Game:

Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Duration: 9:30

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17

Massive Mod v1.5 is a pretty unique and lively gameplay experience.
Now first of all, there are many ways to design engaging gameplay, and different Halo CE overhaul mods tend to have their own design flavors in this regard; such as sandbox diversity, combat flow, creative puzzle encounters, rewarding exploration, and so on.
Massive Mod does it mainly via combat scale, but also via some simple sandbox alterations.

The increased combat scale unfortunately isn't entirely compatible with CE, because at least in PoA your allies end up being in your way much more frequently than in most other versions of CE, and this issue is compounded by the fact that running into a character doesn't move them in the CE engine, as this functionality was implemented into the Blam engine with H2.
It doesn't bring down the experience massively, but it's worth mentioning.
One way to fix it though would be to disable the ability for allies to be assassinated, and make the player melee have some push force to it.

Combat in Massive Mod is pretty easy, but that's not as much of a problem in this mod as it would be in most other mods due to the fact that this mod relies more on combat scale to add gameplay intensity and satisfaction; and this increase in enemies you get to kill works nicely with the chill combat flow of this mod. This flavor of gameplay does however make the density of the gameplay feel noticeably softer compared to most other versions of CE including Vanilla, since the Covenant feel like they crumble and fall like piñatas.

I also feel like mentioning that fitting with the mod's name style, the implementation of a sizeable portion of the changes in Massive Mod feel pretty lax and haphazard. For example, the implementation of increased character spawns, which is very noticeable during gameplay as many of them spawn in silly clusters. These kinds of enemy spawns are sitting ducks and are too easy to deal with using Plasma Grenades before these enemies get a chance to spread out. Instead of having these character clusters, spreading out the spawn locations would probably work better.

This mod has kept sandbox changes pretty simple, and I like the overall direction. Most of the weapon changes feel pretty nice, and Marines now have energy shields which I think is very much the correct approach based on my own overhaul modding experience. Makes them properly reliable and worth having on the battlefield.

Mod page: https://www.nexusmods.com/halothemasterchiefcollection/mods/1636

The rest of this video series is linked below, ordered from top to bottom according to my personal ranking of specifically the Legendary PoA gameplay experience quality in each version of CE.

Infinite Evolved v1.3: https://youtu.be/P-YiZaBWLdY
Ruby's CE v2: https://youtu.be/JKN7pwTeO1Q
Combat Revolved v2.7: https://youtu.be/5LRjV7SGTp4
Super Campaign v2.1: https://youtu.be/oaRTWo0PBFE
Yanrensheng CE v1.1: https://youtu.be/8gyHqlYiPBg
Gen's Battlescape v0.7.5: https://youtu.be/YyTnGFyG3C8
Massive Mod v1.5: »You Are Here«
Vanilla CE: https://youtu.be/NpGtTQeFFAg
Ruby's CE v3: https://youtu.be/A-25ne9Hwfc
Vanilla CEA: https://youtu.be/kUTEy5N9mn4
Corrupted Vanilla CE: https://youtu.be/52XpMVBreVk

This is a video series where each video is a playthrough of the first level of Halo CE on Legendary difficulty without dying; showcasing a different version of CE each time. The point of this is to have a place to easily compare the infantry combat game design of different versions of CE from a fairly skilled Halo player's perspective.

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