Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

A modern remake of Halo: Combat Evolved is the perfect way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Halo. Combat Evolved Anniversary is a near-exactly-recreated version of the original game with a new layer of HD graphics put over it.

Overall, this is a brilliant package. For only $39.99, you get an entirely remastered CE campaign with new visuals, new sound effects, and re-recorded music. On top of that, several CE multiplayer maps are included in a downloadable (and playable on-disc) map pack for Halo: Reach's multiplayer, complete with tweaks to Reach's gameplay to help recreate CE's multiplayer as closely as possible.

The single-player campaign is, overall, a very good recreation of CE. The gameplay hasn't been altered in the slightest, except for now being rendered in 16:9—allowing for the widest field of view in any Halo game yet. Even the glitches in the original game still work. Sometimes, this is cool. It's always neat to find those hidden tricks you used before and discover that they still work. On the other hand, this can also be frustrating. The crouch toggle function, for instance, literally does not work because of a bug in CE's game code.

The reuse of much of the CE code creates a lot of problems, actually. Although CEA adds online capability to its co-op campaign, CE's code was not designed for that kind of use. Because of that, there is HORRIBLE lag between players, to the point of severely affecting the gameplay. The new graphics layer doesn't seem to help; it seems like the Xbox is being stressed by essentially running two games at once. Sometimes in order to counterbalance the lag, it becomes necessary to switch to classic mode and stay there—which kind of defeats the purpose of this game, doesn't it?

As for the new graphics themselves, they're a mixed bag. The real strength of the new look is the environment. Everything in the Halo world looks gorgeous. There are a few little oddities with the art direction choices, mostly with the choices in color, but overall things look amazing. If there's one criticism to level at the art in the environment, it's that it's over-designed. There's more vibrant detail than actually needs to be there.

The Halo ring itself (when viewed from space, in the main menu or the cutscenes) looks really bizarre, being more purple in color and given a ton of prong details that seem bizarre and distracting. Like the ring is going though a weird phase in high school where it's just gotten a dozen piercings and you're not sure you recognize it anymore.

The character and weapon models are sometimes brilliant, but sometimes terrible. Master Chief himself, following the example of the rest of the game, looks a bit more colorful, and his armor is actually made a little bit rounder than it was in CE. Personally, I'd have preferred it if they'd kept the original design exactly and simply made it more detailed, but as it stands, John-117 looks pretty spiffy. Other characters, however, look a little weird. Some models, like the UNSC marines and Captain Keyes, use old models from Halo: Reach. This makes total sense, and I like it. Cortana, however, uses the model from Halo 3, which is nothing at all like the CE design. Even worse, she wasn't given any new animations—unlike some other characters—so she seems horribly awkward in every possible way. Considering that Cortana is, in terms of story, the heart and soul of CE, this is very disappointing.

Some of the weapon models are new, while a few are re-used from older games. The worst offenders are the assault rifle, taken from Halo 3, and the shotgun, taken from Reach. The assault rifle looks close enough that unless you're looking for it you won't notice the difference, and hey, maybe this is a purposeful retcon. 3's version of the AR does look better anyway, and there are more than a few real-world guns that look exactly the same on the outside but function differently. The Reach shotgun, on the other hand, looks nothing at all like the CE shotgun. It's perplexing as to why they didn't just re-use the Halo 3 shotgun, at least, since that one looked more like the CE shotgun.

There are other differences, too, but those are the main ones that bugged me the most. Hardcore Halo fans will definitely notice these re-uses of old Halo assets, and, if they're like me, will be pulled out of the experience by it. It just feels like the development team used old models like duct tape covering the bits of the game they didn't have time to finish. It's very disappointing.

One way in which the game does not disappoint is the way that it brings together the new audio and visuals during gameplay. Every bullet slams into its target with vivid response, aided by the amazing new sound effects for weapon fire. The old pistol had a "bap" sound effect in CE, but in CEA it's a thunderous "BOOM" that makes the gun sound as powerful as it actually is. When enemy shields fall, they don't just fade out; they explode. It's immensely satisfying to snipe a jackal and watch his shield pop like a liquid firework. That kind of visual feedback in combat is something that CE always lacked in comparison with future Halo games, notably 3, ODST, and Reach. Now that it's there, it makes CE all the better.

