Halo: Combat Evolved

aka: Blam!, Guangyun: Zui Hou Yizhan, Halo: El Combate ha Evolucionado, Halo: Kampf um die Zukunft, Monkey Nuts
Moby ID: 5368
Xbox Specs
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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

  • γƒ˜γ‚€γƒ­γƒΌ - Japanese spelling
  • ε…‰ζ™•οΌšζˆ˜ζ–—θΏ›εŒ– - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • ζœ€εΎŒδΈ€ζˆ° - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Xbox version)

185 People (107 developers, 78 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 91% (based on 112 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 417 ratings with 26 reviews)

A good (NOT great) game that is overhyped to the extreme

The Good
Halo has a loyal fanbase. The fanbase is so loyal that they are willing to ignore all of the game's shortcomings - and there are a few key ones.

There's plenty to like about Halo, though. For one, the game has some great visuals. Halo is eye-candy, and a real display of Xbox graphical power. Halo made me look at console games a little differently - as though maybe they can compete with PC games in terms of graphical goodness, finally.

Halo also did what Goldeneye 007 miserably failed to - make the first person shooter playable on a console gamepad. The dual-analog control scheme isn't as good as a PC mouse-and-keyboard setup, but it works surprisingly well. The left and right triggers handle the guns and grenades, and the sticks control smooth and responsive movement. Bungie deserves an award for doing what everyone else has not been able to.

Enemy AI is very good. The "smarter" enemies will take cover from gunfire, dodge shots and avoid grenades, and just generally act like they have some concept of self-preservation. However, while this is a step forward, they are still too easily outsmarted. Too often, an enemy will take cover, and remain behind cover until you flank him and let him have it. Still, while a few games (like Unreal's bots) have been able to accomplish similar AI tasks, it's great to see in the framework of a regular single-player game (as opposed to deathmatch bots).

Vehicles (like hovercraft and jeeps) add an extra dimension to the genre. Unlike Red Faction's vehicles (which were very limited and served little purpose), Halo's vehicles are a core part of the fun. The physics engine is pretty remarkable, and vehicles react like one would expect, as the physics are as real-world as possible (at least as real-world as a hovering vehicle can be).

The split-screen multiplayer feature, similar to Goldeneye, has many different modes. Vehicles add a twist to the standard multiplayer gunplay fare.

The Bad
The single player campaign starts strong, and ends strong. Everything in-between, however, is plagued with constant repetition. Many stages feature the SAME room, OVER and OVER again. Many stages feature the SAME room, OVER and OVER again. See how repetition is annoying? Too many Halo levels are similarly annoying. Traverse a room, kill what appears there. Go to the next room, it looks exactly the same, kill the enemies, move onward. You may think I'm exaggerating, but many of these rooms truly are exact clones of previous areas.

The storyline really isn't very strong. This is very disappointing, compared to previous Bungie games like the Marathon series. Some cutscenes between levels moves the story along, but in reality, there just isn't much there.

Split-screen multiplayer, while a nice addition, pales in comparison to even an average online-capable PC shooter. Of course, it may not be fair to compare a console shooter like Halo to such games, but when the fanboys call Halo the "GREATEST GAME EVER", it's prudent to take a step back and see where Halo comes up short (and there are plenty of shortcomings). 4-player split-screen is a good time, but in the end, it's not great - especially since the Xbox supports online play with shooters like Unreal Championship.

The Bottom Line
Halo is a good game. Compared to PC shooters, however, it's just middle-of-the-pack. There's nothing wrong with that, but it quite possibly is the most overrated game of the PS2-Xbox-Cube generation of consoles. Halo's sequel will have plenty of things to improve upon. Halo is worth owning and playing through, but it does not deserve any special merit.

Xbox · by *Legion* (136) · 2003

Hey look, it's Marathon 4!

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

O.k, here is my real opinion on this classic game.

The Good
The fact is, when I wrote my last review for Halo: Combat Evolved I flat out lied. UnicornLynx had recently written his own take on the game, out rightly condemning it as gimmicky, convoluted and full of terribly in cohesive elements. Eager to impress him I wrote my own take on the game, despite the fact that I have loved the Halo series for years. Recently, I've felt the emphasis on multiplayer has come at the expense of the campaign but the early years are something to be appreciated.

