Very few games have managed to stand the test of time, but the ones that do Cement the success of their franchise. Games that first come to mind are Zelda ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy 7 being the best 2 examples, but none of them have revolutionized gaming Like Halo Combat Evolved (CE) did, Halo CE is a timeless masterpiece that Has aged extremely well. Not to mention that Halo CE is without a doubt the main reason Microsoft's Xbox is around today. Everything about the game just works from its story to its gameplay from its soundtrack to its characters. Not to mention it was the first game to prefect arena multiplayer. But at its core what makes Halo CE a masterpiece?
The Introduction
There are many things that we can take away from the beginning of a game the characters, the tone, and the plot of the story. Halo already sets the tone of the game right from its main menu; you open the game to see a simple menu with a strange ring in space as well as an apar quire witch not only ads what I can only explain as a feeling of exploring the unknown, but it also gives of a sense of an epic adventure. At the beginning of the game, you are introduced to most of the main character in a way that just feels natural. You have Captain Jacob Keyes Giving orders, Cortana analyzing the data and explaining the best course of action, Avery Johnson giving a motivational speech to his men which still stands to be one of the best and most iconic introductions to a character in any game, and you have Master Chief Emerging from a pod, he gives of a certain feeling of fear and safety along with a mysterious aura along with him he genuinely looks like an unstoppable force to be wrecking with. After this you battle your way throughout the ship until you make it to an escape pod where you then as the name states escape and crash land on another planet. This all happens within the first 10-30 minutes of the game and yet it never feels rushed or prolonged if feels natural and true in some ways.
The Story
The narrative of halo is both a self-contained story and something that can be expanded upon. This was mostly caused Because Both Microsoft and Bungie didn't know if it was going to be a one-off game or something that would call for a sequel, usually when a game attempts to do this it fall flat, and ether levees more question asked then answered or makes a sequel not feel like it was needed. But fortunately, Halo CE gives you a perfect balance between canon while also leaving behind a good amount of mystery. Because of this it gave them a chance to explore things like reach, humanity, and the covenant in a more Indepth way. Which they do, just not the beginning of the game, they explain everything you need to know in a manual that comes with the game. Unfortunately, most people don't read the manuals when they first get a game. But this plays to Halo's strengths when you first wake up as master chief you are confused and not thinking about what events lead up to this moment because it doesn't matter right now, all that matters is what is going on is the chaos that is going on in this very moment. This confusion mixed with the brutal scene of the covenant attack on the pillar of autumn just adds to the intensity of the scene. The game itself is an adventurous, mysterious, and at some points generally creepy with depictions of glory and moments of lose, magnificent moments of action and intense subdued moments in contrary. With this Halo CE has the uncanny ability to tell most of the story through the level design without the player even noticing, such as when you crash land and are forced to scavenge through the remains of the crashed ships and the dead marines in them while recruiting the surviving marines to form a resistance against the covenant or the moment in tube of trails when you are attacked by only human flood that strangely don't have any weapons only to come to the realization that this is the supposed remains of a fire team that you previously saved, or when going through the pillar of autumn after it has crashed, you find a large amount of weapons on the ground with no ammo in them. But by far the best example of this is the mission named 343 guilty spark, in the opening cutscene of the mission we see grunts running in fear away from something in a swamp soon after you land in that same swamp and fight your way through the swamp and make your way through a series of tunnels where you then meet a marine that went insane, you go past rooms that are completely destroys with blood on the walls and fire that has been set ablaze by what looks like an explosion, this already gives you an uneasy feeling, but then you come into contact with the flood, soon after a group of grunts and marines come in and get easily slaughtered by the flood, soon after you make your way out. This mission was so memorable and impactful because you were never told what was going on and the only way to know what is going in is to press onward and see for yourself. The way that Halo CE does its storytelling is not by expositions or even cutscenes it tells its story by having you the play experience it for yourself.
The Gameplay
Throughout the years changes to games constantly make older games feel much more clunky than you originally remember games that are victim to this are games like goldeneye that when first release was a revolutionary experience but today it is unfortunately not. The controls for Halo CE are only what I can explain as a perfect balance between simple and advanced, you can't run or zoom in with most guns but your can-do close-range attacks towards enemies while you also have a forcefield around your entire character, with this the game rewards you for proper positioning and understanding the limits of Master chief. This allows the game to be easy to pick up but hard but extremely rewarding to master. Because of this the games campaign is very fair balance and functional, most of the time when you are killed in game you can always reflect on what it was that you did wrong weather you overextended your armor, or it could be boiled down to something as simple as I should have flanked there. To put it simply Halo on legendary mode is like a soulsborne game both are challenging but whenever you lose in game it was most likely because of an error you made or the opposite of artificial difficulty like you have in modern games.
The Timeless masterpiece
Looking back one everything that Halo CE has both accomplished and revolutionized in its time it's not hard to understand why the series has such a cult following. Not only did the game perfect First-person shooter controls but it was also the game that sparked interest in online multiplayer. And on top of that the story and characters are gaming icons that continue to be put into games and other media today. And that is the Story of the timeless masterpiece by the name of Halo CE.