The Halo franchise is one that I’ve always felt I should play. It’s like those lists of classic movies: if you want to be a film critic, you should probably watch them. If you want to be a games critic, you should probably play these. Halo is definitely a franchise on that list—especially if you’re covering Xbox.

My journey to playing through all the Halo games in the lead-up to Halo Infinite later this year has begun.

EX-PILE OF SHAME #4: HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED

What I Played: The campaign in co-op
Difficulty: Normal
Playtime: 6–8 hours
Synopsis: Halo is a sci-fi shooter that takes place on a mysterious alien ringworld. Packed with combat, Halo has you battling on foot and in vehicles, indoors and out, with alien and human weaponry. Your objective: uncover Halo’s secrets and destroy mankind’s sworn enemy, the Covenant.

LET-DOWN

I gotta admit, I wasn’t a huge fan—sorry to let you all down! This game shows its age quite badly.

If I wasn’t playing this with Ciaran (we’ve been streaming at twitch.tv/explosionnetwork), I probably would have put on headphones and a podcast. Damn, do these levels get boring and repetitive.

One level in particular took about twenty minutes to beat and was the definition of a hallway shooter. Every room looked like the last, every enemy encounter felt the same. There was nothing to break up the monotonous structure.

All that said, I did have mild fun playing in co-op. That certainly helped a lot.

YOU’RE NOT THAT COOL, CHIEF

I’m also not grabbed by the story in this first game. Master Chief is some dude who’s frozen and awoken to do battle at the last second against the human race’s biggest enemy. Okay—but why was he frozen? Why does he look like a Bionicle man? The stereotypical army dude-bro characters aren’t exciting, and The Flood is just tedious to fight—not scary.

I now know what the “Halo” refers to in Halo, though, so I feel like I’ve grown as a gamer.

By the end of this first game, my attachment to the characters and story is more or less non-existent. I have very high hopes for the next several games, though—it can only get better after this.

Catch me playing them on twitch.tv/explosionnetwork over the coming month(s), and I’ll follow up with more thoughts on the future Halo games in this series.