The multiplayer component of CEA, as mentioned before, is really just a map pack for Reach. But it's a hell of a map pack, easily the best one for Reach yet. Maps like Hang Em' High and Prisoner are wonderful, but Timberland—a map only Halo PC players had seen before—is easily the best big team battle map of all time. We also get a new firefight map based on a section of the CE campaign, which is very very cool.

All in all, Halo CEA is a little bit of a jumble. Some of it is above and beyond what it needed to be, while some of it is far below the Halo standard. Overall, however, it's a decent remake of an amazing game, with a great multiplayer add-on for another game that you already love (or should, at least).

And you get achievements now, so... yeah. Play it.

8/10

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Skyward Sword is in many ways a new genesis for the Legend of Zelda series. Not only does it provide a new beginning for the story, it's the only Zelda built from the ground-up for Wii, the first Zelda to finally include real motion-controlled sword combat, and the first to have fully-orchestrated music.

Story

This new story is set earlier in the Zelda timeline than any previous game, before the formation of Hyrule kingdom and before many other recognizable elements of the Zelda universe have come into being. Because Skyward Sword is set so early, there aren't any towns, villages, castles, or people to meet in the world beyond the single small town you begin your adventure in. The few characters you come across are rarely humanoid; they're closer to talking wildlife than anything else. Only a few of them could be considered friends to Link; most just act like talking signposts directing Link to his next objective. This makes much of the game largely impersonal and lonely, a sharp contrast to previous games like Ocarina of Time, which gave each area and dungeon a character (or cast of characters) for Link to get to know and care for, making the entire journey a very personal one. Here, Link is motivated only by finding Zelda and nothing else. Because of that, the story feels a little sparse. You need to complete three dungeons before each new step is taken in the main story, and many of those steps are very small. While this isn't terribly different from most other Zelda games, the fact that everything aside from the main story is so uninteresting doesn't really help.

What does help, however, is the fact that this game introduces and explains so many epic facets of the Zelda universe. For fans, getting to see some of the very foundations of Zelda mythology lain before our eyes is a special thing. At times, it's totally enthralling. Skyward Sword also has the deepest and most meaningful relationship between Link and Zelda seen yet. There may not be much actual story, but what's there is great motivation for players to continue on. Perhaps that's why some of the game's story is so disappointing: you desperately want to find and save Zelda, so every dungeon that doesn't end with you finding her is frustrating, and every new obstacle that gets thrown in your path (and there are many) is just maddening.


Gameplay

The aspect of exploration is practically expunged from the game entirely. Practically every single area in the game, save for the tiny home area of Skyloft, is an obstacle for Link, almost like some sort of mega-dungeon. The world of Skyward Sword feels less like a living, breathing place and more like a gigantic puzzle to work your way through. I found myself bored and frustrated with most of Skyward Sword's world instead of enthralled by it as in every other 3D Zelda game.

The puzzles in Skyward Sword, however, are fortunately brilliant. Beforehand, most Zelda games had dungeons that relied more on finding a hidden trick, and most games in the series used the same tricks over and over again. Skyward Sword, however, feels much more organic in its puzzle-solving, encouraging players to use their brains and realistically think about how they can use their tools to work their way past obstacles. I personally feel that although I didn't have as hard a time getting through Skyward Sword's puzzles as other games, I had to be much smarter about this game than other games in the series. It was less of "oh, I stumbled across the right answer" and more of "I logically figured this out." If there's anything Skyward does better than any other Zelda, it's puzzle-solving.

