you eventually are told to stop by Cortana, saying that this is the spot where Foehammer will come to pick you up. Look to your left to find one of the sadder moments of Halo as Foehammer is shot down by banshees. With her gone, Cortana comes up with a plan B, which is to get to a longsword fighter (cool looking human Starfighter that you won’t be able to fly until we look at the Custom Edition for the PC). In the most climactic driving sequence in the whole series (in my opinion), you manage to drive to the longsword and escape. By the way, whole escape, starting as soon as you got in the warthog, is done in less than 5 minutes, otherwise you blow up with the ship. As you escape, the Pillar of Autumn blows up and one of two things can be seen. Normally the flood can be seen walking toward the ship as it explodes, however if you beat the game on the Legendary difficulty (the hardest difficulty) you will find a marine sergeant (sergeant Johnson) trying to pull a rifle from one of the aliens, when they both see the ship blowing up next to them. Realizing they are both doomed, they comedically hug each other, with the alien even grabbing the sergeant’s butt. As the chief and Cortana manage to get far enough away from the explosion, they look out the window at the destruction of Halo. Cortana explains that they are the only two left from the whole crew, but assures him that their mission is finished, with the chief responding that their mission is only just started. Thus, the end of the first Halo game.

Gameplay

          Let me start by saying that this is my first experience with a game not being on the Sega Genesis or Nintendo, so I was very wasn’t very familiar with 3d gaming on consoles at the time. This game blew my mind, and the control felt so natural to me. You had your standard movement controls, jumping and shooting, but being able to look around in a 3d environment on all axis was mind blowing for me (I was 6). Nowadays I have a little more background with console shooters, including older ones like 007 Golden Eye and even the ports of Quake. I’m not going to say that these games were bad, but I could never get used to looking around on these games. Games like these I would’ve felt more comfortable with using a mouse and keyboard. With Halo, I had no problems simply because of the control schemes. This game makes you feel like you are not only playing a game, but you’re also watching a movie. Seeing the dropships land was so mesmerizing to me, and to this day is still something I really get a kick out of. Along with good movement control, you have your basic shooting, crouching, zooming feature for guns like the pistol, sniper rifle and rocket launcher, and reload controls. You can carry two weapons at any given time, and can have four of each grenade the game has to offer. The guns include the pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher. The covenant will drop plasma pistols which can overload to take out shields instantly, and the plasma rifle, a rapid-fire plasma gun. In the PC version, there are additions like the flamethrower and the fuel rod cannon in multiplayer. There are only two grenade types, but both are devastating. You have the normal fragmentation grenade and the plasma grenade which will stick to enemies. None of these guns are situational, but don’t expect to see these guns in every level. If you should run out of ammo and can’t find ammo or another gun, you have the option of beating your enemies to death with a melee feature. This feature is good at taking out enemies from behind should you whack them in the back. As far as vehicles go, you have the warthog, a Jeep with a gun that can carry a weapon wielding passenger as well, the scorpion tank, which is just an average tank that can have four guys sit on the sides to shoot their guns and protect you, the ghost, a one-man covenant hover vehicle with plasma guns, and the banshee, a covenant plane that also has 2 plasma guns and a fuel rod gun that explodes on contact. Human vehicles (warthog and scorpion tank) cannot be destroyed, but covenant vehicles (ghost and banshee) have a health meter and will explode after enough damage is done. The banshee in the original console version of Halo is only available in the campaign, but in the PC and Master Chief Collection it can be used in multiplayer. The scorpion tank is used in only one level, and that level is the assault on the control room, that snow level I was talking about, however it can be used in a couple multiplayer levels. All vehicles can and will kill upon the slightest tap on a target in its path, so don’t end up in front or get backed into, because you will die. You yourself are a Spartan II super soldier, which means you are strong, accurate, and have a shield to protect your health. Your shield will go out, so once it does, keep an eye on that health, and hide in cover until that shield recovers. If you lost health, find a health kit when you can. Your marine allies are not very reliable, but get one in a warthog chain gun and you got yourself a rather useful marine to watch your back. Just keep an eye out for marines behind you in the heat of fire, they can shoot you by accident which thanks to the shield isn’t much of an issue, but the guys can and will throw grenades and can hurt you bad (seriously these guys suck sometimes). The Covenant have 4 different species. Grunts which carry plasma pistols and plasma grenades are the weakest of the species, but can be dangerous in groups. Jackals, again a week species that carry a plasma pistol, but carry an arm shield and use the pistols charge feature to take down your shields (be careful, I hate these guys). Elites, which are the alien version of you and use plasma rifles and plasma grenades. These guys can use melee and can sometimes be invisible. Watch out for the ones carrying swords, they will whack you with it and kill you in one hit. Finally, you have the Hunters, big armored metal knights with orange slugs as innards. They are strong and can kill you and your guys easily with melee using their giant metal shield, and their fuel rod cannon. If you have a pistol however, shoot the orange on them for an easy one hit kill. Finally, we have campaign difficulties, which are easy (for those who don’t want to lose at all), normal (for those who have some experience with first person shooters), heroic (a hard mode which makes enemies a little more aggressive) and legendary (makes enemies more aggressive and a lot stronger, this will test your patience and then some).

