"Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary" Game Review

HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED ANNIVERSARY
(ON XBOX 360)

PLAYERS: 1-2 (KINECT OPTIONAL) (2-16 VIA SYSTEM LINK) (2-16 ONLINE)

OTHER SYSTEMS: NONE

GENRE: FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER

PUBLISHER: MICROSOFT

DEVELOPER: 343 INDUSTRIES, CERTAIN AFFINITY

RATING: M

WARNINGS: BLOOD AND GORE, VIOLENCE

POINTS OF INTEREST: HDTV CAPABLE (720p, 1080i, 1080p), 3DTV SUPPORT, XBOX LIVE ONLINE CAPABLE (ONLINE MULTIPLAYER, ONLINE CO-OP, DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT, FILE SHARING, VOICE CHAT)

SAVE CAPACITY: 18 MB MINIMUM, XBOX 360 HARD DRIVE

RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 15, 2011



WHAT I LOVED:

- The excellent new lighting upgrades, environmental detail and both HD and 3D television support effectively revitalize the original Halo game for those who may have missed it back during the previous hardware generation!

- Many of the campaign's high points are still quite enjoyable to play today, and both the engaging story and excellent soundtrack are just as appealing ten years later!

- It's cool to switch between the original 2001 visuals, and the extensively updated 2011 visuals, with either the press of a button, or a simple voice command if you have Kinect.

- The story is noticeably expanded with all-new cutscenes and Terminals to track down during the campaign, which better tie the original Halo's story into its sequels, and lay the groundwork for the upcoming Halo 4 quite well!

- The ability to use Kinect to scan environmental details, weapons and enemies to read up on in a library feature is a great idea for expanding your knowledge of the Halo universe, should you have a desire to do so.


WHAT I DIDN'T SO MUCH:

- Level navigation is a major pain in the ass, since, even with the updated visuals, level designs all look too similar, and the game doesn't do a good job of pointing you in the right direction, leaving you to waste a lot of time wandering aimlessly.

- Checkpoints feel glitchy and unreliable, a flaw that REALLY should have been fixed in this remake. Many times, checkpoints just won't trigger, unfairly kicking you further back into a level than the game should when you are killed.

- The Kinect voice commands aren't terribly useful, and with the exception of scanning objects for the library, none of them are a good substitute for a standard button press on the controller.


AND HERE'S THE FULL REVIEW:

2012 is sort of an interesting year in the sense that I'll be revisiting BOTH of the two very first game reviews I ever wrote this year, back when I just had a private webspace to muse in during high school in 2005. The first of these was The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap on the Game Boy Advance, which I'll soon be revisiting and typing a revised review for during Zeldafest. The second was Halo: Combat Evolved on the Xbox, a game I was eager to talk about at the time, since up until that point, I never really bothered to hop aboard the Xbox bandwagon during the full start of the last console generation back in 2001. I was content to spend most of my gaming time on Japanese RPGs upon my PS2, whilst not neglecting the Nintendo brands I already loved on the GameCube, simply utilizing my Game Boy Advance whenever I was to take my gaming on the go. Thus, I felt I had no need for an Xbox, which was mainly sustained on shooters, driving games and sports games, none of which I really cared about at the time, and only shooters is a genre I've since picked up and gotten into in adulthood. During the fateful Christmas of 2004 however, when I had received a shiny new DS to muck about with, my little brother happened to receive his own Xbox, and with it came Halo 2. I'd sampled the original Halo game at my cousins' house the previous year, which I relayed to my girlfriend at the time after explaining that we had finally adopted an Xbox after she'd happened to buy one for her little brother that same year. I mentioned that we only had Halo 2, and skipped the original Halo, leading to her surprising me with the original Halo game for my birthday just a few weeks later, so that I, too could enjoy my brother's new Xbox. It was sweet, but I wasn't sure what to make of it, since the only shooter I'd ever really owned, played and gotten so deeply entrenched in as to max everything out completely, was Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64. Could Halo possibly be that good? Well, I suppose it was, because while Goldeneye 007 may have been the first shooter that I really dove into and played extensively, Halo: Combat Evolved was the game I credit for starting my love affair with shooters, and consequently, it officially began my relationship with the Xbox brand, which thus shared my attention with Nintendo and PlayStation as an equal to this day. Anyway, when I was finally given time to play Halo 1's campaign, and not just mess about in local multiplayer skirmishes with my cousins (Xbox Live was a fledgling service that most people hadn't adopted at the time, unlike now, when just about every Xbox 360 owner I know seems to have an account on it), I finally saw what the fuss was about. After joyfully completing the campaign of Halo 1, I immediately nicked my brother's copy of Halo 2 when he wasn't looking and played through that as well, giddily taking on hordes of Covenant aliens with a varied arsenal of weapons, vehicles and mission environments at my disposal which, at the time, represented the cutting edge of first-person shooter gaming on a console! This is why I ultimately chose to make Halo: Combat Evolved the very second game review I ever wrote, and along with a now ex-girlfriend who also happens to love the series, I preordered Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary at my local games retailer the second I was able. Formally announced at Microsoft's E3 2011 Press Conference after numerous leaks in the media, this high-definition remastering of the original Halo game promised to bring back the game that launched the Xbox, with a full visual makeover, the addition of both online play on Xbox Live as well as Achievements, Kinect functionality, and an expanded storyline that also included hidden Terminals to track down during the campaign, which would help set up more backstory, while also laying the groundwork for the upcoming Halo 4, which is coming to the Xbox 360 towards the end of 2012. I was interested to see if my opinion of Halo Anniversary would change from when I was a teenager, after playing an enhanced version of the game as an adult, especially since Halo Anniversary is the very first game by new series developer, 343 Industries (which seems to be commonly abbreviated to 343i), after the original series developer, Bungie, left the Halo franchise to work a ten-year deal with Activision. After playing through the game, I can say that my opinion on Halo 1 sort of hasn't changed, but sort of has too. On the one hand, I still love this game, and I still think that it's a lot of fun. The story is still awesome, the soundtrack is still incredible, and it's surprising how enjoyable even the original Halo arsenal of weapons is to wield against the alien scum plaguing the game world. On the other hand though, many elements of Halo 1 have not aged gracefully since 2001 and the original Xbox generation, and they're all the more noticeable in 2012 when you play this game on an Xbox 360, even with the new HD gloss and Achievements added in to spice up the campaign further. Halo Anniversary really makes you appreciate all of the subtle tweaks and rebalances in Halo 3 and Halo: Reach especially, since the weapon imbalance is now really noticeable, the vehicles suddenly handle terribly, the bad AI really sticks out, and the repetitive, sprawling level design is all too easy to get lost and turned around in, making navigation much more difficult than it ever was in the Halo sequels and prequel. To make matters worse, one of my main gripes with the original game back in my review of it from 2005 is STILL a persistent problem in the HD remake, and that's that the game's checkpoints seem to be glitched, and often trigger at random, giving no rhyme or reason to your progress and how far back you're kicked if you die throughout the campaign's stages. This is a really irritating flaw that 343i really should have fixed! That said though, Halo Anniversary doesn't strive to impress per se, it strives to remind us of how the series began, providing a great new way for Halo fans to relive the original game for nostalgia's sake, made easier by some added bells and whistles. It's true that you could spend a lesser $15 to download the unaltered original Halo game directly onto your Xbox 360's hard drive via the Xbox Originals service, but the added perks to Halo Anniversary are worth paying the extra cash for if you really love the Halo series, especially since Microsoft is pricing the game at a rather reasonable $40. This could have been a lazy remake which 343i could have farted onto the shelf after slapping HD capability on the original Xbox game's graphics and calling it a day, but the package is put together surprisingly well, with more features than you'd expect, making this HD remake a clear cut above most others. There are still disappointments and missed opportunities in Halo Anniversary as a remake of Halo 1, and again, despite the visual update, Halo Anniversary leaves the gameplay completely unchanged from the original Halo game beyond the addition of Achievements and some new hidden easter eggs, so you'll have to put up with a fair amount of dated game design if you want to give this game a go. If you can take this as a celebration of the series' origin, and not a modern, fully-loaded Xbox 360 shooter (I'd direct your attention to Gears of War 3 if that's what you're looking for), you should find that Halo Anniversary is a strong remake package that's worth the attention of any Halo fan.