Playing as Link in Skyward Sword feels brand-new in a few small ways, but in many other ways feels like The Wind Waker 3. Although Ocarina of Time set up the basic gameplay that all 3D Zelda games have followed thus far, Skyward Sword—even moreso that Twilight Princess, which was also based on the same engine—feels like The Wind Waker. And while Wind Waker is an incredible game, it has definitely aged a bit. In today's gaming world, where games like Assassin's Creed and Uncharted show off incredible fluidity and ease of movement, Zelda still feels like it's lagging behind quite a bit. Maneuvering Link throughout the environment can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore. That wasn't as big of a problem for Wind Waker, with its more simply-designed worlds, but Skyward's world is a bit more complex.

Additionally, the art style of this game is notably set in-between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, possessing Wind Waker's bright colors and a bit of its cel shading along with some of Twilight Princess's more realistically-proportioned character models. The end result works pretty well, but there are some sacrifices. The level of detail is nowhere near as high as Twilight Princess, and the level of stylization isn't as strong as Wind Waker. What we're left with is a bright, vivid muddle of outdated visuals. Even with such heavy stylization, a lot of the game (notably the textures) just looks distractingly old. Other Wii games have shown that this doesn't need to be so; games can look better.

Environment design aside, this game feels near-exactly like Wind Waker, albeit with the addition of new controls for the sword, the shield, and item aiming.

Sword and Shield

The sword controls feel like what Twilight Princess's controls should have been. Nintendo fans were promised something like this all the way back in 2005 when the Wii controller was first unveiled, then known as the Nintendo Revolution controller. The swordfighting bit at the end of that original teaser video left Zelda fans with their jaws on the floor at the sheer possibilities created by such a new controller. But when Twilight Princess was released, the sword controls hadn't actually been changed at all from the traditional button-press action we'd seen in previous Zelda games. They just mapped the button press to a controller shake, which only made things frustrating. Finally, with the advent of Wii MotionPlus and a Zelda game built from the ground up for Wii, that original idea has come to fruition. Players can now control Link's sword movements near-perfectly. Whenever a player swings the sword, the game registers which direction the controller is moving in and selects one of 9 different options (8 directions plus a stabbing motion). If you want to slash from left to right, you can do it. From right to left? You can do it. From left shoulder to right ankle? You can do it. And for the most part, it's highly accurate. Initially, on my first day of playing Skyward Sword, I was getting frustrated with the controls, convinced that it wasn't correctly interpreting my actions. The next day, however, I noted that my moves were much more accurate. It wasn't that the game had calibrated itself more correctly; it was that I had simply gotten better at using the sword. The game was actually interpreting my movements so accurately that my own error was showing up.

On the other hand, it's not as though my errors weren't understandable. One quirk of the Wii Remote is that it doesn't actually sense where the controller itself is in three-dimensional space or how it moves, like PlayStation Move or even the Kinect. The Wii Remote just senses vaguely how it's being tilted and moves, and estimates what's going on. You can imagine it as though the Wii Remote is a person riding in a car and then being asked which direction the car is moving and how fast. It can be trusted within reason, but only so far.

One big problem with the sword controls is that they demand that the Wii remote stay perfectly horizontal while the sword is being swung, no matter the direction. It can be tilted up or down (as is necessary for vertical swinging), but not rotated along its axis. If you rotate the Wii remote even slightly while swinging, the remote will misinterpret the intended angle of the swing. The problem is that this is nothing like how a real sword works. A sword is only sharp on two sides; a swordfighter rotates his sword when he swings in different directions—otherwise he'd just be slapping his opponent with the flat of the blade. Link actually does this in the game when he attacks, regardless of the Wii remote's angle. But you don't need to be a swordsman to know that it doesn't make sense. You don't chop with the flat side of a kitchen knife, do you? That disconnect between the game and reality hurts the overall experience. Sword combat often still feels realistic and immersive regardless, but sometimes the holes in the realism can be a harsh reminder that the Wii remote is video game controller that needs careful precision, not a "real" sword. That said, it does work most of the time.

