Retro Review “Halo”

 

By Lakyn Gardner

lagardner@lc.edu

Hello and welcome to the final Reto Review. It’s been an honor to get to write for you guys each week and recommend a game each week I hope a couple of people got a chance to try some games out for the first time or revisit an old one and have a good nostalgia trip. Thank you for taking the time to read this article and the bridge paper as a whole there’s a lot of very hard workers and amazing designers that put a lot of time and effort into the website and the paper. Without further ado let’s get into it. Halo combat evolved was the first entry into the Halo series. Halo is developed by Bungie and published in 2001 for the Xbox and Windows PC. Unfortunately, I don’t have much nostalgia for this game I didn’t play it until I was 17 when I bought an Xbox for the first time just to play old games. This time for the game review I played it on PC as it was re-released about a year ago. In retro fashion, I played it on the old graphics settings just to get a taste for what people felt back then.

I must say I enjoyed the game a lot it was very action-packed and unlike any game I reviewed. I must add I’m a very big Halo fan I’ve played every single entry and have read quite a bit about the lore. Halo doesn’t seem to hold your hand nearly as much, it lets you find everything out as you go. Our story follows a recently awakened Master Chief who is entrusted with an AI known as Cortana to protect the location of the Earth so the covenant aliens can’t find it.  It feels like an adventure as most of the description of the objectives are very bland and generic so you have to find out on your way what you’re going to get yourself into. Looking back it’s very fun, but in the moment you’re very confused as to what you’re doing. As for the controls it feels very well thought out I constantly switched between a controller and keyboard and mouse to get the feel for both players, and I had no complaints. I did find myself a little bored at times as the terrain it’s very boring to look at. Even in the updated version, the textures all feel the same regardless of where you’re at. I think there’s something to be said about how enjoyable Master Chief’s voice is listening to him speak makes you want to pursue the game further, and further in because he makes you feel immersed and invincible.

All in all, I give this game a 7 out of 10. It’s a bit of a lower score than most people would probably expect. However, the replayability of this game is lackluster, the textures get boring to look at, and killing the same things over, and over again gets tedious. As someone who’s played through every single difficulty and has gotten every achievement in the game, I know how boring it can get. If you’re playing it for the first time I’m sure the universe will suck you in making your first few playthroughs memorable but after that it gets dry. Again thank you all for your time and have a wonderful day bye-bye.

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