Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

This game was praised and received critical acclaim when it was released. I understand why. It had a creative idea of haloes that serve to protect life forms. The background story wasn't a religious one, but it clearly borrows themes from the bible. The halo itself references to salvation and angels. The soundtrack was beautiful, really one of the most beautiful musical scores of all time. Halo succeeded in creating its own mythology and a pretty strong fanbase.

I'm very much impressed by how they created an almost seamless fantastic journey where a level ends with a cutscene transitioning into the next level. The sheer scale of the halo is massive and to achieve transition between levels with the hardware that they had at the time is incredible. It was way beyond Unreal for instance and closer to what unreal engine 2 would present years later. I can't compare to other franchises from the time such as Return to the Castle of Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor franchise, Timesplitters, No One Lives Forever, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, SiN, Alien vs Predator, among many others because I didn't get to play them.

It had vehicles, companions, different environment conditions, gigantic alien structures and multiple alien races. The shield with auto-regen became a feature that many games began to imitate. The limit to carry two weapons at a time also became a feature that many other games copied. I suspect that the biggest problem with Halo is that the devs had a megalomaniac concept that was beyond both the hardware's capabilities and their own experience level. Halo is a complex game to make and the fact that they've done it, released it, is almost a miracle. I can only vaguely imagine how hard it was and how it must have brought the devs to the brink of madness.

The plasma weapons, the plasma grenades that sticked to surfaces instead of bouncing off, the enemies with energy shield that could be disrupted by certain plasma weapons. All that were certainly innovations that games from years after began to adopt. If I compare to Half-Life and Unreal, Halo was ahead of its time. The limitation to carry two weapons for instance. After I played Resistance 2 I understood why it's not a bad concept as I thought it was. If you give the player free access to all weapons you risk creating an even more repetitive gameplay experience because the player can just use the most powerful weapon at any time. By limiting how many weapons the player can carry you force some meaningful decisions to create more interesting combat encounters.

I think that the fact that alien races had their own personalities also helped with the success of Halo. In addition, I should praise the high quality voice acting of both Cortana and Guilty Spark, which was very rare to have in games at the time. The Unggoy, Sangheili and Kig-Yar are cool foes. The Unggoy seems to have been inspired by the fallen from Diablo because they both run away from the player. The flood was kinda dull, but it worked. It's more or less Halo's version of zombies.

I can't help it, but notice how bad the level design was. The levels have that maze structure of Wolfenstein 3D and Rise of the Triad. If you look at modern games there is a much better integration of environment art and level design. Even Unreal and Half-Life had a better linear level design and not just mazes with corridors, intersections and rooms in all directions. I can't say anything about the designers because even to this day I find it hard to design levels that both play good and feel realistic at the same time. It's not something that you learn fast. It does take its time. It's clear that Bungie learned a lot from Halo CE to Halo 3. The evolution in their level design is pretty clear.

The combat design was another area were you can see how it has evolved from the first game till Bungie's last Halo game. The encounters in Halo CE were all pretty basic, but there are some harder sub-bosses, enemies that throw grenades at you, some long range and enemies with vehicles. They didn't balance the game very well. Many enemies have too much armor or shield and this is probably due to their limited AI.

Two goofs in Halo CE's level design are worth mentioning though: the last level is a racing track with obstacles in the middle of a spaceship; also, there is a gap with a bridge that disregards the outer's hull.

I don't think it's a good idea to keep the old graphics underneath the newer graphics. This creates a problem with collision because unless the new graphics use the exact same collision, you'll notice that in many places the collision is misaligned with the new graphics.

In conclusion, I think that the biggest achievement of Halo was its mythology. They created a mythology for a whole series.