Halo Combat evolved was the first X-box game I ever played. I'd had experience with shooters before in Goldeneye and Turok for the N64, but nothing like this. I still remember that music and the opening shop of the Pillar of Autumn, just...
So with Infinite literally a couple days away, I wanted to take a minute to think about the series I've loved so much and what I think worked and didn't about each of the games in the series. Not a full review by any means, but my impressions of each of the games as I had when I played them and as I have now in order from best to worst. This is just about the campaigns however, not counting any multiplayer here.
1. Halo Combat Evolved:
It truly was, when I first turned this on, it was like nothing I'd every played before and it left a huge impression on me. The gameplay was enthralling and remains enjoyable to this day, even if I can practically beat Legendary on autopilot (for the most part) as I've played it so many times. The story was fresh and new with just enough information to keep us invested, but with plenty of mystery to keep it interesting. It felt like creativity was pouring out of every crack in the game, the needler was fascinating to me, the whole Ring World concept, ect. The biggest draw to it that the many Halo imitators (and many of the sequels) over the years seem to have failed to grasp the desperate feeling of the game. Even though you are this super soldier far and above the common man, the forces arrayed against you were such that it was the bare minimum needed to survive. Every level (especially from 343 Guilty Spark forward) felt like you were just barely making it through and that it wasn't a fight to win, merely to survive to accomplish your objective.
2. Halo 3:
This has shifted up and down my list more than any other Halo game, but I think I'm finally happy to settle with this here. It has a lot in common with my 3rd pick but I think for the most part executes it slightly better in more than half the cases. Halo 2 for all it did, felt like an interlude to connect the two big moments in the series and to me at least, I never felt the weighty stakes of it all. Yet here for that was used against me with some key character deaths making the story really feel like one of sacrifice and cost. I feel like they struck a good balance with the nostalgia from the first game and innovation with new weapons / gear. However, I don't think that the Brutes felt like a proper replacement for the Elites, I've got a lot of critiques about Halo 2, but despite that, I think they did the Brutes best there. Here, the just felt like reskinned Elites with different vehicles. Even though the gameplay doesn't capture it anywhere near as well, the story at least has the same desperate feel as the original which I loved. There were a few stinkers of dialogue choices here and there (that line "Squad leaders are requesting a really point, where should they go?" "To war." still makes me cringe every time) but for the most part, everything felt sufficiently bad ass (I still say "Were it so easy" to this day.)
3. Halo 4:
I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but I really loved Halo 4. It felt like a true to form attempt to come back to the routes of the Halo series. A desperate battle across a crumpling ship, stepping out onto a strange alien construct world for the first time, it really brought a lot of nostalgia back to me. The stakes were different, saving Cortana, vs stopping the Flood, but in a way it felt almost like there was more at stake with how attached to her we had become over the series. The introductions of the Prometheans and the re-introduction of elites made for interesting enemies and new weapons and tactics, while on the flip side the new characters really suffered with Lasky being the only interesting one of the bunch. The Didact had nowhere near the personal grudge of Spark or the Gravitas of The Gravemind, Palmer just fell flat with very little to do/say, and the whole bit with Del Rio and and the intro cinematic stinks of an abandoned plot line. However, I loved that we got to finally see some cracks in the Chief's armour and at the end, for once, we didn't win and he has to find a way to emotionally deal with that. I legit teared up at the end when they say goodbye. Both 3 and 4 had stinkers for final boss fights, so that's dead even. In the end, I think it's close, but 4 falls just short. This is the only Halo game aside from the first where (though it was only at some points) it felt like a fight to survive rather than total badassery and I was really hoping that would continue onto the rest of the series as it went forward.
4. Halo Reach:
Bungie's last hurrah and for the most part, it works. This to me is very much the middle of the road of a Halo game. I does everything well enough, but doesn't really stand out in any particular way. The characters are likable, but not memorable, the maps are fun, but not very interesting, the weapons are well designed, but not inventive. It was a decent length, but felt like a story of this scale could have been twice as long easily had they the time and resources.