The shield controls are handled entirely with the nunchuk's motion sensor, and they work very well. All you need to to is shake the nunchuk once to raise your shield, and shake it again once there to knock back enemy attacks. This works in tandem with the sword controls, creating a fun sense of realism. Players see Link on-screen holding his sword and shield, and they get an instant sense of just how they're supposed to interact with the world.


Bow and Arrow

In Twilight Princess for Wii, you simply aimed the pointer at an object and hit the A button to fire. It was far too easy, in some cases allowing players to snipe enemies with arrows from miles away with pixel-perfect accuracy. Here in Skyward Sword, it's a little more difficult without feeling frustrating. Skyward uses the MotionPlus tilt sensor to aim rather than the Wii remote pointer, which means that it's measuring your 3-dimensional controller movement rather than the pointer's placement on the 2-dimensional TV screen. Realistically, this is how you'd really aim with objects in the real world, and it feels very natural. One particularly cool feature is the fact that you can use two different control methods for firing arrows: you can either hold down the A button and wait for the tension in the bowstring to build to maximum, or you can physically pull back on the nunchuk while holding the C button—as if pulling back an actual bowstring—thus instantly charging your arrow to maximum speed.


Sound

The music in this game is the best-produced of any Zelda thus far. Having a fully-orchestrated soundtrack makes a lot of difference. The themes in Skyward aren't as plentiful or notable as in Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, or even Twilight Princess, but what's there is good. Better yet, there's more emotion in those few moments of music than in pretty much any prior Zelda game.

One major way in which Skyward feels like an old game is the lack of voice acting. That worked fine for Wind Waker in the early 2000s, but even five years ago in Twilight Princess it felt odd. There's some controversy among fans (as well as the Zelda development team) about whether or not adding voices would make the game better. A lot of people say that adding voices would only make it seem odder that Link doesn't talk. Personally, I'm all for voice acting; it's one of the last things keeping the series from being totally immersive.


Finale

Skyward Sword, overall, is a slightly odd experience. On one hand, it feels completely vibrant and new. The fresh combat, imaginative puzzle-solving, and orchestrated music are definite high points. On the other hand, the game is horribly stiff at times, and in many ways it simply feels outdated. This game needed to be released five years ago, not now. At the same time, does that objectively make the game bad? No. After all, old games can still be good; it only matters if they pass the test of time. And Skyward Sword mostly passes that test. Yes, the outdated portions of it are drawbacks, but only to the point of mild annoyance. It's something that should definitely be corrected before the next Zelda game is released, but it doesn't mortally wound this one.

In the end, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is a great game. One drawback to the Zelda series is that its standard is set so high, it's easy to forget that even an average Zelda game is truly better than most anything else.

8/10

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4

Anyone who's familiar with the Lego game series should know their basic formula:
Go from place to place, using various characters' skills to solve puzzles and defeat enemies, collecting all sorts of items and discovering new characters.

Anyone who's familiar with Harry Potter should know that story's tropes:
The heroes go from place to place, using various magical abilities to solve puzzles and defeat enemies, finding special items and meeting new people.

Clearly, this was a game that was always waiting to happen. Every element of Harry Potter translates into Lego so well that the game becomes totally immersive.

The music, taken directly from the film scores, works brilliantly. John Williams' themes are meant to be played in concert style, which fits the looping requirements of gameplay very well. The overall feel of the game often tilts more towards being a Harry Potter game than a Lego game, which actually works rather well. At the same time, it's infused with the fun of Lego—that being, essentially, building and/or breaking things.

This game is massive. Not only are there plenty of story-based missions to go on, but also a huge overworld in the form of Hogwarts Castle, which has an almost mind-boggling amount of hidden collectibles and secrets. Even with a guide, it takes around a week of nonstop gaming to find everything. Of course, once it's all done, then that's it. It's done. The fun of the game really is the discovery and collecting; once you've completed it to 100%, there's really not much reason to go back.

That being said, though, the perfect synergy between the "magic" of Harry Potter and the fun of Lego makes the overall experience a great one, even if there's a limit to how long it can last.