Gameplay: 6/10- So, if by some miracle you're an Xbox gamer that's somehow never played a Halo game before, allow me to tell you how Halo Anniversary is played. You take control of Spartan-117, better known by his military rank, Master Chief, a super soldier fighting alongside humanity in a war against a fanatical alien conglomerate called the Covenant. The story campaign, easily the bulk of Halo Anniversary's package, is broken up into ten levels, which you progress through by moving about from one point of interest to the next, either shooting or avoiding Covenant foes that stand in your way. I barely mentioned those OTHER alien foes in my original review of Halo 1, the Flood, since I was worried that it would be a spoiler, but now, the presence of the Flood is common knowledge, so I can also safely reveal that you'll be battling against those parasitic monstrosities during the second half of the game as well. The arsenal of weapons and foes is at its most minimalist in Halo Anniversary, since this is a remastering of the very first Halo game after all, so you won't get nearly as many enemies to attack, and nearly as many guns to wield. The human arsenal is very basic and familiar, with your expected helping of Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifle, which Bungie never even bothered to give a proper name to way back in 2001, and 343i hasn't changed things up there. The human guns are best defined by the absurdly overpowered Pistol, one of the most memorable elements of Halo 1, since it carries a fair bit of ammo, and immediately kills any enemy that you can pop in the head. Even if you go for a body shot, only about three or four bullets puts them down too, and since 343i is very reverent of the original game's legacy, they've left this bad boy in the game exactly as it was in 2001, for better or for worse. The Pistol was re-introduced in Halo: Reach, the stellar series prequel from 2010 if you weren't aware, albeit a rebalanced version. This is the original super awesome Pistol that avid Halo fans associate with the first game though, to the point where it's even what Master Chief was given to wield on the game's box art! Wow! Anyway, complementing the human guns are Covenant guns, and these are also the most basic weapons that have gone on to define the Covenant's arsenal throughout the series. The Covenant's sticky Plasma Grenades complement the humans' standard Frag Grenades (you can switch between them with a tap of the B button), and from there, you've got your chargeable Plasma Pistol, your rapid-firing Plasma Rifle, and... well, honestly that about sums it up. You'll see glimpses of weapons that are useable in future Halo titles like the Fuel Rod Cannon and the Energy Sword, but Master Chief was never able to use them in 2001, so he's not able to use them in Halo Anniversary unfortunately. More current Covenant enemies like Brutes and Prophets are also not in the game at all, with gradually upgraded versions of the same recurring foes sustaining the Covenant forces. You get your basic Grunts that are weak and cowardly by themselves, but tougher in numbers, your Jackals that deflect most bullets with their sturdy shields and are best felled with melee attacks (done by pressing Right Bumper), and of course, your Elites, the Covenant CO's that wield stronger weapons and take much more punishment to put down. Big, armoured Hunters also show up every now and again, but they're just tossed in with the regular forces as much more manageable foes, unlike the follow-ups that have pretty much made them powerful and ruthless to the point of being bona fide minibosses. This enemy variety seems simplistic, and honestly, it kind of is, but again, we have to remember that this was the very first Halo game from 2001, and that means putting aside all of the improvements from later in the series that we've probably come to take for granted, even if the Flood never really moved past its own trifecta; Infection Form (the little crawlies that kamikaze charge you in great numbers), Carrier Form (Flood blobs that explode and split into Infection Forms, damaging what's around them when they're shot), and Combat Form (intelligent Flood that wield both human and Covenant weapons, also sporting a deadly melee assault). Speaking of improvements that we've come to take for granted, this brings me to the vehicles, and to be honest, you never noticed it before back in the original Xbox generation, but they've been improved IMMENSELY in subsequent Halo titles. Honestly, in the original game, they kind of sucked, and it's more noticeable than ever now that Bungie had gradually improved them in three succeeding Halo titles, and 343i, again, is preserving them exactly as they were in 2001 for Halo Anniversary. The vehicles are unbalanced in the sense that they provide ample protection for Covenant in the case of the swift-moving Ghosts, high-flying Banshees and tank-esque Wraiths, but if Master Chief hops into any of these, or the handful of human vehicles (since this is Halo 1, you're limited to Warthog jeeps and a Scorpion tank at one point for the human side), you'll find that he's extremely poorly shielded, and is a sitting duck to enemy fire on top of that, since every vehicle in the game handled like a clunky shopping cart back in Halo 1, and as expected, this is the case again in Halo Anniversary. When I was allowed to take command of a Scorpion tank in the fifth level for example, I kept fuming at the game because of how many times I died while trying to navigate that massive tin can around, which seemed to have all of the protective capacity of a wall of tissue paper. I'm sorry, I AM driving a tank, right?! The Scorpion is still powerful, but its armour is pathetic in the original Halo, especially on Heroic and Legendary difficulty, not to mention that its shells are MUCH less accurate to boot! Even in Halo 2, the Scorpion was improved so much, but as much as it's stiff and clunky to drive, that's nothing compared to the Warthog. Honestly, when you climb into a Warthog, you'll be convinced that Master Chief chugged an entire flask of hard liquor, or is driving with a blindfold, because the handling is godawful. The final challenge of the campaign forces you into a Warthog jeep to escape an exploding facility under a time limit, and while this would have been pretty manageable in the follow-ups, it is RIDICULOUSLY cumbersome in Halo 1 when you have to deal with the piss poor vehicle control, but I'll elaborate more on this in the appropriate paragraph. It just doesn't make sense to have the vehicles so clumsy though, and even the Ghosts and Banshees slide and swerve around wildly like Master Chief has the instruction manual held up to his face while he attempts to pilot them, and they're not even touching the ground! On the bright side though, vehicle segments aren't terribly common, and most of the time, you'll be battling the Covenant in wide open environments or narrow corridors. Unfortunately, this also brings attention to two other problems that were much easier to tolerate in 2001. These are both points of contention that I had even when I originally reviewed Halo 1 back in 2005, and I expected to be dealing with them yet again in Halo Anniversary, but these two flaws have only become more irritating than ever unfortunately, especially considering how far first-person shooter games have progressed on consoles in ten years, after Halo paved the way for them. As impressive as the sprawling, lengthy levels would have been to someone who had just taken a chance on the fledgling Xbox console in 2001, the level design has now become one of Halo Anniversary's most persistent problems in 2012. The levels are very large, but by today's standard, the design is repetitive and banal to the point of feeling really lazy, and it's an element of Halo Anniversary that is REALLY stuck in 2001! Even though Halo Anniversary sets you loose in a wide open environment with plenty to explore, everything looks the same, and the level design is rather poorly varied. Granted, Halo 1 was a launch title for the original Xbox, so it would have been easier to swallow back then, but now, these open environments are extremely irritating to navigate at the worst of times. There's no compass or objective indicator, or anything that points you to the next point of progress, so you're often left to waste minutes on end just wandering about aimlessly like a dumbass, often getting turned around and lost continually because everything looks EXACTLY THE SAME! 343i occasionally tries to add in some displays on the flooring in the indoor areas to help point you in the right direction if you're playing with the updated graphics enabled, but they can't do this in the outdoor environments, which are even larger and even more confusing to slog through. Even the various firefights can feel repetitive in the especially lengthy missions, and this is yet another highly dated design element that really makes you appreciate how varied even the more average FPS games can often be nowadays. This flaw is compounded by another flaw, and one that I think 343i actually could have, and should have ironed out in this remake, and that's the infamously glitchy checkpoint system. Checkpoints have absolutely no consistency in