Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved is a 2001 first-person shooter game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The game was released on November 15, 2001 for the Xbox, with a Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X port released in 2003, and a downloadable Xbox 360 port released in 2007 as part of Xbox Originals. It is the first installment in the Halo franchise. Set in the 26th century, players assume the role of Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. Accompanied by an artificial intelligence construct named Cortana and the forces of the United Nations Space Command, players battle against an alien theocracy known as the Covenant while they attempt to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.
The development of what would eventually become Halo began in 1997. Initially, the game was a real-time strategy game that morphed into a third-person shooter before becoming a first-person shooter. Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, intending for Halo to be a launch title for the upcoming Xbox, and the game subsequently became a first-person shooter. Despite having a troubled development, Halo introduced multiple new features not previously seen in first-person shooters, many of which became standard in the genre. The game also features a multiplayer component.
Halo was a critical and commercial success and is often cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. Particular acclaim was given for its campaign, graphics, soundtrack, and multiplayer, although minor criticism focused on the campaign's level design. More than six million copies were sold worldwide by November 2005, making it the second best-selling Xbox game and spawning a multimedia franchise. A sequel, Halo 2, was released for the Xbox in 2004. A remaster of the game, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, was released for Xbox 360 by 343 Industries in 2011, the 10th anniversary of the original game's launch, and was re-released alongside the original competitive multiplayer as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection in 2014. A remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, is set for release on PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S in 2026.
Gameplay
Halo: Combat Evolved is a first-person shooter game in which players primarily experience gameplay in a 3D environment from a first-person view. The player can move around and look up, down, left, or right. The game features vehicles, ranging from armored 4×4s and tanks to alien hovercraft and aircraft, many of which can be controlled by the player. The game switches to a third-person perspective during vehicle use for pilots and mounted gun operators; passengers maintain a first-person view. The game's heads-up display includes a "motion tracker" that registers moving allies, moving or firing enemies, and vehicles in a certain radius of the player.The player character is equipped with an energy shield that nullifies damage from weapons fire and forceful impacts. The shield's charge appears as a blue bar in the corner of the game's heads-up display, and it automatically recharges if no damage is sustained for a brief period. When the shield is fully depleted, the player becomes highly vulnerable, and further damage reduces the hit points of their health meter. When this health meter reaches zero, the character dies and the game reloads from a saved checkpoint. Health can be replenished through the collection of health packs scattered around the game's levels.
The game's main enemy force is the Covenant, a group of alien species allied by belief in a common religion. Their forces include Elites, fierce warriors protected by recharging energy shields similar to the player's own; Grunts, which are short, cowardly creatures who may flee in terror if their leader is killed; Jackals, who wear a highly durable energy shield on one arm; and Hunters, large, armored creatures equipped with an explosive plasma cannon. A secondary enemy is the Flood, a parasitic alien life form that appears in several variants later in the game. Another enemy is the Sentinels, aerial robots designed by an extinct race called the Forerunners to protect their structures and prevent Flood outbreaks. Sentinels are able to hover in enclosed spaces and produce an energy shield when under attack. They lack durability but use powerful laser weapons.
The player is often aided by United Nations Space Command Marines, and the crew of the ship, who offer ground support, such as following the player and mimicking their tactics, and manning gun turrets or riding shotgun while the player is driving a vehicle. Marine AI and crew member AI are differentiated by their uniforms but also act distinctly; marines engage aggressively while crew members often cower or fire while retreating to cover. If the player kills too many of these friendly forces, they will attack the player in retaliation.
Players fight enemies on foot with a combination of weapons, grenades, or melee attacks. Weapons have different traits and excel in different scenarios; for example, the assault rifle has a high-capacity magazine but is less effective against energy shields. Players can hold only two weapons at once, forcing tactical decisions about which weapons to carry. Fragmentation grenades bounces and detonate quickly, whereas the plasma grenade adheres to targets before exploding.
Halo departs from traditional first-person shooter conventions by not forcing the player to holster their firearm before deploying grenades or melee-range blunt instruments; instead, both attacks can be utilized while a gun is still equipped, supplementing small-arms fire.