8/10

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

This is a decent game. A bit limited, but pretty fun. Extremely straightforward, but not in a bad way. With a nice, self-contained story that doesn't feel too long or too short, it makes for a great rental game. Might not match the brilliance of past Prince of Persia games, but it's still not bad on its own.

7/10

Transformers: War For Cybertron

From start to finish, it's obvious that this entire game is made by and for Transformers fans. It evokes the same fun feeling of the 80s cartoon while being given a certain level of quality that makes it not as easily ridiculed.

Other recent Transformers games have tried to do various things with the franchise that didn't really work. We had the first two movie games, which tried a semi-open world mission-based style. We had an older game for the PS2 that was more along the lines of adventure-shooter. War for Cybertron is a simple action-shooter, and it works brilliantly.

The primary gameplay is a 3rd-person shooter, played from an over-the-shoulder perspective. This works very well for the most part, but can get slightly annoying because the camera is set several meters to the right of the player character. Other shooters give the player the option of switching the camera between the left and right sides on the fly, but War for Cybertron does not. This makes for a problem, since there's no way to  look around a corner to your left. If you're trying to hide behind cover, you can only really step around from the right side, not the left. Fortunately, the camera shifts to a centered perspective when you click the left thumbstick and transform into vehicle ("alt") mode. The act of transforming and quickly utilizing alt mode is one of the best parts of the game, especially when using a fast-moving "scout" character like Bumblebee or a jet-based Cybertronian like Starscream or Jetfire. While past Transformers games have made alt modes feel clunky and annoying, War for Cybertron makes them feel fast and fun.

The story behind the game is pretty simple: it's a prequel to the main Transformers story, set during the war on Cybertron. Megatron has discovered the power of Dark Energon, and is using it to corrupt the planet and destroy the Autobots. The Autobots fight back, and Optimus Prime must learn to accept his role as leader of the Autobots. One very cool factor is that this game serves as the canonical prequel to the currently-running Transformers: Prime TV series. The voice cast is different (with the exception of Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime), but there are plenty of notable similarities in design and story between the two projects.

The main campaign mode is split into ten reasonably long chapters. The first five are played from the perspective of the Decepticons, while the last five belong to the Autobots. Although the chapters are arranged in chronological order from I-X, they're treated like two separate campaigns, and the player can choose to start at the Autobots' first mission in Chapter VI if they so choose. It's a nice bit of leeway.

For the most part, the Decepticons' campaign is very straightforward: Megatron and his lackeys fight their way from point A to point B, blasting everything in sight. It's enjoyable, though a little mind-numbing and repetitive. The Autobots' campaign, however, is much more interesting. It's more varied, changing things up a lot more often and throwing in a few more minor plot changes to keep things somewhat interesting. Overall, the Autobot campaign is just more fun.

The multiplayer modes are good, if somewhat generic. All the usual multiplayer shooter modes are there: Team Deathmatch, objective-based combat, etc. The really great mode, however, is called "Escalation." It's basically a survivor mode, where four players defend themselves against wave after wave of Decepticon drones. The little features of this mode—inspired, no doubt, by the Nazi Zombies mode from Call of Duty—make it extremely fun.

Looking back at the last seven paragraphs I just wrote, three of them have ended with the word "fun." And that's probably the best word to describe War for Cybertron. More than any game previously, it taps into what we all suspected would be the fun of being a Transformer and fighting in the Great War.

8/10

Star Wars: Empire at War

(Orig. 2/15/11)

The first-ever modern Star Wars RTS is here. And it's pretty good.

I won't go into a ton of depth here, but suffice it to say that the game focuses on three basic types of gameplay: space battles, ground battles, and galactic conquest.
Unlike other RTS games, in which each battle is a wholly separate affair from the rest of the game, Empire at War interlinks every single battle of the game into one gigantic war for the entire galaxy.