Halo Anniversary, just like in Halo 1. There's times where the game will throw three checkpoints at you within three seconds of each other for no reason at all, and there's other times where checkpoints will just never trigger, even after you've shot your way through three Covenant patrols and hiked a considerable distance through your current level. Unfortunately, the latter case is a big problem, especially on Heroic and Legendary difficulty where it's all too easy to die, since if Master Chief is killed, you'll be kicked ALL THE WAY BACK to your last checkpoint, which may force you through certain frustrating sections continually. You do have the option of bypassing whatever enemies you can, and doing so can sometimes prevent checkpoints from being triggered, but this is a dated flaw that really had no excuse not to be fixed, since it essentially amounts to a glitched problem with the game that doesn't need to be there in the remake, as it's not nostalgic, it's just irritating. It may sound like my opinion of Halo 1 has really soured since I became an adult, but that's not necessarily true. When the campaign is fun, it's really fun! It's just that not all of it has really aged well since the original game's release in 2001, and some of these dated elements can be really tiresome, especially to people who don't really know what they're getting into, should they be like me and not have joined the Xbox community right away, possibly missing the original Halo game in the process. If you go into Halo Anniversary knowing that it's trying to preserve the series' legacy, warts and all, then it comes with the territory and you'll know that, but playing through this campaign may mostly do wonders for renewing your appreciation of Halo: Reach! On the bright side though, at least the addition of Achievements give you more incentive to master even the more dated challenges in Halo Anniversary's campaign (and yes, every last Achievement is earned exclusively in the campaign), and there's a few new goodies to track down too, specifically hidden Skulls, which have become a series tradition since Halo 2, and Terminals, which are newly added into this game after debuting in Halo 3: ODST. If you're a Halo fan, you already know this, but if you're not in the loop, Skulls can be located in the campaign to activate extra challenges when you replay any level that you've completed. Some Skulls are harmless, like making Grunts burst with confetti when they die, and some are even beneficial, such as giving you infinite ammo, but many of them exist to provide a sadistic new challenge for the most die-hard of Halo gamers, such as disabling your HUD and auto-aim, making explosions twice as ranged and powerful, making you expend twice as many bullets when you fire your weapons, and even forcing you to restart a WHOLE level from the beginning if you die, which is truly unforgiving when you consider Halo 1's sprawling, repititious level design! The Terminals, thankfully, are much less masochistic, and they basically exist to provide all-new backstory from the perspective of one of the pivotal story characters, 343 Guilty Spark, the monitor of the Halo world that the game takes place on. Even the normal cutscenes have been expanded and given new plot elements when you see them with the updated graphics enabled (they're identical to their more simplistic Xbox counterparts when playing with the classic graphics), though the Terminals will be especially interesting to Halo fans, since not only do they expand the story of Halo 1, but they also lay some teasing groundwork for the events of the upcoming Halo 4, which will start the series' new 'Reclaimer Trilogy' later this year! Should you happen to have a Kinect, you can also use its voice recognition by saying, "Analyze!" to activate an analysis mode that lets you scan weapons, interesting environmental features and enemies when you then say, "Scan!", in order to read up on them in a library section from the main menu. Yes, Halo Anniversary marks the very first Xbox 360 game that I've reviewed which happens to be compatible with Kinect, though the Kinect support is limited, and it's not even advertised on the game box at all, only being mentioned in a tiny blurb in the instruction manual, with the game itself telling you which voice commands can be used. The Kinect support is very limited, and it feels like something that was mainly mandated by Microsoft, and not necessarily the vision of 343i, but I suppose that 'not terribly useful or necessary' is better than 'frustrating and broken'. You can use certain voice commands like, "Grenade!" to toss a grenade or, "Reload!" to reload your weapon, but there's a slightly delay between you speaking the word and the game recognizing it, and sometimes it doesn't even recognize the word over the noise in the game too. Thus, it's usually better to just stick with the buttons, since you don't want to die in a heated firefight and get booted back considerably because Kinect wouldn't read your voice properly! You can also use voice commands to pause and unpause the game, cycle between the updated and classic graphics, and turn the 3D visuals on and off if you happen to own a 3D television, but while the options tweaking beats sifting through the Options menu continually, the graphics cycling and pausing still don't really make good substitutes for just tapping the Back button or the Start button respectively. Again, the Kinect features aren't broken or bad in any way, they're just sort of redundant, though I do kind of like the scanning feature, even if it's completely asinine that it deactivates itself after about ten seconds or so, forcing you to start barking at Kinect to turn it back on because you're not done scanning things. As I said, the bulk of Halo Anniversary's package is the campaign, and the game's multiplayer suite is actually considered to be under Halo: Reach on your Xbox Profile, not under Halo Anniversary! Thus, you're basically paying your $40 pretty well entirely for the campaign, since you have the option of just downloading Halo Anniversary's remastered maps separately to play on your Halo: Reach disc via Xbox Live Marketplace at a much smaller price. This brings me to one of the most surprising missed opportunities in the remake; The multiplayer. 343i pretty much immediately threw in the towel when it came to trying to surpass Bungie's incredible work on Halo: Reach's multiplayer especially, most apparent when you consider that they enlisted a whole other development studio, Certain Affinity, to try and replicate Bungie's multiplayer programming, with 343i focusing entirely on Halo Anniversary's campaign. Rather than simply make all of Halo 1's multiplayer maps playable online, there's simply a small collection of six maps from the game that are treated as an expansion to Halo: Reach's multiplayer, not as their own multiplayer suite. This is a real let-down, and if you're crossing your fingers for Firefight Mode, I'd release them, since there's only one new Firefight mission, inspired by the second level of Halo 1, and it's also treated as an expansion to Halo: Reach's Firefight missions, not as its own independent Firefight Mode. In a sense, Halo Anniversary doesn't even really have multiplayer, so if you were hoping to finally take the original game's local-only multiplayer online exactly as it was in 2001, well, you're shit out of luck, friend. You could view the combined $40 package as going towards a Halo: Reach map pack and a remastered Halo 1 campaign with a few added goodies, but it's still kind of disappointing that there's no real independent multiplayer mode on offer here. Halo Anniversary also yet again limits the campaign co-op to just one other person, and they have to be on your Xbox Live friends list if you want to play with them online, since there's no campaign matchmaking in Halo Anniversary, despite both Halo 3 and Halo: Reach featuring it, while also allowing you to play their campaigns with up to four players at once. It's a little more nostalgic to just have a friend pick up a second Xbox 360 controller and play split-screen co-op with you, but being able to play Halo 1's campaign with a full squad of four players online feels like yet another missed opportunity that wasn't meant to be. As much as I find myself annoyed and occasionally even infuriated by Halo 1's blatantly dated design elements and 343i's stubborn desire to leave them completely intact, I still must respect the vision behind this package though. Halo Anniversary preserves the game as it is, challenging gamers to accept the series' origin for what it is, even if that origin hasn't always aged gracefully. Halo 1's design is showing a lot more cracks in 2012, but that's not to say that the game isn't fun during its better points, and it does benefit from the updated graphics and additional goodies, so while it's the same annoying campaign from 2001, at least Halo Anniversary gives you a much better way to play it than just pulling the unaltered Halo 1 off of Xbox Originals, with no added bonuses. Even if this is a dated game experience, at least it's a game experience that 343i clearly put a lot of heart and dedication into reviving in the most faithful way possible, and I suppose you have to respect that.

