It’s been 10 years since the original Xbox came out. One of the launch titles was Halo: Combat Evolved, first game of the Halo series. Love it or hate it, it’s been a very popular franchise.

To celebrate this anniversary along comes Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, a remake of its namesake.

Metacritic gives it 82.

After the jump, my thoughts on the game.

The Good

  • A Faithful Remake
    I thought I’d mention this first. Anniversary is a remake of a 10 year old game. And it’s a very faithful remake. That’s good if nostalgia is part of your playing motivation.
  • New Graphics, New Sound
    Fear not, just because it’s a remake doesn’t mean you’re going to play with Xbox original graphics. They’ve given the game a graphic revamp. They’ve also remastered the music (though this is far less pronounced a change than the graphics).
    Best of all, you can go back to the originals at any time. The music option is accessible in the menu. Better still, the graphics setting can be changed in-game, on-the-fly, even during co-op. This is a nice feature. It can be interesting to remind yourself how the old game looked, especially when reaching some of the game’s best vistas and viewpoints.



New graphics…


…push the Back button to toggle to old graphics.

  • Thumbstick Combat
    Halo: CE was by no means the first shooter on a console, but it was one of the better efforts at making shooters work with controllers (as opposed to the generally superior mouse and keyboard). In some shooters you stick to cover and plink away at enemies doing the same. In other shooters you zoom about like a wall-jumping acrobat.
    Halo does neither. Though you move slowly you’re encouraged to do so quite constantly. Standing still will cause some types of enemies to overwhelm you, and other types to retreat and wait you out. This slow-but-constant movement suits the controller well. In addition, most combat takes place at mid- to close-range. Closer targets require less precision to hit (works both ways!).
    At its best, Halo combat is like a chain of micro-combats, where you dash from cover to cover, downing enemies and occasionally swapping your empty guns for their full ones. Like an action movie hero in a hurry. It’s tactical and satisfying. And it’s still great fun, ten years on.
    Of course, this requires you to play on as challenging a difficulty as you can handle. Go easy on yourself and the game becomes a bore.
  • The Setting, The Plot
    Halo: CE is one of those graceful game stories — simple, understandable, unobtrusive, and self-contained (with a proper ending). The setting is deep and rich but you aren’t force-fed any of it, instead you notice it in the details.
    This makes Halo CE (and hence Anniversary) rather special. Upon graduating from a game to a franchise Halo had to have a “proper” plot — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but never again so gracefully elegant.
  • Elites
    Every now and again an enemy unit AI truly surprises me. The hit-and-run Half Life marines. The always-flanking soldiers in F.E.A.R. The stalk-you-cross-country men in ArmA.
    The Elites in Halo fit into that category. They’re not the most numerous of enemy but they will give you the greatest challenge. They have the same regenerating shield as you and they know how to use it. Bring down their shield and they’ll rush to the nearest cover, regenerate, and be back for more. They often play defensive and can’t be lured away from what they are guarding. They know well enough to dodge incoming fire and grenades. They understand lead-times and know to throw grenades at where you’re going, not where you are.
    They’re fun to fight. It’s nice to face enemies that are challenging because they are smart, not because they are artificially powerful.


I don’t know if this elite is from Anniversary or not, but after scouring for full minutes on Google images, I don’t care anymore.

  • Co-op
    The entire campaign is playable co-op, split screen and (now in Anniversary) system link and online. Co-op is pretty common stuff now, but 10 years ago it was quite the thing.
    It still is a great, perhaps the greatest, way to play the game.
    But… read the Ugly section below before you get too excited.

  • Extra Content
    There are extra tid-bits in the campaign. Secret skulls let you “mod” the game’s default rules. Hidden terminals play new cut-scenes that give some franchise background information. Xbox 360 achievements offer a few special challenges that might extend your playtime.
    There’s no multiplayer from the original game (I mean other than co-op). But the game disc does contain the multiplayer engine from Halo Reach with some CE-themed maps. Which is probably for the best — no sense fracturing the multiplayer community with a CE’s old, long-surpassed multiplayer.

The Bad

  • Repeating Rooms
    CE, and so Anniversary, does this thing where you sometimes have to turn back and retrace your footsteps. Now, that in itself isn’t a bad thing — some rooms play very differently “backwards” and those that don’t have a twist like a different enemy on the way out.
    What is bad, though, are two particular room types: Covenant corridors and Forerunner chambers. These room types are copied-and-pasted so many times you’ll get sick of them. Worse, they’re often arranged as if by a sadistic architect. For example there’s one level where you’re directed across a canyon-spanning bridge only to turn straight about and return via its parallel neighbour.

The Ugly

  • Client Controller Clumsiness
    “Does this Halo feel strange to you? Like, sluggish?”
    “No. It handles fine.”
    I’d probably just written myself off if we didn’t (for reasons too boring to relate) change which console was hosting the game in our system link. Then we had the same conversation in reverse.
    It turns out that, when playing system-link (and online too, I’d wager), the person who is not hosting has these slightly sluggish controls. It’s hard to explain exactly what’s wrong with the controls. If I had to guess I’d say there’s a latency from your action to it taking effect. Whatever it is, it’s not so annoying as to be unplayable, but no so mild as to be something you grown accustomed to.
    There is no technological excuse for this. Other shooters, even other Halos, do not suffer from this problem. So, there’s some hope for a patch.
    (As an aside, this is a horrible problem to search for on the internet. The symptoms are vague. It gets mixed up with more common latency-related problems. Multiply this confusion by one hundred because this issue is mostly talked about on gaming forums and the regulars there aren’t exactly known for their patient listening and troubleshooting skills. So, dear reader, I wish you good luck if you’re motivated to see if this problem is patched.)

Conclusion

  • Rated Amazing on the (on the Amazing, Good, Ordinary, Marginal, Critical scale).
  • A remake as they should be done. Halo: Combat Evolved Annivesary brings an excellent shooter to modern audiences and throws in plenty of extras to sweeten the deal.

See all Good, Bad, Ugly reviews by clicking here.