Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox)

The Start of Twin Stick Shooters

Halo: CE - Box Art

With video games being an interactive medium, players can drop themselves into many different scenarios they would never find themselves in real life. While I have talked on and on about Final Fantasy and the fantasy/sci-fi setting that people could put themselves in. Some of those genres being massive RPGs, humble Arcade games, Platformers, in-depth Simulations, Fighting games, and much more. One of the big ones and probably the one that most people know even if they're not into video games is First-Person Shooters (FPS). It's a simple concept, the camera is your vision, and in front of you is your weapon and an enemy for you to shoot. Then shoot the enemy with a simple tap of a button. BAM!

Totally Accurate FPS

Make interesting levels, and interesting enemies to fight against, with a wide variety of different weapons and you have something to take the masses by storm! You of course have the more commonly known ones, like Call of Duty, Farcry, Battlefield, Bioshock, and Doom. To more indie shooters, like Prodeus, Dusk, BattleBit, and Ultrakill, with the last one being simplified as, "What if crack was a video game?"

But, while FPS games have had a long and fruitful life on consoles, which makes them so popular, there was once a time when that wasn't the case. In fact, during the 90s when FPS games were gaining popularity, you were more likely to find FPSes on PC. There were obviously shooters on consoles, but they never created an urge to make more for consoles. That was until one came out, one that propped up the then-new Xbox platform, created a legendary series, and proved that FPS games can truly work on a console platform. Halo: Combat Evolved. This post will discuss the game's history, impact, and what it did for FPS games to help create the massive genre it is today.

History

Shooters Before Halo

FPS games were a lot different back then. The term, "First Person Shooter," was not even used back then. A lot of the older ones are described as, "3-D adventures," "Virtual Reality," which is pretty funny to think about in hindsight, and "Rat eye view games," because of a lot of older games being in a maze. My personal favorite, being "The feeling of being there." The earliest FPS games and First Person games in general are Maze, later Maze War from 1973, and Spasim from 1974.

I won't go too in-depth with these examples, but these were the origins of what we know as FPS games. While these games were very simple, involving tile-based movement where you could only move from square to square, wireframe graphics, and were built on much older computers like the Imlac PDS-1, a computer so old that even George Washington could use it. It helped to spawn others with similar styles and controls. I felt that if I was going to go full History Channel for shooters, it was worth mentioning the start of the genre.

(Maze War on a Imlac PDS-1)

It wasn't until the 90s that shooters started gaining a foothold with the release of "Wolfenstein 3D." Created by Id Software in 1992, the game was inspired by Muse's 1981 game, "Castle Wolfenstein," it was a fast-paced shooter where you fought as ally spy, William "BJ" Blazkowicz, during World War II. Fighting in the Nazi German prison, Castle Wolfenstein, your goal is to destroy the Nazi Regime with nothing but your wits, and a growing arsenal of weapons. Wolfenstein pushed FPS games forward with its detailed 2.5D graphics, fast gameplay, and variety of weapons the player uses to defeat the Nazis.

Wolfenstein 3D Screenshots

Id would take another step forward with their 1993 release of Doom. A game that needs no introduction, and leads to the further popularization of FPS games. With even faster gameplay, more guns, and better 3D-like graphics. It also had taboo imagery with players fighting Demons and even going to Hell, the game was also ultra-moddable thanks to Id storing game data as separate assets called WAD files, and even had four-player multiplayer, and later full online multiplayer. Doom was stupidly popular, and still is to this day, with it being an important step for FPS games. Or as they were called after Doom's release, "Doom Clones." Yeah, Doom was so popular that it was used as a shorthand for first-person games involving gunplay.

With Doom's release, more and more FPS games were released, Marathon, Star Wars Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Half-Life, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. And a lot of these were some of the most popular ones, there were tons of FPS games to release at this time that were directly impacted by Doom or other FPS games that came out after.

But something to note with the shooters I mentioned is that all of these were PC-only, with the ones that would be ported to the consoles at the time usually being poor port. With there being very few good ports of these PC FPS games. But that didn't mean there wasn't any sign of the FPS on consoles, with Doom getting a really good port on PlayStation, and Medal of Honor getting its start on the same system in 1999. But a good chunk of notable FPS games on the console was on the N64. Goldeneye, Doom 64, Turok, and Perfect Dark, the first three being released in 1997, what a year. While these games were good at the time and it can be debated whether they have aged in a good way or bad way today, one thing that didn't age well is how they were controlled.