Innovation: N/A- Being an HD remake of an Xbox game from 2001, Halo Anniversary really doesn't strive for modern convention. This is a game meant to tickle the nostalgia of longtime Halo devotees, but thankfully, it does so very well, even if it means swallowing a fair bit of dated design flaws in the process.

Controls: 8/10- The original game's controls are adapted reasonably well to the Xbox 360 controller, though Master Chief's increased sluggishness compared to more recent Halo games will take a bit of getting used to after likely spending so much time with this series' follow-up titles. Chief no longer jumps nearly as high, and he moves rather slowly, with no ability to sprint, which makes slogging through the massive, empty levels even more of a chore. At least the button assignment isn't difficult to keep straight. As with most other Halo titles, you move with the Left Thumbstick, aim your target reticule with the Right Thumbstick, press in the Right Thumbstick to zoom in with appropriate weapons, press in the Left Thumbstick to crouch, turn your flashlight on and off with Left Bumper, melee attack with Right Bumper, toss a grenade with Left Trigger, fire your gun with Right Trigger, jump with the A button, switch between your guns with the Y button, reload and interact with points of interest with the X button, switch grenade types with the B button, pause the game with the Start button, and switch between the classic and remastered visuals using the Back button. Should you possess a Kinect, you can also use voice commands to toggle the old and new graphics, toggle the 3D graphics, reload your gun, toss a grenade, or scan something into the library, but if you don't have a Kinect, you don't really lose anything, as the Kinect controls are pretty redundant and minimal. There's absolutely no motion control either, and the peripheral only makes use of its voice recognition in Halo Anniversary. Again though, if you have yet to drop the investment on a Kinect, don't sweat it, because its implementation feels a tad gimmicky, and it really doesn't add anything to the experience. The standard controller is just fine, but even if the button placement is never an issue, it may be a bit jarring to suddenly have to deal with the vehicles' surprisingly clumsy, generally poor handling from Halo 1 again. Warthogs, Ghosts, Banshees and Scorpions all clunkily careen around all over the place, with surprisingly poor mobility and defenses, and it's all too easy to accidentally eject Master Chief from your vehicle in the case of the Warthog and Ghost especially, because you flipped it on some tiny piece of terrain. Again, at least vehicles don't come into the campaign often, but man were they ever improved in follow-ups, because they're borderline useless in Halo 1!

