Halo: Combat Evolved First Full Playthrough (via MCC)
1I've been meaning to at least try the Halo series for years, but with the constant stream of boomer shooters and mods worth playing, it's been tough to fathom fitting in - especially given I did not enjoy the few hours I played of Marathon, and am very much not a fan of the types of games that mimic Halo's formula. However, Turok 3 ended up being such an unintentional shitpost that it created a clear opportunity to pivot to this.
Halo: CE is the only Halo game I have had prior exposure to, but I'd only ever played maybe a third of the game at most - which means I hadn't seen one of the game's highest points, and most of its lowest points.
In terms of high points: I did not expect Halo to throw a moral dilemma into the plot, and the introduction of the Flood comes with quite a drastic shift in tone. (It also finally introduces the shotgun; longest time-to-shotgun in an FPS ever?) There's also one particular late-game moment that I have to figure Quake 4 stole notes from.
In terms of low points: I did not realize just how much egregious copy-paste went on in a few of these levels, and how they drag on way longer than they needed to. And then on top of that, Halo apparently pulled the "make the player go backwards through the same levels" shtick before DMC4 did. And then there's the one spot where I got softlocked, which seems to be somewhat infamous for doing that.
Given how many flaws the game has, it's kind of hard for me to believe how ridiculously successful it was, but it certainly did manage to evolve the genre and make a new generation of FPSes viable on consoles. I am told the first game is hands-down the roughest, and I have never had the opportunity to play the rest (nor have I ever had any desire to play FPSes on a console with a gamepad), so I am curious to see where the series goes. As long as it keeps my interest, I'm planning to at least play everything available in MCC.