5. Halo ODST:
This would be higher, but it's just so short. The stealthy at night sections were a lot of fun, but feel like the could have been greatly expanded upon. The daytime stuff varies, but feels again feels too short on average. The story was interesting, and I really liked how it played behind the scenes of Halo's 2 and 3. The characters were interesting enough, but again it came down to not enough time to spend with them. Despite playing as normal humans, they don't differentiate you enough from the Chief's playstyle and you don't really end up feeling as vulnerable as you should just playing a regular human, even if you are essentially Spec Ops.
6. Halo 2:
When I played this the first time, I loved it to bits. I've played it more than any other Halo game save Combat Evolved. That being said, it hasn't aged anywhere near as well as any of the other Bungie titles. There are a lot more cracks in the game and you can really tell this was strapped together at the last moment for a deadline rather than being completed to the desires and expectations of the people making it. This is also the start of the chief playing like an unkillable badass, which I've never enjoyed. I'm mixed on duel wielding, so that's a net neutral for me. With everything going on, it didn't really feel like there were a tone of stakes, at least not in the way the others did. I like the Arbiter as a character, but the mishmash of him and the chief make both feel like they didn't get enough screen time. I did like vehicles could finally be destroyed and that you didn't have to always drive anymore, but that is more detractions from the original and logical changed rather than anything Halo 2 did particularly well. I did like the expansion of the Covenant's roles then. The drones were a really interesting enemy and this is the only game I've ever liked the Brutes in. In the end, it feels like a project far too ambitious for what they could accomplish and while they pulled off a solid 6 point landing rather than a faceplant, I can't play Halo 2 without thinking of the game that could have been.
7. Halo 5:
I consider this surprisingly close to Halo 2 and have even ranked it 6th in the past, but at the end, it has many of the same problems 2 does, just more so, and them some of its own, with not enough it does well to offset it. This is doubly painful because I think I was more hyped for this game than any Halo game since 2. I's just read Ghostlands and listened to Hunt the Truth so with the way Halo 5 was marketed I thought it was going to be a story of the Chief against ONI type story, but no. The "conflict" barely existed and had no weight to it and the decision to bring back Cortana felt like a slap in the face to the emotional impact at the end of 4. The swapping back and forth between the characters just felt like Halo 2, but worse since we got even less time with the Chief. Conceptually, I think the story of a team tracking down the Chief could have been really good, a mystery of trying to follow this (near mythical at this point) hero's footsteps and discern what they are doing and why sounds great on paper. The execution just fell flat with the aforementioned conflict but not really. I was also really excited to finally see Blue Team in a game (something I'd wanted since Halo 2) but they never really got fleshed out and I cared about them because of the books. Team Osiris was even worse off with me only really caring about Buck and again that being because of OSDT, not Halo 5, I don't even remember the other two that weren't Locke. That being said, the second level was one of my favorites of the entire series and felt like a real Spartan Team mission for the most part. I also thought the Human settlement was well done and the Covenant city very interesting. The locations were great, it was just most of the things that happened there didn't work. Did I enjoy the game, at the end of the day, yeah I still did, but it's the only Halo game I have not played through a second time. (For comparison, I've played CE and 2 over 100 times each easy (though I had far fewer games to play as a kid when I owned these), 3, ODST and Reach probably around 20 times each, and Halo 4 probably 5 or 6 times. I've even played Halo Wars 3 or 4 times, but that's a whole other thing.)
So far, with what I seems, Infinite stands upon a precipice. I could really see the game going either way. One one hand, the open world could really make you feel immersed in a Halo Ring, however, it could also just turn into needless busywork like some other open world titles have. It seems like they are trying to go back to the classic feel with a modern touch, however I guess we'll have to wait and see if they really understand what that classic feel meant. So far 343 is one for two in good Halo games so, I guess we'll just have to see for ourselves.
So what do you all think? What are your fondest memories of the Halo series, what draws you to it? What games did you like the best / worst and why?