Graphics: 8/10- Like I said, it would have been really easy for 343i to phone in an HD gloss upon the unchanged 2001 Xbox visuals and call it a day. Thankfully though, they put in much more effort than that, and what could have been a lazy, cash grab HD remake is instead a surprisingly solid package visually. This is mainly because, rather than just shoehorning HD capability onto the original graphics, 343i actually tweaked the entire campaign's visuals from the ground up, bringing them more in line with the designs in Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. The environments are very extensively updated, featuring surprising amounts of added detail that really bring them to life a lot better than the plain-looking designs of 2001, and this is easily seen when you use the Back button (or Kinect) to cycle between the classic and remastered graphics at your leisure. Seeing the immense improvements to the updated graphics compared to their Xbox inspiration is really incredible, and it's very commendable to see how much added effort 343i put into revitalizing the visuals in Halo Anniversary! This doesn't change the fact that level designs are still too repetitive and overly similar, making them needlessly difficult to navigate, but the developers have really risen to the occasion with the new graphics, and there's really no reason to play the campaign without them enabled, especially since they add in new story sequences! The fact that you can play the game with up to 1080p HD graphics and even in 3D if you've invested in a 3D television is all the more impressive as well! With that said though, even though 343i has done a very impressive job in helping Halo 1 make the leap to Xbox 360-caliber visuals, Halo Anniversary still falls short of the system's top visual offerings, and even Halo: Reach had superior graphics to Halo Anniversary in some respects. It looks impressive, but the Xbox 360 has still done better. That said though, you really have to commend 343i for not half-assing Halo Anniversary's visuals, and with this much effort put into updating the graphics for 2011, Halo 4 is sure to really be a visual stunner when it arrives toward the end of this year!

Presentation: 10/10- Again, 343i really knocked it out of the park here, because Halo Anniversary is beautifully presented as a package that the developers clearly poured a lot of heart into. The small, but very noteworthy addition of being able to freely cycle between the classic and remastered visuals during main gameplay (though not in cutscenes unfortunately), as well as the new menus that neatly present the added goodies from Terminals to Skulls to library information all goes toward making Halo Anniversary come off as a much more polished product than most other HD remakes, especially since it actually redid all of the graphics instead of just taking the same graphics and giving them HD capability. The new cutscenes are highly appreciated, and the teases for the direction of Halo 4's story should really be great for getting fans pumped to see what's next for the series, now that 343i has taken over for Bungie!

