3.5/5 ★ – jacklg's review of Halo: Combat Evolved.

Influential and beloved, but Halo is the biggest name in a genre I struggle to love. Obviously Halo CE is doing the best it can for the time, so the repetitive enemy types and limited environmental variety is forgivable - in fact, the way it uses its limitations is pretty great. The world looks cohesive and lived in, and it has a wonderful overall alien vibe that is kind of unmatched. Its peaceful but threatening, and the visuals have aged well. Whilst it feels as if there's no more than maybe 8 enemy types, most of which are introduced very early on, they're all very distinct and create fun gameplay scenarios. The gunplay itself feels great, and it probably has the most satisfying range of weapons in a shooter that I've experienced, each feeling fun and serving a unique purpose (shotgun is OP though lol). The movement feels sort of clunky and slow, the lack of a run button is very noticeable in retrospect, and the autoaim is perhaps a little too generous. But it works, and feels good. The campaign itself had a story that did nothing for me - Cortana was kinda annoying honestly, and I didn't feel the stakes at all, my eyes sorta glazed over whenever a cutscene started. The missions themselves were all very, very repetitive, and as I played on hard, I kept getting myself screwed over by the checkpoint system, which had no problem forcing me to stay stuck in an area with 20 enemies, whilst on 1HP, with no health packs anywhere. It was also cheesable, since the checkpoints seemed to generate at random, sometimes saving me halfway through a run at a section, which although I appreciate was to help me, ended up frustrating me, I don't appreciate the game locking me out of a challenge. Some later levels just threw an ungodly amount of enemies at me at a time, which can be fun, but feels like a cheaper way of escalating difficulty instead of introducing newer, harder enemies or objectives. When I can't do a section because a hundred dudes kill me before I even enter the room, it doesn't feel fair. But these issues don't distract from the experience generally being very pleasant. I had played the Resistance games before, and found the experience rather uninspired, but after playing Halo I realise this is just what the genre is like, and I can only assume the campaigns of such shooters simply don't have the time put into them that the multiplayer does. Hell, there wasn't even a single boss fight. Is it fair to call Halo underwhelming without putting time into the multiplayer? Of course not. But as somehow who only cares about single player experiences, Halo CE is fun and memorable, but not quite spectacular.