Yeah, PlayStation had the first dual analog controller, but FPS games weren't controlled how you'd expected back then. And of course, the N64 with its infamous three-pronged controller and one analog stick didn't help things either. The analog stick wasn't used for moving, instead you would use the C-Buttons to move and the joystick stick to look around. And of course there were multiple options on how to control them to try and make it more comfortable. It's this inconsistent control scheme for FPS games on consoles that made FPS games less fluid than using a Keyboard and Mouse. Not to say it's bad, just less ideal with how intuitive FPS games were by the time of consoles like the PSX and N64. This is why Halo's control scheme became so liked, using both analog sticks for both movement and looking around made it feel especially smooth to play compared to what came before. Speaking of Halo, let's look at that development!

Halo's Development

With Halo being developed by Bungie, this wasn't their first rodeo when it came to first-person shooters. In fact, one of the games I mentioned in the last section that came out after Doom, was Marathon. Marathon itself was influential for FPS games due to it being the first commercial FPS to allow freelook controls with a mouse.

Marathon Image

However, despite them having experience with FPS games in the past, that's not where the initial ideas for Halo came from. Let's take a step back to 1998, Bungie had just finished Myth: The Fallen Lords. Myth was another franchise from Bungie at the time with it being a Real-Time Strategy game or RTS. At the time, the most popular RTS was Blizzard's Starcraft, and while Myth did see success for the company, they wondered if they could get even more success if they made a game like Myth, but in a sci-fi universe.

So under the codename, "Monkey Nuts" (Yes that's what it was called.) Bungie began work on there then new RTS game using a modified version of the Myth engine. Featuring a fully 3d environment, and a deformable terrain! I know, not too impressive now, but in 1998, this was incredibly impressive, and as the game was shown off more, many people would have similar thoughts. There's even some old footage of the RTS build and later with developer commentary. There is a link to one of those videos directly below this paragraph, and an extra long one that compiles just about everything before Halo was completed. That extra long one will be in the sources for the curious.

(Evolution Of HALO [Beta Pre-XBOX] RTS & 3rd Person version - Unseen64 - YouTube)

As the RTS version was being developed, they were looking for ways to control the hummer vehicle in a fun way. Most RTS had a simple click point then click, again mechanic to move troops, but they found it more fun to give control of these vehicles to the players. They found this so fun that they wondered if the whole game should be like this, and as they moved the camera in, they had more of a 3rd person action game instead of an RTS game

About a year later, Halo would be shown off to Steve Jobs, who had just recently rejoined Apple, during this time. Apple was trying to market their Mac for gaming, which aged about as well as you think it did. But besides that, Jobs was really impressed and would have it shown on stage at Macworld on July 21st, 1999. This was the first time that Bungie's new game, "Halo" had been revealed to the public.

(Halo - Macworld Unveiling - Bungie - YouTube)

There are several things to note with this original reveal of Halo, one, and this is my Graphic Design Associates talking, it reminded me that this was a time when Comic Sans was seen as a good font choice. But getting serious, this reveal showed the game in real-time running on Mac hardware on OpenGL, it showed many different things like seamless transitions from indoors to outdoors, lens flare, multiple controlled player characters at a time including two proto Master Cheifs, and possibly controlled Elite characters. It also included the use of vehicles including the warthog, and a flying vehicle. All in real-time.

Again, while now this might not be seen as impressive, in 1999, this looked incredible, and it got people really excited for this game to come out if this is what they were showing for their reveal. (Fun fact: The theme used in this reveal which would become the main theme for Halo was composed in only a few days! With composer, Marty O'Donnell, hiring monks, and an orchestra to make something that sounded ancient, epic, and mysterious. Knowing such an iconic theme was made in such little time hurts my head...)

However, despite, the success of this reveal and the growing hype for this game, Bungie was on the verge of running out of money and going out of business, this was due to an installer bug on Myth II where if you tried to uninstall the game, the game would also uninstall your computer. So they had to recall thousands of copies and send out replacement copies, this equated to them running out of money. So in a very ironic twist of fate, Bungie was not only bought in order to stay in business and to keep the development of Halo going, but it was also bought by Apple's rival, Microsoft, and Halo would now be a launch title for there brand new Xbox to show off the console.

So now, Bungie had to not only deliver a good game with Halo, but it also had to be a showpiece for Microsft's entrance into the console market. Which meant translating the controls of a keyboard and mouse to a controller. So while Bungie was busy working on finishing the game, and basically crunching to get this game done, gamers would have reservations about how this would be controlled. As talked about in Power On: The Story of Xbox's third chapter: "And It Didn't Turn On." gamers on forums would show their reservations to complete denial that a shooter could work on a game controller.

