Halo: Combat Evolved
Description official descriptions
Humanity is in the midst of a long war against an alien alliance called the Covenant which has been wiping out colony after colony. Your hero is Master Chief, who is given no name beyond his rank in the game itself. He is stationed on the Pillar of Autumn, a ship which, per protocol makes a jump in a random direction to retreat to avoid revealing the location of Earth. They find themselves at the titular Halo, a planet-sized ring of mysterious origin, and function with the Covenant on their heels. Master Chief must repel the Covenant assault and discover the secrets of Halo with the assistance of the female AI Cortana who lives in his suit and gives missions.
Halo: Combat Evolved is a sci-fi first-person shooter with considerable driving elements. Features include friendly NPCs who fight alongside the Chief, squad-based AI where enemies groups work together to flank you under the direction of a leader unit and can be demoralized by his death. They also use cover, set ambushes, etc.
Only two weapons may be carried at a time: one active and one on backup. There are five human weapons and three Covenant with distinct art styles for the two groups. Human weapons look basically like real guns and fire projectiles. Covenant are sleek and purple and fire energy. For the most part, weapons are not just left around the environment and must be procured from fallen enemies though there are supply points.
Your life is armor and health as in most games of the genre, however, rather than armor being an item that is picked up, it is a force field which quickly recharges itself after several seconds without taking damage, which emphasizes finding cover.
One of the most significant features is vehicles. You can drive a variety of vehicles in both single-player and multiplayer, some of which have additional seats for passengers or gunners which can be used by AI characters. Vehicles also come in distinct human and Covenant varieties with their design philosophies. Human vehicles roll around the ground on wheels and covenant vehicles hover or fly.
Halo also has a significant multiplayer component with basic deathmatch (called slayer here), capture the flag with the unusual addition that the flag takes your weapon spot while you are holding it, so shooting your way in and out of the base on your own is not an option, territories, and some options unique to the game, such as oddball, where you must hold onto a skull for the longest time, race where you score points by getting to checkpoints and juggernaut, where one super-powered player must get points by killing the others and the other players try to kill him to steal his powers. There is also a game editor which allows you to set custom rules for all the basic game types. All the playable weapons and vehicles from the campaign mode are available in the multiplayer maps with the ability for members of the same team to share the game's distinctive Warthog vehicle, which is essentially a small truck with a mounted gun on the back.
Spellings
- γγ€γγΌ - Japanese spelling
- ε ζοΌζζθΏε - Simplified Chinese spelling
- ζεΎδΈζ° - Traditional Chinese spelling
Groups +
- Console Generation Exclusives: Xbox
- Games made into books
- Games made into comics
- Games made into movies
- Games made into TV series
- Halo series
- Launch title: Xbox (North America)
- Middleware: Bink Video
- Setting: Space station / Spaceship
- Technology: amBX
- Xbox Best of Classics releases
- Xbox Best of Platinum Hits releases
- Xbox Classics releases
- Xbox Platinum Hits releases
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Credits (Xbox version)
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 91% (based on 112 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 417 ratings with 26 reviews)
The Good
Way back in the day Bungie was a Mac developer. Their greatest release, for many, was a great Doom-a-like called Marathon. Marathon not only had better graphics and sound -- a side effect of Macs actually being better for that until the mid-90's -- but had an incredible backstory and amazing multiplayer back when that was rare.
After doing the wonderful Myth they started talking about Halo. I couldn't wait, it looked like it was going to be Marathon x 10. But I had to wait... and wait... and wait. Then they got bought by MS, then the Mac version got canned, then it went x-box only. Finally after what, FOUR YEARS, it's out on the PC.
And sadly, it's not Marathon x 10. It's better, sure, and the hardware-based 3D graphics are excellent, but really, this is just Marathon with vehicles. The physics are better (but come on, flight sims were doing this a decade ago), but the weapons are mostly the same, the action is similar in many ways, even parts of the story seem to be lifted from Marathon.
One oddity is that it does seem to play a lot better on the Mac than Win. I see a lot of complaints here about the performance, but I was playing it on a iMac without anything fancy and it seemed fine.
The Bad
When I heard MS was buying Bungie I got the feeling they would loose all of the originality that made Bungie the company to beat. Seems I was right.
I guess if they had actually released it back then it wouldn't be so bad. But today it really does feel like a four year old game.
The Bottom Line
Definitely a good game, and it was certainly ahead of its time -- but that time was three years ago.
