By Sam Coles:
When people think about Xbox these days it seems to be in a
negative light, but honestly I don’t understand why, and yes there are a lack
of exclusives but if you think about exclusives released each year on consoles
during the 360 and PS3 I can count on hand how many were released. However 17
years ago when they entered the console market with their Xbox people were
unsure if they could compete with the likes of Sony and Nintendo, but there was
one green armoured clad hero that put them on the map and that game was Halo.
Halo was originally going to be an RTS for the Macintosh, however Microsoft so
the potential in the studio and bought the studio, Bungie scrapped the RTS
idea, made a third person game until they settled on the shooter we know today.
Halo is about the titular rings which are held in high
regard by the alien race known as the Covenant, they regard the rings as holy
relics but they are a weapon to cleanse the galaxy when the parasitic race
known as the flood take over. You play as the Master Chief, who has been stasis
since the UNSC have been fleeing from the planet Reach, where the Covenant invaded
and destroyed the planet. When you are fleeing a Covenant armada is on your
tale where they then catch up and begin to board your ship, Captain Keyes
decides to wake Master Chief out of stasis to give the Covenant a good seeing
to. Then the game begins, you drive the aliens off the ship and escape via an
escape pod and land on the Halo ring, the story is not terribly deep, but it
has a lot of intrigue due to the mysterious nature of the Halo ring.
I played this game on Heroic via the Master Chief Collection
as I wanted the higher frame rate, as 60 frames per second is nice for a first
person shooter but I did play my original Xbox copy for comparison. I found Heroic
difficulty was the perfect balance of fun and challenging because playing on
Legendary on your own is the equivalent of putting your gonads in a vice. When
I played on Heroic I found myself switching and using all the weapons at my
disposal, with the exception of the assault rifle which is about as useful as
harsh language on higher difficulties as enemies shake off shots from that gun
like butterfly kisses.
All the enemies have different ways of taking them down, you
have the Elites which are the commanding officers on the field which if you
kill them the Grunts and Jackals will panic and run about the battlefield, the
Grunts and Jackals are the cannon fodder, the Hunters are hulking beasts that
hunt in pairs but can be taken down with a single pistol shot to the back. Finally
you have the most irritating enemies in the game the Flood, the Flood are
zombie like creatures that can take control of dead enemies, now you would
think this would add a new and interesting dynamic for combat. Wrong, they are
the most frustrating enemy due to the small parasites that roam the
battlefield, as they can take control of enemies you have already killed where
they one shot your with a rocket
launcher where you fly in other direction as if you’re in a Looney Toons
cartoon. It’s doubly annoying as this can happen behind you which catches you
off guard, where I thought about repurposing my controller as a wall mount.
Presentation is fantastic, especially in the anniversary edition
although this was at a time where developers had a complete obsession with
bloom which would make Ray Charles squint. The great thing about the
anniversary edition is that you can switch to the original Xbox graphics, and
yes it is crude by today’s standards but there was nothing like it at the time
on consoles with the huge wide open spaces coupled with the animations from the
enemies. I played the Master Chief version and the original Xbox version and the
Xbox One version of the game is the way to go, as it runs at a smooth 60 frames
per second for the most part. The game does stutter in parts during busy
gunfights, but this was the case in the original release as well but it was
more noticeable as that game targeted 30 fps and it would drop to the low 20’s
stuttering like the local drunk.
Halo Combat Evolved is still a fantastic shooter even nearly
two decades later, and wow I just realised that the Halo series is approaching
20 years old. If you haven’t play this game there are many ways to play these
days there is the original Xbox, PC, Xbox 360 and the Xbox One via the Master
Chief Collection.
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