Sound: 9/10- The music in Halo 1 hasn't aged a day, and it still marks one of the very best orchestral soundtracks that's ever been featured in any console shooter, period. 343i wisely left the original soundtrack untouched in Halo Anniversary, which was a good move, because the music was one of the best and most timeless elements of the original game, and it really doesn't need to be changed. I felt an undeniable sense of glee as I once again heard the original Halo theme sound in the background while I navigated menus and experienced the most epic, memorable moments of Halo 1's campaign all over again, and the other tunes have remained equally appealing even over ten years later as well! Even if 343i left the music alone though, they actually beefed up the sound effects a bit, which is appreciated. Weapons sound much more powerful and surge with a huge amount of added weight and power, compensating very effectively for the somewhat weak-sounding weapons in the original Xbox game. One of the potential gripes that some purists may have with the updated sound effects is that they remain updated even when you're playing with the classic visuals, so they'll still remind you that you're playing an Xbox 360 remake even when you're looking at the standard-definition 2001 graphics. The voice acting has also remained unchanged since 2001, even the more shaky delivery that's sadly much more common in Halo 1 than it is in its sequels, which all feature MUCH better voice acting, and this sometimes creates a rift in quality, since the new scenes specifically for Halo Anniversary obviously feature new voice recordings, which are leaps and bounds better than the original voice acting all of a sudden, something that can, again, take you out of the illusion of re-experiencing Halo 1. Another more disappointing element of that, which will no doubt piss off purists, is the more menacing and monstrous Grunt voices from Halo 1, which actually made a comeback in Halo: Reach, and that they are sadly gone again in Halo Anniversary, even when you play with the classic graphics. They've been replaced with the more comedic, silly Grunt voices from Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST, and that will make some people upset I'm sure, since the alteration is kind of inexplicable, especially when 343i has gone to such lengths to preserve the rest of Halo 1's gameplay elements, for better or for worse. You can still experience the original more monstrous Grunt voices in Halo: Reach, but I don't get why 343i suddenly made the Grunts sound like goofs again in Halo Anniversary when they didn't sound that way in the original Halo 1, even though, to be honest, I actually prefer the goofier Grunt voices, since I find that the original voices make the Grunts sound too much like the Elites, which doesn't really make sense. Still, it's another reminder that you're playing a remake, and I'm sure that many purists will take issue with that, however miniscule it will be to everyone else.

Story: 10/10- If there's one element that has really stood the test of time in Halo 1, it's the storyline. In my opinion, this was what really made Halo 1 into the groundbreaking Xbox launch title that it was! The plot was just amazing, and it's been expanded upon beautifully from this origin point, which still marks one of the best Halo stories of the lot! 343i has made the story even better with the addition of the new Terminals and all-new story cutscenes as well, which better ties Halo 1 into its follow-ups, and starts fueling the fires of speculation for the plot direction of the upcoming Halo 4 while it's at it! If you aren't familiar with the original Halo game's plot, which still has the same progression in Halo Anniversary obviously, allow me to explain for you; The game begins in the 26th Century, with humans waging a galactic-scale war against a fanatical alien conglomerate known as the Covenant. To help turn the tide on the Covenant, the humans have started a super soldier program to create highly enhanced fighters called Spartans, one of which being John-117, a.k.a. Master Chief. After spending a while in sustained hibernation, Master Chief is awakened to a Covenant attack on his craft, the Pillar of Autumn, and is forced to make a quick getaway onto a shuttlecraft, which takes him to a mysterious ring-like structure in space called a 'Halo'. Landing on the surprisingly natural landscape of the planet-like Halo structure, Master Chief learns that the Covenant are desperately trying to gain control of the ring world's higher functions for unknown purposes. Racing the Covenant to Halo's inner workings, Master Chief must discover the mystery of the ring, and put a stop to the Covenant's mysterious campaign before disaster strikes the galaxy! That's the gist of Halo 1's backstory without spoilers, but it only gets better as the plot goes on! Even though I knew all of the turnouts, all of the emotional moments still had impact, and all of the shocking moments still took me to the edge of my seat, right up to the quite literally explosive finale! Even if the gameplay has become a bit dated, this story is as incredible as it ever was even ten years later!

Difficulty: 7/10- Even on the Normal difficulty, Master Chief's less impressive mobility and defenses make him quite easy to defeat compared to the Halo games that would succeed the first. Explosions will immediately take his health down to almost nothing if they don't kill him outright (and on Heroic and Legendary difficulty, they almost always will, even at full strength), and even in vehicles, it's pretty easy to shred through his shields and health. The overwhelming amounts of enemies and weaker player character make Halo 1 noticeably tougher than its follow-ups, and that hasn't changed in Halo Anniversary, so be ready for a stiffer challenge that hasn't pulled any punches since 2001!

Replay Value: 7/10- The campaigns of the three other Halo games on the Xbox 360 are all much better and more replayable than that of Halo Anniversary, but at least the new hidden goodies and Achievements provide reason to replay the game, even if the multiplayer is technically a separate entity existing as an expansion to Halo: Reach, rather than standing on its own. That's disappointing.

Extras: 7/10- Again, it's nice that 343i clearly went to considerable effort to throw in some new goodies, and tracking down hidden Terminals and Skulls will still effectively keep Halo gamers busy along with the Achievement roster, which only has a couple of doozies, and shouldn't take too long to fully conquer for Halo veterans. Even on a pretty standard playthrough, Halo Anniversary is more generous with its Achievements than most of the other Halo games on the Xbox 360, and that, paired with the weaker multiplayer package, gives Halo Anniversary less perks and replay incentive compared to Halo: Reach in particular. Once you track down all of the hidden easter eggs, the extras kind of dry up, but I suppose that the winking speculation of the Terminals in regards to Halo 4 is an extra in and of itself that should keep fans effectively tided over while they wait for the franchise's next proper entry later this year.