Windows · by Maury Markowitz (266) · 2003
This game is good, but not as good as people make it out to be.
The Good
This game is good. There is no denying it, but i found that while single player is certanly fun, playing on system link against your friends is much more fun. There are a ton of alien weapons, and some interesting and powerful vehicles. It definetely succeeds as a first-person shooter.
The Bad
There isn't much bad about this game other than the music, which got on my nerves, but that isn't much to worry about.
The Bottom Line
This is a good game to buy.
Xbox · by Jester236 (34) · 2004
Try not to pay any attention to detail, and it's a fairly decent game.
The Good
Halo probably has one of the most easily recognizable characters in the Master Chief. Show any gamer a picture of the Chief and ask who he is and they will say "that's Master Chief from the Halo games", whether they have played it or not. Another of halo's stand out characters is Cortana, the Pillar of autumns sparky, well humoured and very likeable AI. I think it forms a very good 'your brawn and my brain' partnership.
A particular delight for me was the Covenant weapons. They were pretty well designed and unique in that no two weapons were very alike, and with there own advantages. The needler fired needles that would explode if you got enough rounds into an enemy, the carbine with with handles a bit like a scope less sniper rifle and the plasma rifle were all stand out favorites for me.
The vehicles the covenant use were also particularly well done. For me, the two best were the ghost which is a fast hovering bike like number with a plasma machine gun on the nose and the wraith, a neat combination of a hover tank and a mortar.
The Bad
The repetitiveness. Halo:CE has flaws, and the single major flaw is its repetitiveness. And it is manifested in two ways.
First off, and most significantly, is the repetitiveness of the level design, which is a bit like trying to tell the difference between Porches, 90% of the time you have to look very hard to be able to tell the difference between two indoor sections. It is so bad, that there are three different types if interiors that i can distinctly recall. Pillar of Autumn, covenant ship and Halo. Now, for me, that is not a good thing. Granted, the most of the game pretty much takes place on two of them, but you can't help go around each interior level thinking "errr, hav'nt i already been through here". I certainly did. The interiors are also note worthy because it's mostly corridor's. Only one or two rooms anywhere, and the rooms or corridor's never contain much, if anything. All they ever contain is wall displays or tables. No consoles, tools, not many chairs. Its all very bare.
The second way the repetitiveness creeks in is the combat, in that it is mostly run and gun. More run and gun. And more run and gun. The only time your not running and gunning is when your not, is when your blowing up the Pillar of Autumn's engines. And that's IT. Combine it with the generic level design mentioned above, you become more acutely aware of both.
On a similar vein to the level design is that of the design when it come to the UNSC weapons and vehicles. Once again, they suffer from a lack of imagination. OK, the assault rifle has an electronic ammo counter on it, there is no particularly sci-fi-ish weapons in the UNSC armory, with is weird when you consider that the game takes place in 150 years time and your fighting with what is, pretty much, weaponry that woud'nt look out of place in current times. This is made stranger when you consider the effort Bungie put into the design of the Covenant weapons. It's the exact same with the the UNSC vehicles, its as if some one at Bungie said to there boss "boss, i've designed the Covenant stuff, but i can't be asked to do the UNSC stuff" and the boss replied "that's OK, don't bother, it's not like it matters, or anyone would notice" and at the last minute, cobbled together a couple of vehicles based on current vehicles. Just sheer laziness to me. And speaking of weapons, one of the little irritations that made it into most of the halo games is the severe lack of substantial amounts of ammo. It's alway's kill a few enemies, run out of ammo, switch to secondary weapon, kill a few more aliens, run out of ammo, run around looking for a new weapon whilst being shot at, find one, kill them, move on, rinse and repeat. Wait till your up against the hunter pair, you'll know then what it's like.
Halo does'nt get many points for story either. OK, were not exactly swamped in similar stories, but it is far from original or creative. I mean come on, religious aliens hell bent on wiping us out, and you single handily stop them. I could think of a few games in which 1) aliens want to wipe us out, 2) there using religion as an excuse to be crappy to humans and 3) you save the day all on your lonesome. Even outside of gaming, it's not very original. And to add insult to story telling injury, the characters don't, save for Cortana, shine to stand out. The Master Chief does'nt say enough to really stand out, Sergeant Johnson and Foehammer are just plain cliched and Captain Keyes is'nt around enough to make much of an impact. For me, Cortana is the ONLY stand out character.
