My Journey to Halo: Combat Evolved

First off, a little housekeeping.

My First Impressions will be solely for the PC port of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary included in Halo: The Master Chief Collection.  We will get there eventually.  In theory.  I hope.

The second bit of housekeeping.  I did play Halo: Combat Evolved on the original Xbox back when my older sister, The Shramp, and her husband who we will call Gary (which is not his real name, but if you've played Pokemon Red/Blue and know a bit of my history with Pokemon Red, you will understand this long-winded reference) were still living in NorCal.  I played using The Duke and I very likely inverted the controls on the controller too, or I may not have, I do not remember the control customization options.  What I played was very minimal, being only the first stage, "The Pillar of Autumn" and a little bit of the second stage, "Halo" because I remember driving the Warthog around and getting a little lost.  I remember not being overly taken with the game mainly because I could not tell what it was that I was shooting at.  The Grunts and Elites that populate the Pillar of Autumn looked like colorful blocky amorphous blobs that shimmered, occasionally made squealing and grunting noises, and occasionally shot back.  The combat felt fine but did not feel evolved from that of Perfect Dark (released just over a year earlier in June 2000).  I honestly do not remember what I was expecting going into the game, and I probably just played it because I had not played anything on the Xbox at that point.  I could probably also blame The Duke for being an uncomfortable controller.

The third bit of housekeeping is that I (along with umteen millions of others) loved the buhjeezus out of Red vs. Blue over at Rooster Teeth which Dr. Potts and his roommates introduced me to around mid-2004.  I was a fervent downloader of the RvB series in whatever format I could get it in (QuickTime I recall having a very tiny viewable file), keep in mind this was in the years before YouTube existed.  I watched the series regularly and multiple times until the end of Season 9, then I caught most of the episodes of Season 10, and then I sort of fell off the wagon.  I might try to catch up before the series finale starts, or I will just watch it after it comes out.

When The Master Chief Collection was released on PC in 2014, I had thought it would be fun to play the games from the perspective of Red vs. Blue characters but never got around to it because. . . reasons I guess.  And then in 2021, Unraveled did an episode about all of the Halo novels and that re-piqued my interest in the series, never really realizing how much lore there was outside what had been cherry-picked for the RvB series.  I nearly started reading the books and then playing the games in the in-world chronological order but stopped because I was (and still am) knee-deep in unplayed Switch (and now Steam Deck) games, and I had not purchased a Smach-Zero yet (because Steam Deck was not a thing).

Most recently I watched the trailer for the final season of Red vs. Blue: Restoration and because the Steam Summer Sale was still going on, I plunked down $9.99 (minus however many cents I had in my account from selling duplicate Steam Trading Cards) and bought the collection.  After feeling the frustration of an hour-plus download of the 39 GB, I jumped into Halo: The Master Chief Collection, deciding to play the original Halo: Combat Evolved rather than the chronological Halo: Reach (shocker, I know).  But, that I could not do because the game only downloaded/installed Halo: ODST for whatever reason, which I have read is what it does by default.  For all other games you have to manually install once the game launcher is open.  So that was another 30-45 minute download.

So then I finally started Halo: Combat Evolved.  And after a while, I felt kinda meh.  Again.  But that is for Friday.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Whisper in My Ear