The Father of Modern FPS Games: Revolutionary But Flawed

Being someone who was primarily a PlayStation player for their whole life I never had much of an opportunity to play much from the Halo franchise, a franchise that is pretty much the poster child for the XBOX and it's the franchise that largely gave Microsoft a hold in the gaming world. It also happens to be the game that spawned what we know as the modern FPS, with features and ideas that would be crossed over into many famous FPS games and franchises going forward, and you just have to respect what Bungie did on that level. I've played many FPS games but of course I never got the opportunity to play a Halo game up until recently, and I decided to go through the whole franchise game-by-game to see what the hype was about, and of course Halo's journey begins with the first entry in the franchise, Combat Evolved.

By today's standards Combat Evolved has aspects about it that are fairly dated, but there's so much here that Bungie got right and they managed to craft it in a way that still feels great to this day, for example the gunplay which is easily the best part of the game as expected, each weapon in the game feels unique to itself and how they can effect certain enemy types adds an interesting dynamic to the gameplay. I know there's a lot of people who despise the newer graphics but I don't mind them, I think they're good for what they are and there's some genuinely great landscapes to be found throughout each of the campaign levels. Combat Evolved makes the player think about what to do next, particularly with the enemy types and how to exploit their weaknesses since each type is designed to function and be killed in a specific way, and like I said earlier that adds an interesting dynamic to the gameplay. Of course the very iconic soundtrack is amazing and is placed perfectly among certain missions, and the world that Combat Evolved builds is truly immersive even if I'm not fully with the story just yet.

But for everything that this game does right there's a lot that doesn't hold up. For one, the vehicle gameplay is very janky, this is to be expected considering how old Combat Evolved is, but it's a very noticeable flaw when it comes to ground vehicles, I had no issues with the air vehicles though. The level design is at times pretty lazy, particularly with some of the indoor map settings where it just seems like I'm walking through the same rooms and corridors over and over again, it can get confusing at points and while it's also an aspect that can be forgivable, it's still noticeable. But one of the biggest and probably the most unforgivable gripe I have with Combat Evolved is the mission entitled The Library, which is honestly one of the worst campaign missions that I have ever played in an FPS title. The map layouts are at their worst on this mission, the swarms of The Flood are complete bullshit and all you're really doing in the mission is waiting to get swarmed by them and it's extremely difficult even on Normal difficulty, it's barely a progressing mission at all and it's frustratingly bad in my opinion.

Even despite its shortcomings and poorly aged aspects, Halo: Combat Evolved is a very solid game that is incredibly admirable for what it achieved during its time. I had a decent enough time going through the campaign (I still need to give the multiplayer more time) and I only hope the following games get better.