Remember, this was 2001, and gamer/online culture was very different compared to now. Like I said in the previous part, FPS games on consoles had a bad track record, especially for its controls. So if Bungie and Microsoft wanted this to succeed, they needed a game that was not only good, not only could show off the Xbox, but also control well for their twin stick controller, "The Duke." And while I'm trying not to get too far ahead; After the crunch, locking themselves away to get the game done, and almost not having multiplayer on the final disk, I think they fucking nailed it!

Story

Our story begins calmly. A calm before the storm as the first thing we see is what looks to be a ring structure with in the background. The camera then pans up to reveal a massive starship in a similar vain to Star Wars: Episode IV flying ever closer. This ship is called the Pillar of Autumn, and its established that this ship was not here on purpose, it was here by pure coincidence after they have been running from an unknown threat known as the Covenant. An enemy that is growing closer and ready to attack. After showing our forces getting ready, we are soon awakened from cryo-sleep, we play as the Master Chief, a powerful and highly skilled super solider. Once we gain control and head to the bridge, we are ordered by the Captain, Captain Keyes, to take the ship board AI, Cortana, off ship and protect her from the enemy, as he states capture could lead to the enemy learning everything, even the location of Earth.

This then leads to us fighting our way out of the ship against this alien threat, fighting through narrow corridors alongside other marines. This starting level is essentially an extended tutorial for us, giving us a simple area to play with how this game controls. This is something I'll be talking about later in the Gameplay section. As for story, this does a good amount of setup already and we've barley even touched the controller, setting up that humanity is a war with an alien race, and that were loosing, so its up to us as the player to take the fight to them as we land on this mysterious ring object. Which is where the rest of this game's story takes place.

Presentation

Design and Graphics

When it comes to the presentation of this game I know the first thing people are going to note are the dated looking graphics and character models that we have on display. And while I'm not going to sit here and say that these aren't dated, I still really like how this game looks, and in some instances, especially if were looking at this from a 2001 perspective, we are at the brink of the sixth generation of consoles. So its totally understandable for someone at that time to see this and be impressed by how this game looks. And then from an artistic point of view, its design is very grounded. Everything you see in the world and as you play the game seems to have purpose, and each faction follows this to their own standers. The humans/marines are wearing very practical combat armor and uniforms, that looks like it could block regular human bullets but struggle with the Covenant's plasma weaponry. The human weapons all take bullets, when we reload we are reloading physical magazines of bullets, or slugs. Our vehicles look to run on gasoline or some kind of power source that seems like something we would make today. We might be in a sci-fi future world but humanity is designed in a way that is still recognizable to the modern day.

Human Design's and Weapons

And then you have the Covenant, a truly alien force in how they look and feel. There vehicles floating instead of moving on wheels, the way they look looked different compared to humans and even there own faction. In fact the enemies we fighting are from different races. The powerful and slim Elites, the cowardly and small Grunts, the scraggly Jackals hiding behind their energy shields, and the hulking Hunters. Each enemy has their own look where your able to see instantly and recognize. I'll talk about how this affects gameplay, but from a design perspective, it gives these enemies a distinct look that makes them iconic to the player. And you can see that even past the dated graphics.

Covenant Design's and Weapons

And then there's the design for the main character, Master Chief. Despite the fact that its a character in a military sci-fi game, its a rather simple looking design. It only using four colors, green, black, white, and gold. Black for the flexible parts of the body, green for the heavy and thick armor, gold for the visor, and white for any lights on the armor. It looks like a realistic version of what would be a piece of powerful military armor made to enhance a super soldier's abilities. It looks heavy and bulky but also slim enough that it doesn't look to heavy to move in which is something you see in gameplay.

Master Chief Design

Story Presentation

One thing I noticed as the story unfolded was how they presented the story. While the game does have the characters talking as the mission plays out, they also have cutescenes that is shot like a movie. Using a lot of the rule of thirds, camera pans and zooms and even some dutch angles to raise unease. Its clear the devs took a lot of inspiration from how movies are shot in order tell their story, along with using certain music to heighten the emotion desired from a scene. Another detail I noticed was how set up certain scenes in the game, like how when you first step on the ring, you get this massive overlook of of ring above you, with it telling you how massive this structure is compared to you or even something like a massive star ship.

(Landing on Halo)

Or how in one mission, it starts with Pelicans (human aircrafts), flying into the scene, that being a massive beach, only for the game to put you into Chief perspective as you coming in and take part in storming the beach, with epic music play in the background as this goes on.

