 Three years ago, I made a two-part series of me reviewing every Halo game on my first YouTube channel. At the time, it was an ambitious and well-crafted masterpiece, according to the 15-year-old self of me. But after reviewing it as an adult, the quality actually represents the product of a 15-year-old kid. For the last four weeks, I've been eating, sleeping, as well as breathing Halo. I've played every game's campaign story mode on normal difficulty, at the same time, every game mode from every individual game's multiplayer section. I've taken many notes with multiple friends while going through these games. Yikes. When I made the video, Halo 5 was only after two years, and I still had opinions I wanted to stay on the video game, and I wanted to also use previous games for comparison. The plan was to review every Halo game and give them a review one by one. But I only made it to reach, and my friend Kaden did Halo 4, for me, while I was editing the reach portion. I never made it to Halo 5, because after putting in a lot of effort on these two videos I made that were lengthy with fast-paced editing and narration, they were never seen or noticed. Years later now, I understand the unrealistic goals I had, but being a kid and seeing something you were very passionate about flock was extremely unmotivating, so I moved on to other videos and projects and never finished the Halo franchise. So in honor of the kid me, I'm gonna remake this series with less voice cracks and better audio. And it should be easier now with Halo being accessible to PCs. I'm gonna play through Halo 1, 2, and reach on the computer and finish the rest on the console. No, I've played every Halo multiple times, but at this point, I just need another round to fully refresh my brain. Also, I'm now humbled. It's a sad realization, but because of it, I'm covering each game on its own video. So with this outro out the way, let's transition to the first Halo game. Halo Combat Evolved launched in November 15, 2001. The PS2 was already a year old by the time Halo came out, and had multiple exclusives for the console, so Halo was the only title Xbox had for a fighting chance. And now with Halo Infinite being the only fighting chance for the new Xbox, it's kind of ironic how it went full circle. I wasn't alive for Halo 1. The first Halo I played was Halo 2, but I replayed Halo 1 with my stepdad when Halo 3 came out. And even if I was able to play Halo 1, I would have been an infinite at the time, without any chance to experience it properly. But now I could play it remastered in its original form with an uncapped frame rate. What a time to be alive. Halo 1 starts with the pillar bottom being attacked by an alien race called the Covenant. So the main character, the Master Chief, is awakened by his AI Cortana to help fight the attack before the ship crash lands on Halo. Halo is a ring that is alive in like a planet almost. Then we find out the Covenant loves old forerunner technology, and you find out Halo is a weapon to kill a parasite called the Flood. But also Halo kills everybody else on the Halo rings. So what happens is you end up destroying Halo and you save the day. Pretty basic campaign, I guess. I really don't have a nostalgia for Halo 1, and it's definitely the most linear Halo game and my least enjoyable campaign for me to play. Well, besides this one. I definitely respect Halo 1 for what it is though. It revolutionized the shooting genre and did something that was never done before. Without Halo 1, a lot of modern shooters wouldn't be around. So I'm glad Halo 1 exists, but in comparison to its sequels, it's bare bone and linear. I know in the current generation it's natural to expect a sequel not to be better than the original, but at the time of peak video game creativity, this was not the case. Halo 1 was a stepping stone for later Halo games, and Bungie did what any sequel should do, evolve, improve, and progress. I don't like making this video because it's hard to critique Halo 1 fairly. Halo 1 is not generally everybody's favorite game, but everyone still understands that the game was the first of its kind, and it's the reason their favorite Halo games do exist. The game is not flawless and for anybody to say they genuinely love replaying it from start to finish is most likely not being truthful. With the knowledge of every Halo game, Halo 1 is underwhelming because of how outshined it is. But this isn't a bad thing because it's old and the first of its kind, so people just need to be truthful. If you were forced to play any Halo game, Halo 1 would probably not be the first picked. Hey, at least it's better to be outshined by age rather than poor choice making. Like this game. It feels like playing a teaser for what's to come in the future, and while I was playing this, I wanted to hurry up so I could beat and go play Halo 2. If you were to drop in on Halo 1 without any knowledge of any other halos, it's confusing why things are happening and a lot go unanswered until the sequel. Who is the Covenant? What's their hierarchy? Why do they care? Who's the Flood? What's their purpose? Who's their hierarchy? Why do they care? You're just shooting mindless aliens with only one goal of killing until you beat your objective, and you don't get to understand the perspective what the Covenant or the Flood are doing until Halo 2. It's cool to be Master Chief and, you know, you having importance in comparison to any normal soldier, but in the context of Halo 1, you still have no clue who Master Chief is. This sounds like a criticism, but a counterpoint is that nobody really gave a shit at the time, and even in the sequels, you still don't get to learn about Master Chief either. Better criticism would be that Chief was uninteresting with no personality other than being a bad guy who kills shit. This isn't a problem either, but still, criticism someone might want to pinpoint for an argument. A lot of criticisms are unfair to Halo 1 because of how aged it is, so I'm just gonna stop nitpicking. Halo 2 and 3 outshine Halo 1 in every way. Story, writing, gameplay, and design, but that's expected because after the first game, they got their footing and improved in every single way. So with that, I'll just start to praise the game instead of critiquing it now. Halo 1's soundtrack is incredible and iconic. Martin O'Donnell did an amazing job with the score and the main theme of this game. The gameplay was also fluid and original at the time. The shooting was fun and felt very unique, and every gun had, like, a certain type of charm to it. The reload animations were fluid and dramatic. The enemies you played against had unique movement compared to any other game. Halo 1 in total was the best stepping stone of all time, introduced this legendary franchise. And I will forever be grateful that it exists, because it brought me to one of my favorite games ever. I'm not gonna do a star rating because that shit's stupid, but in total, Halo 1 is an iconic franchise starter and walked so the sequels could run. It aged and has been outshined by its sequels, but it did what it did for the future of gaming, and it changed Xbox forever. That's what I have to say about Halo 1. I like to hear your opinions and experiences in the comments, and if you want to see me cover Halo 2 and the rest of the games, please subscribe. See you guys.