Multiplayer

There are two types of multiplayer in the console versions of the game, Co-op and split screen multiplayer. Co-op is console exclusive and allows you to play side by side with buddies on the couch, or in the Master Chief Collection through Xbox Live through the campaign. Good way to get those achievements in the Master Chief Collection, and it’s just a good time on the original Xbox version. Split screen is the main multiplayer aspect of the game. It’s for good competitive gameplay with buddies on the couch and can consist from having 2 to 16 players (for more than 4 players you must have 3 more Xbox’s and 3 copies of Halo along with cables to connect to. You also need 3 more tv’s and enough controllers) duking it out in free for all or team play. Game modes include slayer (Kill players for points), capture the flag (capture the enemy teams flag), king of the hill (keep inside of the hill to gain points while keeping others out of the hill), oddball (find and hold a skull to gain points, and defend yourself from others trying to take the skull from you), and race (race to checkpoints and be the first to finish). On top of those game types, there are also sub types in each of these game types. Some types change the type of guns you can use, some make you invisible and so many more. Each player can choose a color for their specific character and make their own name for their own profile, so everyone can see who is who. The original Xbox version of the game had no online multiplayer and was limited to couch lan play, however from what I’ve heard there were tunneling programs where you could make your own servers to play on the Xbox with others from around the world. The PC version of the game would be the first to incorporate online play, along with lan play on your network, however Co-op is not present in this version. Xbox One’s Master Chief Collection took the content from the PC version and allowed players to connect through Xbox Live, while still allowing players to play couch lan and couch Co-op. The PC version added new maps, and added the flamethrower and fuel rod cannon to the multiplayer. It also introduced the banshee to multiplayer maps. These were added to the Master Chief Collection version as well.

Versions

Halo Combat Evolved originated on the original Xbox, but was ported to the PC and Mac in 2003 as stated above, it added multiplayer content not present in the original Xbox version. In 2011, Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary was released on the Xbox 360, incorporating achievements, Kinect support and new graphics which could be toggled between. The Kinect support was for voice commands, allowing you to shout commands to do certain actions, however I only used it to analyze and scan things for the new scan log incorporated into this version. The graphics are gorgeous and were going off a similar design to Halo Reach released the year before. Skulls (campaign benefits that changed certain aspects and physics to the game) were also added to allow for more challenge and benefits for the player. Multiplayer was simply an add on to Halo Reach’s multiplayer, only adding maps. Halo Master Chief Collection was a compilation of the four main Halo games, and as such included the anniversary edition of Halo Combat Evolved, however multiplayer from the PC version of the game were used instead of Reach’s multiplayer, now allowing Xbox Live in Halo Combat Evolved Multiplayer for the first time. As far as the definitive version of the game goes, I can’t simply pick one. For Campaign, I would choose the Master Chief Collection simply because you have the option for the enhanced graphics and Co-op multiplayer, but for competitive play, the PC version is the better game because of the servers you can make and the lack of screen peeking (where a player peeks at your screen and uses that to find you and get a quick kill on you, basically cheaters). A multiplayer based version that allowed for custom maps called Halo Custom Edition was made for the PC version to allow players who had the skill the ability to make and play your own maps. The maps I’ve seen are amazing, and the skies the limit with what you can make for your map (provided you have the skills to make a map in the first place, I know I sure don’t). I’ve seen people make huge maps with all kinds of weapons and vehicles (including that longsword fighter I was talking about earlier which now has a nuclear bomb feature, warning that thing hurts EVERYTHING), and I’ve even seen single player campaign maps be made, including reimagining’s of the original missions from the original game. The modding community is huge for Halo PC and will continue so long as there is imagination for the creators.

Final Thoughts

I am a huge Halo fan, ever since the game came out and I played it with my dad Christmas night. It was a beautiful experience and I will never forget that. It was also a good bonding experience with my dad at the time, and I’ll never forget that either. Looking back on it even in its older graphics, it’s still a good-looking game and looks better than some of the games I’ve played nowadays. I love coming back to this game and consider it tied with Halo Reach as my favorite Halo game in the series. I have fond memories playing this game alone and with friends, and even now am still making great memories with this game. Nowadays I see speed running dominating this game in ways I had never seen before, and they taught me awesome tricks 7-year-old me would’ve loved to know playing this game on legendary. If you get the chance, try this game out, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. With that, I believe this review has gone on long enough, and I hope you guys enjoyed what I got to say. Next week I will be discussing Halo 2. As my first review, let me know what you guys thought about it. I will say this now I am giving more of a basic review of these games simply because I feel games are better experienced than read. Thank you, guys, for watching and take it easy.

Check out the twitch stream I did of the game here.