Name: No Nostalgia, Reviewed by Todays Standards
Item: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Rating: 5.5
Author: Todd Lewis

This is my first Halo. I’ve never played Halo in my life. Let me get the obvious out of the way. The game has a nice feel in it’s core combat. The physics are pretty cool, the music is great, and the graphics aren’t ugly. This game did a lot of firsts for the first person genre and I respect that. Now for the bad: the lack of a map system is a joke, no sprinting feels so awful, the level design is extremely repetitive, the game is super linear (of course), and the story is boring. I don’t really remember what happened because the game never pulled me in. I couldn’t tell the other human characters apart because they didn’t stand out. I had to toggle between the old graphics and new graphics in the MC collection to find my way a lot, because the new graphics have terrible lighting and every level looked the same or used the same textures throughout. The game fools you into thinking that there will be plenty of green vistas and worlds but most of the time you’re inside concrete temples fighting the same three to four alien species. Towards the end I just wanted the game to end already cause I was doing the same five or six functions on the same four enemies. Man it got old fast, but I understand the limitation, but I review games how I want so whatever. This game works better with friends to help you overlook that it feels like a prototype to Halo 2. I would recommend skipping this one and jumping into the sequels. Not much happens to be honest. I rate games with 5 as the average. I enjoyed my time, except when I didn’t which was about 1/3 of the time—a good ratio, imo, for a very average game.

<p>This is my first Halo. I’ve never played Halo in my life. Let me get the obvious out of the way. The game has a nice feel in it’s core combat. The physics are pretty cool, the music is great, and the graphics aren’t ugly. This game did a lot of firsts for the first person genre and I respect that. Now for the bad: the lack of a map system is a joke, no sprinting feels so awful, the level design is extremely repetitive, the game is super linear (of course), and the story is boring. I don’t really remember what happened because the game never pulled me in. I couldn’t tell the other human characters apart because they didn’t stand out. I had to toggle between the old graphics and new graphics in the MC collection to find my way a lot, because the new graphics have terrible lighting and every level looked the same or used the same textures throughout. The game fools you into thinking that there will be plenty of green vistas and worlds but most of the time you’re inside concrete temples fighting the same three to four alien species. Towards the end I just wanted the game to end already cause I was doing the same five or six functions on the same four enemies. Man it got old fast, but I understand the limitation, but I review games how I want so whatever. This game works better with friends to help you overlook that it feels like a prototype to Halo 2. I would recommend skipping this one and jumping into the sequels. Not much happens to be honest. I rate games with 5 as the average. I enjoyed my time, except when I didn’t which was about 1/3 of the time—a good ratio, imo, for a very average game.</p>

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

No Nostalgia, Reviewed by Todays Standards

Player Score

Todd Lewis