All your troops, ships, and other combat units are trained/built under the galaxy map, but it's only once you send those units in to attack enemy forces (or if you are being attacked) that the traditional RTS-style gameplay begins. Here, you either attack in space or on the ground. You can choose to either play the battle through yourself, or have the computer "auto-resolve" the battle, instantly determining which units will die on both sides, and which side will end up the victor. More often than not, having the computer auto-resolve the battle will end up worse for the player than playing through the battle. Conversely, if the player's forces vastly outnumber and out-gun the enemy forces, the auto-resolve feature will often result in a major victory for the player.

One major flaw with the game is that the ground battles are tedious, boring, horribly slow, hard to control, and unnecessarily difficult. It's extremely tempting for the player to simply hit the auto-resolve button and take a major loss, if only to avoid spending a good 15-20 minutes trudging through the ground-based combat.

The space battles, on the other hand, are where the game really shines. The cinematic, fast-paced, and mildly strategic space battles are exciting, fast-paced, and lots of fun to look at. There's a ton of depth in these battles, due to the fact that all large ships and space stations have individual sections to attack. If you want to lower a Star Destroyer's shields, all you need do is eliminate its shield generator. If you want to stop a Rebel Cruiser from blasting away at your space station, target and blow away its turbolasers. By selectively destroying specific sections of ships and stations, you can turn the tide of entire battles.

There's even an option (in both ground and space battles) to switch to a completely cinematic camera view, which allows the player to simply sit back and watch the battle as though it were a Star Wars film. Sweeping camera movements and shaky-cam effects for large explosions make the experience one of the most breathtaking visual Star Wars experiences. There are some drawbacks, however. The cinematic camera often rests on the least interesting aspects of the battle, rather than what you want to see. Fortunately, a quick tap of the space bar lets you switch to a different angle, but it's still a pretty big problem.

The space battles, while still very fun, are not without their own flaws. The AI of specific units doesn't appear to know what to do in rather obvious situations.
For every unit on the side of the Empire, there's a unit on the Rebellion side to counter it, and vice-versa. Bombers kill capital ships, corvettes kill fighters, frigates kill corvettes, and capital ships kill frigates. However, the game doesn't seem to know that. At the beginning of each battle (and constantly in the middle of battles), you'll need to TELL each unit what it's supposed to to. If you lose track of one unit for a moment—which is easy to do with battlefields as big as the ones here—you might find that unit destroyed because it wasn't avoiding or attacking the right units. It would have been great if there were an option to give orders to each unit BEFORE each battle (tell X-Wings to attack fighters, tell corvettes to attack bombers, etc). This can be a nuisance, but it's not so bad as to bring the space battles down entirely.
It definitely can be a huge problem for ground battles, however, because a good portion of ground battles involve just searching for enemy structures. However, if you've ordered a unit to move across the map, he might not necessarily stop to battle every unit he meets along the way. So if you order a group of Rebel troopers to move to a corner across the map, but they meet a squad of stormtroopers along the way, the stormtroopers will simply mow the Rebels down without resistance. It can happen in the blink of an eye, too, so you need to keep a CONSTANT eye on your troops at all times. It's stressful and frustrating.
There's a distinct lack of strategy in ground combat, to the point where it often feels that both sides are merely throwing units at each other until the computer decides that one army has won.

The Galaxy Map section of gameplay might be the most well-rounded, as it allows the player to use smart economics and highly strategic placements of troops, stationary defenses, and production facilities to strengthen their forces. A masterful Galaxy Map-player can dominate an entire game, even by only using the auto-resolve feature.

Despite a few major flaws, Empire at War is an overall good experience, made far better if you're a Star Wars fan (as I am).

8/10

Halo: Combat Evolved

(Orig. 1/14/2011)

Halo. The game that made the Xbox what it was, and kept the system from dying in its infancy.  The game that reinvented the concept of the console-based first-person shooter, and gave the few Xbox fans of late 2001/early 2002 a rallying point.

It's fun.
I'm not going to set up the Halo universe for you here; if you don't already know what it's about and you want to find out, go read it elsewhere.  This is just about the game.