I think i'll end this section off with a minor niggle. Objectives. Maybe it's just me, but going through the game, and the main trilogy for that matter, i got the feeling, that whilst your overall objective was pretty clear, some of the time is spent on objectives that either have no major point, get's switched to something else or scrapped all together. Could just be me.
The Bottom Line
If this came out now (2010), instead of in 2001, i would say not to expect a sequel. It does'nt have that much variety, some lazy design work and does'nt blow you away. But in spite of that, you can still have a bit of fun playing it.
For me, Halo is a like a Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It's got a shallow plot, chances are Schwarzenegger's dialogue is being very mono syllable or dones'nt say much and is doing a cardboard character performance, but as long as you don't expect much from it, you can kind of enjoy it.
Xbox · by Starbuck the Third (22606) · 2010
Trivia
1001 Video Games
The Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Demo
The end of the PC demo features a 49 second infomercial-style video, narrated by Sgt. Johnson, which extolls the virtues of buying the full version. "Buy one! Heck, buy two!"
Development
Halo went through many changes during its development. As originally conceived, it was a real-time tactical game for Windows, something like a sci-fi version of Myth. The focus shifted toward direct control of one of the individual units and it became a third person shooter and work began on a Macintosh version as well. This is how the game was originally announced.
After Microsoft bought Bungie, Halo was shifted to being an Xbox exclusive. Around the same time, it became a first person game, with Bungie saying there wasn't any way to get precise aiming to work in third person. Many of the art assets changed too, with the Master Chief's armor in the game as shipped looking quite different than the original trailer. Eventually, Halo was ported back to its original platforms of Windows and Macintosh bearing no resemblance to how it started.
Ending
Beat the game in Legendary difficulty and you get an additional funny cutscene at the end.
Engineer
Halo has a strange enemy hidden in the game code called the Engineer. You can only access it using a mod chip. It's a pink, blobby thing that just sort of floats around. It's the same creature as seen in one of the earliest videos of the game, the one with the marines going into the huge building.
Gags
- If you look closely at the shotgun shells taken out when Master Chief reloads, you'll see there are hippo heads pictured on them.
- If you highlight the "Edit Gametypes" section in the multiplayer section of this game, you come across an image of Master Chief with text that, to the reader, seems to be schematics for each of his body parts. If you look closely, some of the text aren't schematics, but text: Text on Head/Gun: "UV Protectant Sun Visor for Protection from Elements". Text on Upper Right Leg: "Sometimes I give myself the creeps, sometimes my mind plays tricks on me" (lyrics from the Green Day song "Basket Case"). Text on Lower Right Leg: "Hydraulic Suspension Thigh Pads with cool Kevlar crap". Text on Left Leg: "Directional Locks MJOLNIR cyborg dealer parts". Text on Arm: "Action/Reload see may flexible joint system". Text on Torso: "All your base are belong to us".
Halo: Custom Edition
On May 5th, 2004, Halo: Custom Edition was released for free. It is a multiplayer only, 170MB standalone version of Halo PC which enables gamers to play user created content created with the halo editing kit. It requires the original cd and a valid key to play. Download it here.
Machinima
Halo is used to film the machinima web series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, which is currently in its fifteenth season.
Novel
As of July 2017, there are a total of twenty-one Halo tie-in novels. The first three being: Fall of Reach (prequel), The Flood (novelization of the game), and First Strike (successor).
Rating
Halo was originally rated T for Teens.
References: Marathon
- At the center of the Halo logo, you can see the
Marathon logo (Marathon being the FPS series Bungie was previously famous for). The Marathon logo can also be seen in several places throughout the game, including on the hull of the human battleship, on Captain Keye's uniform, and on several of the doors found around Halo. The character design of 343 Guilty Spark, one of the game's pivotal characters, also strongly resembles the Marathon logo. - The cyborg Master Chief wears a suit of Mjolnir battle armor. The hero of the Marathon series was a Mjolnir class cyborg.
- The alien grunts sometimes scream out "They're everywhere!" in combat. The human civilians from Marathon would also scream the same thing during the alien invasion.
- Certain weapons have similar names and appearances in both games, such as the SPNKR rocket launcher.
- Both games have very whimsical chapter names, like "Wait! It Gets Worse!" or "Fourth Floor: Tools, Guns, Keys to Superweapon" in Halo or "Kill Your Television" or "You Think You're Badass? You're Going to Die Badass!" in Marathon.
- Rampancy, or "When AIs go nuts and rebel against humanity", played a major part of Marathon's story. If you kill the command crew in Halo's opening level, Cortana will complain that you've gone Rampant and will sic the Marines on you.