(Landing on the Beach)

And their are several other details like this, along with playing little cutscenes to set up a place your in and about to play through. It makes it feel like you’re playing a movie. Less like how it was in FFIV, but an actual movie, and a sci-fi movie at that It makes sense why so many people got invested into the game for not only its gunplay but its story as well. Because the game presents itself in a way that allows for someone to get interested like with any movie. And this was something you couldn't get with older games on SNES or NES because of their pixel format, unless done in very specific ways. But as technology improved it allowed developers to do these games and stories that feel like movies. Flash forward to now and we have people calling a game a movie game almost like an insult, when if a game like that was made back then it would be commended.

That itself is a whole other topic of discussion, and honestly deserves its own post, I just find it an interesting point to bring up, even for a little bit.

Gameplay

Finally we can talk about the gameplay, and oh boy, this is the thing that truly helped to set Halo apart. Even if you can't get past the visuals of the game, this is something that has aged incredibly well. Halo CE has a flow to its gameplay loop, and once you understand it, it leads to some really cool scenarios and makes it incredibly addicting. The way Halo worked was very different compared to something like Doom. Doom allows you to hold every weapon you get from previous levels (About seven weapons) and you don't need to reload. Where as in Halo, you only hold two weapons at a time, and grenades are used with one button, with there being two types of grenades. Your also have to reload, either when running out of ammo in the magazine, or pressing the reload button.

While this might seem like a downgrade compared to something like Doom, I see this as a necessary simplification for the genre. Not because a shooter like Doom can't be on consoles, it obviously can, with how many versions of the game have been on console but more so in a way for it to work on a controller, let a lone a controller that looked like this.

(Duke Controller)

I believe that Bungie mapped these controls how they did to make it more accessible to players who were new to this genre or even gaming. At this point in time, gaming was becoming more popular than before, so there will be new players coming to your game, and if it was too complicated then people would not play. To add to the less amount of weapons, the movement is more simplified with the two analog sticks. The left stick is for movement, and the right stick is to move the camera, that's it! No using buttons to move, no tank controls, its keyboard and mouse movement on a control pad. It helps also that Chief has a nice set speed, good for decent movent in more open areas, while still working great with more narrowed areas.

Put all of these together, and you have the main combat loop of the game. This is best seen in the first mission, Pillar of Autumn, after getting your mission from Keyes, he gives you his service pistol. Later on you get an assault rifle where your first encounter with the Covenant. First encountering an Elites and Grunts, while the game doesn't really tell you this, you do learn from the behavior of the enemies on what enemy you should take out first. For example, elites will yell when they see you and then target you if not focused on a marine, this enemy has an energy shield which you need to shoot in order to get a kill on him, but once you get the kill, and if there are grunts nearby, the grunts will begin to freak out and scatter, allowing you to take them out easier.

And while the Grunts are the easiest enemies to kill, hence the name, if you just charge in and try fight a pack of them, they'll have an easier chance of killing you. Or as I like to say, getting Yamchaed, because when you die it 100% is the exact same pose when he died in DBZ.

Master Chief and Yamcha Death

But the strategy I outlined isn't the only option you could do. If you had a grenade you could chuck it into the group and send a bunch flying. You could also pick up different weapons when an enemy is down, like a grunts plasma pistol, if you hold down the right trigger, you can do a charged shot with the pistol If you aim it at an elite and it hits, you will take out its shield immediately, allowing you to get a kill shot on the elite if you can hit it. The narrow corridors of the ship gives you a good playground in order to feel out the combat and get into the flow proper. That being to always be moving, watching enemy movement, listen for there call outs and to kill the right enemy depending on the situation.

(Pillar of Autumn Fighting)

As you continue the game, the game will slowly introduce you to different scenarios, like how in mission two, you are introduced to a more open environment, and you'll see how the enemy works in an area like this. You'll also see them be dropped off in drop ships, and be introduced to jackals with there shields. And while an easy way to make them vulnerable is to take out there shields with the plasma pistol or rifle, if you have the magnum, and zoom in by pressing down on the right stick, you could shoot there hand from there little opening and kill them faster, allowing you to save that charged shot for an elite.