Multiplayer
A split screen mode allows two players to cooperatively play through Halos campaign. The game includes five competitive multiplayer modes, which all can be customized, for between two and 16 players; up to four players may play split-screen on one Xbox, and further players can join using a System Link feature that allows up to four Xbox consoles to be connected together into a local area network. Halo lacks artificially intelligent game bots, and was released before the launch of the Xbox Live online multiplayer service; LAN parties are needed to reach the game's 16-player limit, a setup that was a first for a console game but was often deemed impractical by critics. Aside from this limitation, Halos multiplayer components were generally well received, and it is widely considered one of the best multiplayer games of all time.Although the Xbox version of Halo lacks official support for online multiplayer play, third-party packet tunneling software provide unofficial ways around this limitation. The Windows and Macintosh ports of Halo support online matches involving up to 16 players and include multiplayer maps, not in the original Xbox release. However, co-operative play was removed from the ports because it would have required large amounts of recoding to implement. In April 2014, it was announced that GameSpy's servers and matchmaking, on which Halo PC relied, would be shut down by May 31 of the same year. A team of fans and Bungie employees announced they would produce a patch for the game to keep its multiplayer servers online. The patch was released on May 16, 2014.
Synopsis
Setting
Halo: Combat Evolved takes place in a 26th-century science fiction setting. Faster-than-light travel called slip-space allows the human race to colonize planets other than Earth. The planet Reach serves as an interstellar hub of scientific and military activity. The UNSC develops a secret program to create augmented supersoldiers known as Spartans. More than twenty years before the beginning of the game, a technologically advanced collective of alien races called the Covenant begins a religious war against humanity, declaring them an affront to their gods. Humanity's military experiences a series of crushing defeats; although the Spartans are effective against the Covenant, they are too few in number to turn the tide. In 2552, Covenant forces attack Reach and destroy the colony. The starship Pillar of Autumn escapes the planet with the Spartan Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 on board. The ship initiates a jump to slip-space, hoping to lead the enemy away from Earth.Plot
The game begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slip-space and its crew discovers a large ringworld structure of unknown origin. The Covenant pursues the Pillar of Autumn and attacks. With the ship heavily damaged, the Pillar of Autumns captain, Jacob Keyes, entrusts the ship's artificial intelligence known as Cortana to Master Chief in order to prevent the Covenant from discovering the location of Earth. Keyes orders the crew to abandon the Pillar of Autumn and pilots the ship to a crash-landing on the ringworld.On the ring's surface, Master Chief and Cortana rescue scattered survivors and help organize a counter-offensive against the Covenant. Learning that Keyes has been captured by the Covenant, Master Chief and a small contingent of soldiers rescue him from the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation. Keyes reveals that the Covenant call the ringworld "Halo" and that they believe it to be a weapon. Intent on stopping the Covenant from using Halo, Keyes searches for a potential weapons cache, while Master Chief and Cortana mount an assault on the ringworld's control room. Cortana enters Halo's computer systems and, after discovering something horrifying, sends Master Chief to find and stop Keyes from continuing his search and uncovering what lies within the ring.
Searching for the captain, Master Chief encounters a new enemy, the parasitic Flood. The release of the Flood prompts Halo's caretaker, a robot called 343 Guilty Spark, to enlist Master Chief's help in activating Halo's defenses. After Master Chief retrieves the ring's activation index, 343 Guilty Spark transports him back to Halo's control room. Cortana intervenes before Master Chief can activate the ring; she has discovered the purpose of the installation is to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, starving the Flood of potential hosts. When Cortana refuses to surrender Halo's activation index, 343 Guilty Spark attacks her and Master Chief.
To stop Halo's activation, Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy the installation. Needing Keyes' neural implants to destroy the Pillar of Autumn and Halo with it, Master Chief returns to the Truth and Reconciliation. He finds that Keyes has been assimilated by the Flood and retrieves the neural implant from the captain's remains. After 343 Guilty Spark stops them from using Pillar of Autumns self-destruct, Master Chief and Cortana destabilize the Pillar of Autumns reactors instead, narrowly escaping the ensuing detonation in a fighter. Cortana justifies their actions to destroy the Covenant fleet and stop the Flood threat and believes the fight is finished, but Master Chief states they are only getting started. In a post-credits scene, 343 Guilty Spark is seen floating through space, having survived the ring's destruction.