Halo: Combat Evolved Review

The Halo series will always hold a special place in my heart, it was the first game that introduced me to story driven games and made me the gamer I am today. As someone who loves movies, you can imagine my amazement when I first came across Halo: Combat Evolved by Bungie studios, back in 2001. Almost everyone who considers themselves gamers have played this title at one time or another. This game not only made first person shooters popular on consoles, but to me it changed the way games are looked at.

I'm going to break this review down into three categories, Story, Soundtrack, Gameplay and Visuals.

Story-

Halo has such a deep lore that goes beyond the games themselves that it would be hard to explain it all in this little review, so I will give you a short version. The year is 2531, the Human race have been at war for the past few decades with a religious driven union of aliens known as The Covenant, who believes the humans to be a race of heretics that needs to be wiped out. Halo: Combat Evolved takes place right after the destruction of Reach, one of the many Human inhabited planets, this one was home to the Spartan Program. 

The Spartans are genetically designed super soldiers that came into great use after the first Covenant invasion, they wore a highly advanced set of armor called MJOLNIR V.  This armor is a technologically-advanced combat exoskeleton system designed to vastly improve the strength, speed, agility, reflexes and durability of a Spartan soldier. It was later implemented with a rechargeable shielding system using technology stolen from the Covenant. But after the destruction of Reach, the Spartans had supposedly been wiped out along with it. Only one Spartan was known to had survived and was in cryo sleep aboard the Pillar of Autumn, a lone military space vessel that fled while the Covenant glassed the planet. The Spartans name is John 117 or Master Chief, this is the character the player will be controlling. The Pillar of Autumn comes out of slip space, this is the opening scene for the game, and approaches a strange object found orbiting a planet, the object has the appearance of a giant ring with water and mountains on its inner sides. 

Afterward the ship is attacked by Covenant forces and they are forced to land on the mysterious ring world during which you play as Master Chief accompanied by an artificial intelligence named Cortana who offers guidance through your missions. Your main mission is to recover your lost crew members, find the captain, and figure out what this ring world is and why the Covenant are so interested in it.

Soundtrack-

The musical score of a video game is just as important as the story, similar to a movie, its role is to capture and intensify the mood of the scene you are witnessing. Halo executes this perfectly, with many jaw dropping pieces by Martin O' Donnell in which every single one fits appropriately with what is going on in the game. To this day the Halo main theme still amazes me. 

Gameplay and Visuals-

Whats the point of playing a video game if its not smooth or good to look at? Fortunately for its time, Halo Combat Evolved was very advanced and revolutionary. Bringing the first person shooter to the consoles must have been a challenged, but Bungie ended up doing it right. The controls are very smooth, fluid, and easy to pick up. Not once did I have trouble remembering which button did what, the set up was very

simple. The visuals however, by today standards would be considered to be very poor, but once again for its time it was state of the art graphics. I remember when I first played the game, how realistic I though it was, and even today the game still looks pretty good. Back in 2011, 343 Industries released a ten year anniversary version of the game called Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, which is exactly the same as the original but remastered. The point of it was to show how far technology has come in ten years, the game allows you to cycle back and forth between the original and revised graphics. So if you are a newer gamer who wants to experience Halo without the outdated visuals, then this one is for you.

Halo: Combat Evolved was an amazing game for its time, setting the benchmark for FPS games on consoles and expressing what a truly original and story driven game should be like. With the Halo series still kicking strong with six games under its belt, its hard to imagine anyone who has not at least heard of this game. If you are a fan of Halo but have not played the first one, I highly recommend that you do and that goes the same for the people who have never played the series.