(Jackal Magnum Kill)

You also get introduced to the sniper rifle and its double zoom, and how powerful it can be if your able to nail your shots. Which your then able to get better in the third mission where you start with a sniper, this mission also teaches you some very minor stealth elements, something that is emphasized when the marines your with attack with you for support. In this mission you are also introduced to the Hunter's this enemy is strong, and is able to hit you hard, and send you and other marines flying, but if you watch it's slow movement, and move out of the way, you can then spray bullets into its back side or try to get a plasma grenade on its back allowing you to kill it. By the way, with the hunters, you can actually kill it with a single magnum bullet, making what is supposed to be a tougher fight kind of easy, but I don't know if this was intentional or not because all these years later, in the most recent MCC version, you can still do it. Maybe there just showing how powerful this handgun is in this universe.

(Hunter Easy Kill)

All of this then culminates to the fourth mission, which by this point opens up the game to you, there's still more stuff to introduce, but mission four is Halo: Combat Evolved in its purest form, moving along the battlefield, taking out what enemies you need to switching to new weapons when needed and traversing the map in a vehicle, its Halo, and its awesome! Its a very good reason why this is not only one of my favorite Halo games, but also one of my favorite video games of all time.

Multiplayer

Now, quick disclaimer for this section this is not going to be well detailed do to me not focusing on multiplayer when playing the game, and now, the main way to play Halo CE multiplayer is online, but I'll be talking about how it was when it first released on the original Xbox. The multiplayer gameplay for Halo is not how you would imagine today, because while you could play with others in split screen, there was no Xbox Live. So you couldn't play online with a headset, so if you owned a single Xbox, you could have up to four people playing on one Xbox in the multiplayer maps that were launched with Halo. Or... If you had a friend and they had an Xbox and a copy of Halo, you could connect both consoles together with a lan cable, and have an additional four players, giving you a full 8 player match of Slayer (Team Death match for Halo).

This was System Link, or playing over lan, and its something that has been done before in the PC side of gaming, where people would bring the PCs and CRT monitors, connect each computer to each other and play things like Counter Strike, World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament together, this was called a Lan Party, and this was something you could do with not only your Xbox, but with Halo. And a lot of the maps in Halo CE encourage more people to be playing on it at any given time. You could have up to sixteen players in a game depending on what game mode you played, with the maps supporting that. So if you had a bunch a friends, four Xboxs and controllers, you could all be playing together in massive multiplayer battles. And this was something that was only really possible with computer nerds, Microsoft and them betting on putting an Ethernet port on the back of every Xbox, made available to a ton more gamers with consoles.

It was an event for many people, and we don't see that anymore with the advent of online multiplayer. But honestly, I hope one day, I'm able to participate in one of those lan parties, because all the old footage of people being side by side and playing video games together looks so much fun. As for the multiplayer itself, while it might not be the most complex in the world or have a lot of unlocks or customization (basically almost nothing), I still find it to be one of my favorites because of how simple it is, in fact in some instances, I kind of prefer it. Its perfect for a small bit of fun with a group of friends or with random people online.

Ending

As we continue through out the game, we eventually learn from Keyes on what this ring is, its called Halo, and the Covenant see it as a religious object and a weapon left behind by a long dead civilization. The Covenant have been trying to find its Control Room in order to fire it, with Keye's stating whoever controls Halo controls the fate of the universes. Keyes then gives us the mission to get to Halo's control room before the Covenant do, which we manage to do after two missions. Where Chief is able to plug Cortana into its computer. I haven't mentioned our ship AI friend much in this post. But Cortana is basically a little voice in our head, she talks to us about the mission, the area's we explore and to other military personal, but other than that and some exposition this is the first time where she a big part of the story.

Upon entering the control room terminal, she explains that this isn't a weapon like a gun or sword, its instead classified as a Fortress World, designed by a people known as the Forerunners to destroy a specific creature, something that was buried in this ring and is something that the Covenant and Humanity inadvertently released. So Chief is told to go to where Keyes and his team went, and when we get there it’s one hell of a sight. Were dropped in a dark swamp with Grunts running in terror and a crashed Pelican. We eventually find more Covenant running from something we can't see yet, but whatever it is, it’s killing them and it’s in the facility. The beginning of this mission almost feels like a horror game, where as in all the missions before we've been shooting up baddies and taking names, this mission is a big tonal shift.

Once inside there barley any enemies to speak of, at least ones that aren't dead, because yeah you'll find dead Covenant you explore, and whatever it was that killed them, it wasn't clean about it, you'll rooms destroyed a hallway full of blood, and even a lone marines who's so scared and manic that he was try to shoot and kill. But the worst part of all, you'll find unused Needler ammo in the level, you never find unused needler ammo in this game!

