Now Playing: Halo CE

Halo is one of the most enjoyable and engaging first person shooters you can play. It holds up remarkably well today thanks to the free form, sandbox style of its campaign. The missions may not be as long or as elaborate as those in later instalments of the franchise, but they’re still endlessly replayable thanks to the dynamic nature of the combat and the enemy AI.

I didn’t talk much about the AI in Halo in my Reach review, so I wanted to touch upon it here. Enemy AI was always a strong point in the Halo games. They try to flank you, take cover to recharge their shields, flee if they think they’re losing, rush you if you’re close or dive out of the way to avoid grenades.

Sure, you can argue that it’s just basic scripting, but it’s very effective thanks to their range of animations and audio. The different races you fight – primarily grunts and elites in Halo 1 – each have their own ‘personality’ in combat that determines how they’ll react and how they’ll fight.

 

This Halo release includes the option to play through the campaign with both original visuals and audio, or a remastered version. I’ve seen some criticism of the remastered visuals, but I think they look fine and they do put the game more on par with later titles. What’s really neat about this release though, is that you can switch between Classic and Remastered visuals on the fly.

I am curious to know, however, if your choice of visuals does have a gameplay impact. I found playing Halo on Legendary in Classic visuals much easier than playing in Remastered. Whereas I could easily string together a chain of head shots in Classic, for example, I couldn’t do so as reliably in Remastered. I’ve seen some people say the enemy hit-boxes are a little ‘off’ in Remastered, but I don’t know if this is true or not. It’s just a little strange how much easier Halo 1 feels to play in Classic compared to Remastered.

Gun play in Halo 1 is as smooth and enjoyable today as it was at release. Obviously, the weapon and enemy variety isn’t as good as later instalments, but what’s here is still pretty good and I’d say I actually prefer how some weapons handle in Halo 1 compared to Reach – the assault rifle and the shotgun in particular are much more enjoyable to use and feel more viable on the Legendary difficulty. I also like the increased grenade limit, because I’ll never get tired of tossing those around.

 

The campaign of Halo is about 4-5 hours – a little shorter than Reach, but still very enjoyable. My main criticism of Halo and its campaign is how its recycles some of its maps as you progress. There’s a couple of missions where you’re essentially just backtracking through the same map as the previous level. And some of the alien environments – a Covenant ship and the internal architecture of Halo itself – can be very copy/paste leading to areas where it’s very easy to get turned about and get lost because you’re not sure which direction is which.

A little over half way into the game, the Flood are released. Whilst lacking the personality and AI behaviour of the Covenant – they basically just rush at you – the Flood do introduce a new dynamic to combat. They just keep coming, forcing you to stay on the move before they overwhelm your position or you run out of ammo.

Although they’re not as interesting to fight as the Covenant forces, I do like the way they transform the latter half of the game. Halo 1, in some ways, turns into something of a sci-fi horror game as both the human and Covenant forces struggle to contain and stop the spread of the Flood. There’s a wonderful sense of desperation from both sides as you fight your way through the chaos. And the Flood just keep coming, an unrelenting tide of flesh and teeth.

 

Halo ends with a fun dash to escape, the iconic theme kicking in at just the right moment. Even today, it’s an exciting final ride. And Halo, of course, isn’t just a solo game, but playable in co-op, and I had a real blast playing through the campaign in both modes. Like Reach, there’s plenty of collectibles to discover – terminals and skulls – as well as little secrets to find that unlock various achievements.

There are time and score challenges to test your skill, and plenty of gameplay modifiers – some to make the game harder, and some just for fun. There’s a lot here to keep you busy. As I said in my Reach review, the multiplayer side of Halo just doesn’t interest me, so I’m not going to factor that into this review.

Overall, Halo 1 is an excellent shooter that I’d highly recommend. I’m very eager to see how the upcoming Halo 2 remaster is handled. I recall having pretty mixed feelings towards the Halo 2 campaign at release, so I’m curious to know what my impression of it will be today.

8/10