- The hero of the Marathon series spend most of his time taking orders from Durandal, a megalomaniacal A.I. named after a mythological sword who had few qualms about breaking a few eggs (using humans as expendable pawns) to make an omelet (liberating a slave race). The hero of Halo spends most of his time taking orders from Cortana, an A.I. named after a mythical sword who's beginning to show signs her ego is expanding, and who has few qualms about breaking a few eggs (destroying Halo and killing the marines on it) to make an omelet (saving Earth).
- Much of the dialog of the "Grunt" characters is taken from the Human characters in the first Marathon: "Thank God it's you" was spoken by characters called "Exploding Bobs", which were sythetic Humans who would run at the player and explode. The line "They're Everywhere" was spoken by frightened Humans the player would come across.
- The architecture in Halo is very similar to Jjaro architecture - the Jjaro were an equally ancient race in Marathon.
References
Some of the dialogue spoken by the marines, comes directly from the film Aliens.
Sales
- As of 2005, Halo is the best-selling Xbox game of all time. It has sold three and a half million copies.
- On August 31, 2003 has Halo (Xbox) won the Gold-Award from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 100,000 (but less then 200,000) units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Timeline
Many people believe that Halo takes place during a one-hundred-and-thiry-nine year gap in the Marathon timeline, in which the creators wrote "This century intentionally left blank. Seriously, nothing really happened."
Voice acting
Much of the dialogue spoken by the Covenant Elites is in fact dialogue by the human Sergeant, reversed, with some pitch alterations.
Windows and Macintosh versions
- Gearbox took over programming of Halo PC and discovered that they can't use much of the existing networking code (for the XBox). They had to rewrite that entire section, delaying the title for PC by several months.
- The PC version (and probably Mac, too) of Halo adds a few bonus features for the multiplayer mode, these include two weapons: a Flamethrower (which was scrapped from the game at the last minute) and a Fuel Rod Gun (the weapon that the Hunters use in the main game) as well as allowing you to use the Banshee and a rocket-launcher version of the Warthog.
Awards
- 4Players
- 2002β Best Xbox Action Game of the Year
- 2002β Best Console Multiplayer Game of the Year
- 2002 β #2 Best Xbox Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
- Computer Gaming World
- March 2004 (Issue #236) β Year's Biggest Letdown
- Electronic Gaming Monthly
- April 2002 - Game of the Year
- GameSpy
- 2001 β Xbox Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
- 2001 β Xbox Action/Adventure Game of the Year
- 2003 β #6 PC Game of the Year
- GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 12/2008 - One of the "10 Coolest Levels" (for the level "The Silent Cartographer". It combines all fun elements from the first person shooter genre into one level.)
- Interactive Achievement Awards (Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences)
- 2002 - Game of the Year
- 2002 - Console Game of the Year,
- 2002 - Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year
- 2002 - Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering
- PC Powerplay (Germany)
- Issue 03/2005 - #1 Biggest Disappointment
- Issue 12/2006 - #9 Hype Disappointment (was no longer impressive when it was ported two years after the console version)
- Retro Gamer
- October 2004 (Issue #9) β #18 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
- The Strong National Museum of Play
- 2017 β Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame
- Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD)
- August 31, 2003 - Gold Award
- Walk of Game
- 2005 - Member
Information also contributed by ~~, Ace of Sevens, Alan Chan, BurningStickMan, Kartanym, Kasey Chang, Maw, MegaMegaMan, Ray Soderlund, Sciere, Xoleras, Zack Green and Zovni
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Related Sites +
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Beyond Fragging
An Apple Games article about the Mac version of Halo, with commentary being provided by Project Manager Marc Tardif and MacSoft President Peter Tante (November, 2003). -
Halo PC
Official Site - Bungie -
Halopedia
A wiki covering all Halo games -
Microsoft: Halo Website
Official website for Halo with overview of title. Includes link to Javascript pop-up window with screenshots, movies and more details on the title (only available through above link, no separate URL for pop-up).
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by JPaterson.
Xbox 360 added by Kartanym. Windows added by kawaii. Macintosh added by Kabushi.
Additional contributors: Istari, Kartanym, Unicorn Lynx, Entorphane, karttu, tarmo888, Kabushi, Pseudo_Intellectual, Zeppin, Paulus18950, Zaibatsu, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, yellowshirt, SoMuchChaotix.
Game added November 17, 2001. Last modified March 25, 2024.