Conclusion- As a remake package, Halo Anniversary exceeds expectation. 343i has gone the extra mile to place this game several notches above most other HD remakes, between a stellar presentation, some really fun extras and expanding upon the story in some really neat ways. Unfortunately, even if the presentation is even better than it was on the original Xbox in 2001, the gameplay hasn't totally stood the test of time. Most of Halo Anniversary's campaign is still fun to play, but the frustrating level navigation, unbalanced gunfights and terrible vehicle handling are much more noticeable and problematic now, since this series has continued to improve itself across four follow-up efforts. Again though, Halo Anniversary is not striving to impress a modern crowd of gamers. It seems to be meant exclusively for people who love Halo as much as the developers clearly do. Yes, there's missed opportunities in the package, from its pitiful multiplayer offering to its dated gameplay elements to the rather redundant implementation of Kinect, but when you stack up how much effort has clearly gone into the package of Halo Anniversary, it's not only a great way to re-experience a beloved first-person shooter classic, but it's also proof positive that 343i is quite serious about maintaining Halo's immense quality standard. Bungie, God bless 'em, did great things for this series, but after playing Halo Anniversary, I'm confident that this franchise is in the best possible hands with its new developer, since this is a studio clearly comprised of people who genuinely love Halo, and they're clearly dead set on delivering the best Halo products possible! Even though Halo Anniversary worked at making me appreciate how far the series has come since its beginnings in 2001, it also assured me that 343i is bound to deliver a fantastic game when Halo 4 finally arrives, which is assuring, since it's my second-most anticipated game of 2012, only behind Mass Effect 3, and I'm really hoping that it lives up to its promise in starting a new Halo trilogy! If Halo Anniversary is any indication though, 343i is going to do their damned best to make Halo 4 one of the best Xbox 360 games of the year, and I'm really stoked to see what they bring to the series going forward! So, I suppose the lingering question is, if you own an Xbox 360, is Halo Anniversary worth your money? Well, it's only $40 on the bright side, which is $20 cheaper than the average Xbox 360 game at launch, and that's great, since Microsoft appears to have wisely learned their lesson from charging a ridiculous $70 for Halo 3: ODST at launch, a game that really should have been a DLC expansion in the end, understandably sparking a fan outcry with the Halo community being so blatantly screwed over. $40 is a much better value for a game like this, one that's clearly meant exclusively for Halo fans, and those eager to become Halo fans. Honestly though, if you want to get into the Halo franchise, I wouldn't start here, because this isn't a real testament to what the series has done with the FPS genre nowadays. If you've never touched Halo before and want to give it a try, do yourself a favour and put down your hard-earned cash on Halo: Reach instead. It's much more current, it's a much meatier package, and when it comes down to it, it's also a noticeably better game, on top of being a prequel, requiring no prior knowledge of the canon. Halo Anniversary works best as a game for the fans, who either want to experience the series' origin after having missed it the first time, or who want to relive the game that launched their love of the Halo franchise, and probably of the Xbox brand in general back in 2001. While you can download the unaltered Halo 1 onto your Xbox 360's hard drive via Xbox Originals for only 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15), I'd advise shelling out the extra dollars for this remake if you have the disposable income, since the vastly improved presentation and added story bits, on top of the expansion maps and new Firefight mission to add to Halo: Reach included here, are well worth the budget retail price tag. You could cheap out and just pull the original game off of Xbox Originals, but you also get what you pay for. Besides, 343i has put lots of work into this remake, and if you're worried about it being a lazy HD cash-in, you can put those worries to rest, because the package is given a pretty generous amount of added features that 343i didn't necessarily have to implement if they didn't want to. If you love Halo as much as they do, you should buy the game and reward that hard work. It's true that Halo 1's campaign hasn't aged well in several respects, and it can't hold a candle to Halo: Reach in particular, but as a nostalgic throwback and a testament to the dedication of 343i, Halo Anniversary is a winning HD remake that Halo fans should definitely pick up and experience while they bide the time for Halo 4. The more frustrating, outdated aspects may simply renew your appreciation for the follow-ups, but maybe that's part of the vision too. Halo Anniversary may not be a pitch-perfect gameplay experience, but as a celebration of Halo's legacy, it simultaneously honours the past while showing promise for the future, and I suppose that makes it a damn fine anniversary gift indeed!



FINAL SCORE: 80% "GREAT!"

FINAL VERDICT: "Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is more impressive as a package than as a game, since 343 Industries' development efforts are much easier to appreciate than the rather dated, occasionally frustrating campaign from the original Halo game. As a great way to scratch that nostalgic itch for Halo fans though, as well as a show of good faith that 343i is going to do this series proud after Bungie's departure, this is an HD remake that's much better than most, and longtime Halo fans would do well to add it to their collection!"