(Montage of Horror from the Mission)

After traveling deeper into the level, you eventually make it to a locked door, a sound can be heard behind Chief as he looks to see what it was, only to find nothing there. When he opens the door, he finds a dead marine hanging from the door, and inside he finds the helmet cam from one of the marines. And I'm going to play this scene in full for you to fully see how well they set the tone and tension of this moment.

(Flood Introduction)

Once the cutscene it done, your back into gameplay, and you start to hear banging from the doors. Until they burst open with a brand new enemy. The Flood. A parasitic alien that is able to attach itself to any living creature and take control, with it able to use there weapons as well. You'll find two variants, an Elite variant and a Human variant, with the variants able to use a weapon from the associated species, so you'll see a variety of flood attack you with the specie's weapons, so you'll be fighting against flood with plasma rifles, shotguns, and magnums. To rocket launchers, and sniper rifles. I found the best way to deal with them is to kill the parasites with the assault rifles, and to kill the combat forms with a shotgun.

After fighting your way out of the instillation, you meet a circular robot called 343 Guilty Spark, with him stating that he needs your assistance to contain the Flood, leading to us being teleported to the Library. Its at this point in the game where we start to have some repeat in assets. The Library is infamous because of its very similar structure and confusing layout, even with me replaying this game a good chunk of times, I still get confused with what direction I need to go in order to finish the level. But then after this level we basically do a bunch of revisits of levels, we go through the snow level but backwards. We go through the sniper level but its infested with the flood, and we return to the Pillar of Autumn for the final mission, it is disappointing to see some not so unique levels for the end of Halo, but considering Bungie's crunch by the end point and just needing to get the game out, I completely understand why this is the case, and at the very least it isn't just a full rehash of the levels, you are doing something different in each level.

Anyway, after fighting the Flood in the Library and securing ann item called the Index, we return to the control room, and its hear where we learn exactly what Halo is. Halo is a weapon designed to kill the Flood, but it doesn't kill Flood directly, it kills there food. The humans, the Covenant, anything organic is equally edible. The only way the Forerunner could stop the Flood was to wipe the galaxy clean of all sentient life, thus, starving the Flood. This changes our mission, with us needing to destroy Halo before it can be fired. After destroying the the rings fusion reactors to distract the Guilty Spark, we then need to get to the Captain to get his access code and cause the Pillar of Autumn to self destruct, destroying the ring in the process. When we find him, he is already infected by the Flood, but instead of a combat form, he's some unholy thing that's connected t the Flood's Hive mind. Forcing Chief to slam his hand into the Captain's face, and rip out his neural computer, putting him out of his misery and getting the access code. A truly brutal scene.

(Finding Captain Keyes)

In the final mission, we finally return to the Pillar of Autumn, it run aground in a desert of the ring world. After trying to detonate the ship from the control room, we are then forced to set off a chain reaction when Guilty Spark stops the countdown. After doing this, we are then faced with an epic Warthog run to escape the ship, driving through narrow corridors of flood as we make it to a lone star fighter. Taking off and flying away from the ship and off Halo as we see it explode and destroy the massive ring structure. Destroying the ring and leaving us as the only survivors. Cortana states that, "Halo its finished." But Chief states in a cheesy, but deserved line. "No, I think were just getting started." The camera pans away as Chief removes his helmet.

Conclusion

Halo: Combat Evolved is one of my favorite video games of all time. And seeing as I'm someone who was born the same year this game out, I find it a little surprising even now. I mean it would make a little more sense if I gave that title to something like Call of Duty 4, especially since I grew up playing it. While I do love COD 4, I find that I come back to Halo CE far more than COD, because it has everything I like in a game. Addicting combat that I can always come back too, good story, good music, its a game that will always be iconic too me. Even the short comings of the end game isn't enough to deter me from the game, I still have a blast even when playing through these repeated levels. And of course the story behind the games development is fascinating to see, and how Bungie essentially set the foundation of shooters on consoles today. If we lived in a world where Halo was seen as a failure and not this massive cultural event in gaming, I think years later it would be seen as the gem that never got a chance to stand.

If your looking to play this game, I highly recommend playing it on the Master Chief Collection, it can be found on Xbox and PC, and it includes the version I played for this post, and includes every Halo game up to Halo 4, so plenty of action for you in one package. Obviously you can play the game on the original Xbox like it was intended, but I'd only do this if you have a love for the game already and have an original Xbox. But it is still a good way to play the game, even today. Either way, I still recommend this classic shooter, whether to see its evolution, or to possibly find your new favorite.