When you make a first person shooter, you have to make it well. If it is too good, you have thousands of people begging for the game, aka the Halo 3 affair. If you make it bad, then no one will buy it. Put the little meter 3/4ths of the way to the top, and you have Halo.
Halo is a futuristic FPS developed by Bungie. From this idea, an outward blossom of fame, riches, and glory would come to Bungie. Because Halo was a good game, people bought Halo 2, and not too long ago, Halo 3. Most of those people liked the games for the intense multiplayer. Others, like myself, don't play a multiplayer game if it has a single-player campaign. (CoD4, Halo, Doom, the list goes on and on)
Halo: CE was a great game to play. You wake up as Master Chief, a futuristic warrior. You were awaken because an alien race called the Covenant is attacking your ship. You as Master Chief, take the ship's computer, known as Cortana, and run into an escape pod. You crash on a giant ring called Halo, where you are attacked by the Covenant. They are there because they think that Halo is a weapon, so you, being the main character, are dragged all over Halo to find out more and stop the Covenant
Alright, first, I'm going to get the praise out of the way
- When it was released, the graphics were considered beautiful; you really couldn't expect anything less.
- The Story was exceptional, I felt like I was actually in the game and fighting
- The firefights were extremely fun
- Gameplay. The Gameplay was amazing. You had a choice in how you did everything, whether you sat up in a corner and sniped, grabbed a ghost and went crazy, or got a shotgun and went berserk. It was extremely fun
- The suspense/creepiness was great, if you were in the dark, and you didn't know what was around the corner, you nearly wet your pants when your flashlight died
- The AI was very, well, intelligent. If you were hiding behind a rock, the enemies didn't walk up and act like idiots, they flushed you out with grenades, then fired as you ran away from the explosion
Now, no game is perfect, and because this is an old game, the designers still have a few bugs to work out. There were a few things about Halo: CE that made me a bit mad, and some things that nearly made me smash my computer with a hammer.~
-Whoever had the idea to make the Silent Cartographer level and the Library, I want you to burn in a fire. That level was unintuitive, confusing, long, and dark. Everything possible thing that makes a level go down the drain, its here. As you run through the same corridors over and over, you start to realize something.
"Why am I here in the first place? What does this level have to do with the game?"
Well I'll tell you. Nothing. The only thing that you get out of the level is that the orb wants to kill you. That's it.
- The Flood. The Flood is a race of green headcrabs that take over aliens and humans. Now, the crabs themselves, they aren't so bad. They run up to you and pop, removing a smidge of your total armor. The zombies on the other hand, they get annoying. There is really only 1 good way to kill them, the shotgun, and ammo for that is scarce.
- Flood AI is close to average, they just charge up at whack you with their claws.
- Okay, I don't know who's bright idea this was, but zombies have the guns their hosts had. Zombies don't have the brain capacity to hold a gun, much less aim and pull the trigger
(Noticing a trend here? All the bad things were about the flood.)
Conclusion and Ratings
Besides the few annoying bits, Halo: Combat Evolved was a pretty good game. When I played it, it got the honor of being in my top 5 shooters list. That's a pretty good game, even if it is old.
Gameplay - 9.5/10
Storyline - 8/10 (The whole session with the orb)
Music - 9/10 (Very cool music, inspires you to fight harder)
Overall - 8.8/10