So, I wrote the review, condemning one of my favourite games. Lying in bed this morning I remembered something I usually tell people about games; "Don't take reviews as gospel, and don't base your opinion on other peoples. There may be enough elements in a game that appeal to you more than someone else. This means while others might think it's terrible, there is something about it that endears that game to you." There, I had totally back flipped on the philosophy I came up with in order to appease someone that has distinctly different tastes from me. However by that same measure just because Halo isn't some obscure adventure game from a Russian studio no one has ever heard of before doesn't mean it is terrible.

So, I apologise for intentionally deceiving people. Here is my real opinion on Halo: Combat Evolved.

I first played Halo in 2002. I was 13 and at the time I was still enjoying the back catalogue of bargain Nintendo 64 games that the market was awash with following the release of the GameCube. I was invited to a friends house (how the hell do I remember all of this?) and the first thing he did was fire up his new Xbox so we could play Halo. My jaw dropped. This was the most beautiful game I had ever seen in action. It was the first game I had ever gotten a real "next generation" feel from. I felt like this was meaningful progression.

So, Halo takes place immediately after the Pillar of Autumn comes out of hyperspace following the destruction of Planet Reach. The ship is assaulted by the mysterious Covenant of alien races that has some sort of issue with humanity being in their neck of the woods and you, as the cybernetically enhanced "Master Chief" manage to escape with the ship's AI loaded into your helmet.
You crash land on the mysterious Halo ring world that is simply floating mysteriously in space and embark on a mission of resistance and then escape when the tables turn later in the game.

Halo is a game that, instead of feeling like multiple parts thrown together in an in cohesive mass of good ideas, feels like an actual refined package. The HUD elements, movement and combat have all be refined beyond reproach. The recharging shield concept was pretty revelatory (pretty much every FPS uses a variation on it now) and the combination of pulse pounding combat and the ability to melee attack made for some awesome battles. Then there is the seamless integration of vehicular combat with the on foot shenanigans and expansive battle fields which render with very minimal impact on the frame rate of the game.

The story was complicated (for the time) and featured a cinematic quality soundtrack with very competent actors providing a voice for each character in the game. The way the exposition unfolds also has this grandiose, cinematic feel to it. I don't mean it's complicated like "Half Life" (vague and confusing) I mean the developers put a lot of effort into making Halo seem like a movie.

There are subtle elements like playing the game that are easy to miss. To begin with, when you look out into the distance on the Halo ring you can actually see it arcing up into the atmosphere. Below you is a vast sea that seams to stretch forever. The forerunner structures are huge and complicated and while this becomes a detriment later in the game the architecture is both beautiful and monolithic. Such care went into the conception of Halo, that is why it deserves such praise.

The Bad
To begin with, there are moments that just seem to go on forever. Covenant drop ships just seem to keep coming and you begin to silently ask the game to let you continue playing. This is irritating.

The huge waves of enemies are great, however occasionally you will get cheap shotted by some Grunt standing behind the Elite's with a plasma grenade or a bunch of needler shots. You will then consequently go flying into the air and back to the last checkpoint.

There are locations that tend to get repeated in the game and unfortunately these particular locations are some of the most boring locations imaginable. Long purple corridors that open into longer purple corridors with a bunch of locked doors or expansive Forerunner corridors that lead to additional Forerunner corridors. There are only two points in the game where this happens, but they are very tedious and depending on how many times you die can take up to half an hour to complete. Backtracking is a bit of a problem in Halo, just be warned.

The Bottom Line
So, I love Halo. I love it because of nostalgia and I love it because I appreciate the effort Bungie put into trying to make a really different style of FPS. The elements like seamless integration of on foot and vehicular combat, the recharging shield, expansive environments, aggressive AI of multiple enemy types, vastly different weapons and beautiful soundtrack all give Halo credibility as a true classic.

There are problems like any game; the frame rate dips now and then, the enemy AI will occasionally cheap shot you, environments drag sometimes and the flood are irritating (while still being necessary for the plot) however these problems are fairly minor compared to how enjoyable the rest of the game is.

This is a must have for Xbox owners.

Xbox · by AkibaTechno (238) · 2010

[ View all 26 player reviews ]

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
    • 2002– Best Xbox Action Game of the Year
    • 2002– Best Console Multiplayer Game of the Year
    • 2002 – #2 Best Xbox Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 2004 (Issue #236) – Year's Biggest Letdown
  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • April 2002 - Game of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – Xbox Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • 2001 – Xbox Action/Adventure Game of the Year
    • 2003 – #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) – #18 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
  • The Strong National Museum of Play
    • 2017 – 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 +

  • 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).

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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.