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

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