Halo: Combat Evolved is just simple fun. That's it. It's not overly gritty (though it has its moments), and it's not highly realistic.  It's just a very fun sci-fi shooter with a great co-op feature and an awesome multiplayer component.

Bungie's greatest strength isn't necessarily in their ability to alter genres or create entirely new ones, but rather to refine what's already there into a distinct, polished, simple experience.  The nearest comparison I can make is with Nintendo and their level of refinement.

The story of Halo is good, though many basic (major) elements of the Halo universe are missing.  There's no in-game explanation of what exactly is going on, why humanity is fighting an alien race known as "the Covenant," or who exactly this "Master Chief" is.  That might work to the game's advantage, since there's no exposition to get in the way, but it definitely does make the player feel a little bit "out of the loop."
Of course, once the opening mission is completed and the story moves down to the surface of the Halo ring, the player is—figuratively and literally—"in the loop."  The player is privy to all the details of the on-ring storyline, and there's nothing you need to know that you don't.

One thing that is a bit of a problem, however, is the way that the game sometimes doesn't do much to guide the player through the world.  Many of the environments in the game are vast and repetitious, often lacking clear markers for the player.  If you get turned around in a few areas, you might just have to figure out where to go through trial-and-error.  Another rather odd feature of the level design is that the path for the player might be not-easily-spotted.
Imagine you're in a hallway.  There are fifty doors in this hallway, but only one of them is unlocked.  In order to find the correct door, you need to get a good look at each door an find the one with a small green light near the handle.
Similar situations happen repeatedly throughout Halo.  You'll be in a large room with tiny alcoves hidden behind catwalks, pillars, glass, and short walls.  You need to search through all of that to find a single small doorway.  And that doorway will be somewhere, not directly ahead, but slightly off to the side, where you might expect to find a broom closet.
Later games in the series solve this issue, but it's still somewhat frustrating here.

The weaponry in the game is another hit-or-miss (heheh) design feature.  The primary weapon, the MA5B Assault Rifle, is so wildly inaccurate that it's only useful at short distances.  It's really really useful at short distances, but that's it.  In fact, almost all the weapons in Halo tend to favor the "fire in the general direction of your enemy" approach rather than the "be accurate" approach.  Even the enemies themselves don't always respond correctly to direct weapons fire, due to inaccurate hit zones.  If you shoot an enemy in the arm, you might hit their arm, or you might not.  The best thing to do is just aim for their chest and hope for the best, unless you have a sniper rifle and a clear shot at their head. I wonder if perhaps this was done in order to better fit the lessened accuracy of the Xbox controller's analog stick?  This actually ends up hurting the later-released PC and Mac ports of the game, as they have a greater degree of accuracy with the mouse, but a slightly frustrating lack of accuracy within the game itself.

Still, however, the game's campaign is plenty of fun in the end, even if it is frustratingly (as said before) simple.

The co-op feature is great.  The idea that one player can literally just jump into the driver's seat of a Humvee Warthog and zoom across a canyon while a second player stands at the Warthog's gunner turret and mows down enemies is just insane.  That kind of teamwork—within a game's story, not just a separate "multiplayer" function—is really cool.  In fact, Halo's co-op feature has now completely revolutionized the way most games of this type approach story-based campaigns.
It doesn't really make sense story-wise for there to be two Master Chiefs—and only one is shown in the cutscenes—but that's not really the important factor.

Bungie made Halo into a phenomenon, if only because it forced people to meet up with each other and play in groups.  Two friends could play the story mode together, and four could play the competitive multiplayer.  Up to SIXTEEN players could play the game together if four Xboxes and four TVs were linked up with network cables.  The simplicity and well-designed structure of Halo made it a great game for almost any gamer, and the multiplayer inspired groups of friends to join up with each other and share in the experience.

All in all, Halo: Combat Evolved is a really great game, even ten years after its initial release.  Every gamer with even a passing interest in shooters needs to give it a play-through.
And after that, you should read all the novels.  And play the other games.

10/10