Post by Blade Runner 07 on Feb 20, 2013 14:11:05 GMT -5
The way a remake should be.
Presentation: 10/10 How do you honor a game that single handedly put the Xbox on the map, spawned countless clones and popularized the FPS genre? Remake it to look, sound, and feel like a brand new game while keeping all of the things that make the original great, intact. If it aint Broke, don't fix it. Weather your a casual Halo fan or just a fan of the genre you owe it to yourself to see where modern First-person shooters as we know them today got there break through.
Gameplay: 9/10 It's not a bad thing that Bungie has taken the "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" approach to developing every Halo game since the original. Halo:CEA feels exactly how it did ten years ago. For better or worse, nothing has changed. What does that mean? That means that you will wish you could move a bit faster on many occasion and will want to memorize where health packs are located before tackling the higher difficulty areas of the game. This also means all of the powerful Halo:CE weapons return as well. All of the weapons feel as they should and enemies aren't the bullet sponges they seem to have evolved into in the sequels. Movement is what you would expect from a Halo title especially if you've played the 2010 title, Halo: Reach. The game-play as a whole is very solid, if not stretched a little thin at times.
Graphics: 8/10 Artistically, Halo:CE always felt like the odd man out. Every other game was in sync as far as art style was concerned. It was as if Bungie didn't know what they wanted the environments of a Halo ring to look like in 2001. 343 Industry fixes this in Halo:CEA. Taking art assets from Halo 3 and Reach, 343 has done a fine job at helping this game to look in sync with the rest of the Halo Universe.
Running on top of the pre-existing graphics engine does bring the quality down, only in one spot though. The character models. These high detail models need to match the old model geometry that exists underneath them. That means you get characters that look great when standing still but mouth movement and facial expressions just look funny in an almost buggy sort of way. Nothing that isn't forgivable but it's a shame they couldn't have at least re-made the cut-scenes from scratch considering you can't do an on the fly graphics change in the middle of them. Oh did I mention you could change the graphics back to how they looked in 2001 at the push of a button? It's awesome!
Now Halo looks like Halo!
Sound: 9/10 I was nervous when I heard they were re-recording all of the music and sound effects for Halo:CEA and for good reason. After 10 years, I know what Halo sounds like. The buzz of a plasma pistol, the pounding discharge of the sniper rifle, and the epic music that starts up as you make the long trek through a snowy battlefield. No matter how little they changed, it would not be for the better. Then I played the game, and was pleasantly surprised. Skywalker Orchestra did a great job at recreating what you heard in the original without trying to improve on it in any way other than improved sound quality. What this provides is an audio experience to match the visual splendor with the option to toggle all the audio back to the way it was in 2001 in the options menu. 343 took great strides to make Halo:CEA feel like a current generation FPS and it shows in the sound more than anything else. The character voices are just as you remember and fit in very well with the new audio.
Value: 8/10 You get arguably the best campaign in the Halo series, new collectables in the form of skulls, terminals, and achievements. Multiplayer offers six new multiplayer maps and a new firefight map to play. If you have already been playing Reach for a year than the multiplayer offering may feel more like a map pack rather than a full fledged multiplayer option but with 343 releasing playlists that very closely emulate the Halo:CE experience in the Reach Engine there is plenty of reason to assemble old-school Halo Party's for some late night fun. For the true Halo fan it's a must buy and the price makes it a great deal.
I give it a 9/10. But you know, James... Goldeneye was always better.