Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary | |
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Xbox Series X/S | |
Release |
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Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
Mode(s) |
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is a 2011
343 Industries, overseers of the
Critical reception to Anniversary was generally positive. The updated graphics, sounds, and ability to toggle between the remastered and original visuals were praised. Complaints included technical glitches, faults with the original game's
Gameplay
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and the original,
Players can switch between the "classic" graphics of the original game and new graphics developed for the remake by pressing the Back button on the controller.
Additions to the gameplay include
The original Combat Evolved did not support online multiplayer, but players could play multiplayer locally via
Plot
After fleeing the Covenant's destruction of the human world Reach, the human ship Pillar of Autumn makes a random
On the ringworld, the Chief rallies human survivors and leads a boarding party to rescue Keyes from the Covenant's clutches. Keyes reveals that the Covenant call the ring "Halo", and they believe it is some sort of weapon. The Chief is tasked with finding Halo's control room before the Covenant does. Once Cortana is inserted into the control room, she becomes alarmed and stays behind while she sends the Master Chief to find Keyes. While searching for the captain, the Master Chief encounters the
Development
Overview
After
343 Industries wanted a complete remake of the original game by the tenth anniversary of Halo's release, giving Saber just over a year to complete the project.
Design
To solve the issues of transferring information from the original game's engine to the Saber engine, the developers looked at how they used the third-party Havok physics engine to handle object positioning, velocities, and collisions. Saber created a proxy of every object in the Halo engine to transfer into the Saber engine, meaning that the game's original programming remained unchanged.[16] The game's ability to alternate between the legacy and remastered graphics engines in the campaign was made possible by the rendering engine developed by Saber Interactive. The technology allowed the developers to update Halo: Combat Evolved's visuals and preserve the original gameplay.[20] Originally, players would have chosen which graphical presentation to play from the main menu.[21] The in-game toggle feature quickly became a talking point among the developers, who pushed for it to be available to other players.[18] Since the ability to switch between classic version and remastered version was provided to players, both engines work simultaneously to retain the spontaneity of game. This approach caused several problems, including collision issues—because objects and environments in the original game were of a lower resolution with fewer polygons, higher-resolution visuals in the Saber engine could deviate from the original significantly. As the original game's geometry was used as the basis for collisions, in some cases characters could appear to walk through or above terrain, weapons could drop through the ground, and bullets would appear to be deflected by nothing. The sheer number of these issues, combined with the desire to keep the original gameplay intact, forced Saber to use a variety of approaches to fix the problems, including making tools for artists to visualize height differences and creating intermediate geometry. In some cases, the artists developed other ways of keeping to the same collision data while updating the visuals by changing the actual object—turning a blocky, low-polygon rock into an angular Forerunner structure avoided the collision issues.[16]
Where possible, the developers drew on or adapted assets from
Saber doubted that it would be able to convert Combat Evolved's split-screen cooperative play to facilitate online play. Greg Hermann, a 343 Industries technical lead who had experience with Bungie technology, assisted Saber in development of a networking solution that would allow online co-op. Since the original game would behave identically when given the same scenario and inputs, only the player inputs needed to be synchronized between players' Xbox consoles.[16]
Because of its previous contributions to the series—Halo 2's Blastacular and Halo: Reach's Defiant map pack—Certain Affinity was approached by 343 Industries to streamline the multiplayer maps to take Halo: Reach's gameplay options into account. The multiplayer is powered by the Halo: Reach engine.[24] 343 Industries director Frank O'Connor said that the decision to use Reach for the multiplayer was controversial, even within the studio. "In Halo's day, there was never a proper networking mode," O'Connor explained. "We couldn't roll back the technology; [recreating Halo's local area network multiplayer] just wouldn't have worked with things like latency and all other modern Xbox Live-related problems. So we would have had to build it from scratch, and it still wouldn't have been the experience [players] remember."[6] An additional consideration O'Connor mentioned was that producing a full replication of Combat Evolved's multiplayer would have divided the Halo player base and interrupted Reach's lifespan.[6]: 3 In choosing which seven Halo maps to remake, 343 Industries set a number of rules—the map could not have been previously remade for a 360-era Halo title, it had to work with Reach's gameplay sandbox, and it had to be a fan favorite.[6]: 1 The company retained the same art director between the campaign and multiplayer elements of Anniversary to make sure the two halves of the game looked visually cohesive.[22]
Since 343 Industries developed Halo 4 concurrently with the anniversary edition, it decided to use Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary to link the original trilogy with the upcoming Reclaimer trilogy by means of in-game collectibles similar to Halo 3's terminals, Halo 3: ODST's audio logs, and Halo: Reach's data pads.[25][26] While the other games' collectibles were aimed at and enjoyed by serious Halo fiction fans, 343 Industries wanted to make Anniversary's terminals higher-budget, more impressive, and accessible to all players.[6]: 2
Though Iones described Anniversary's one-year development cycle as a "very smooth ride",[16] some production issues that were not discovered until late in development contributed to bugs and other problems. Saber relied on a partially automated tool to render the game's cinematics, but did not do a thorough vetting of the results until after the game had reached the alpha stage of its release cycle. As a result, the developers realized that their addition of motion capture animation and lip-syncing had caused serious audio syncing issues and animation bugs.[16]
Audio
The developers refreshed Combat Evolved's music and sound effects along with its visuals.[17] While players can toggle the original music from Halo: Combat Evolved, the soundtrack was also re-recorded in partnership with Pyramind Studios, using the 75-piece Skywalker Symphony Orchestra and the Chanticleer vocal ensemble.[17][27] Because there were no MIDI recordings of the original game's music, Paul Lipson, Lennie Moore, Tom Salta, and Brian Trifon transcribed each piece of music.[17][28]
The soundtrack was released digitally and in two physical formats: a two-disc
Release
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was announced to the public with a trailer on June 6, 2011, at Microsoft's annual
Thirteen retail
As stated by tracking firm
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was released on the Xbox One as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on November 11, 2014, with support for 1080p60 rendering.[47] A PC version of the game for Master Chief Collection was released on March 3, 2020.[48]
Reception
Aggregator | Score |
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GameRankings | 82%[49] |
Metacritic | 82/100[50] |
Publication | Score |
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Destructoid | 9/10[51] |
Electronic Gaming Monthly | 8.5/10[52] |
Game Informer | 8.5/10[53] |
GameSpot | 8.0/10[54] |
Giant Bomb | [55] |
IGN | 8/10[2] |
Official Xbox Magazine (US) | 8.5/10[56] |
PALGN | 8/10[57] |
Digital Spy | [58] |
The Escapist | [59] |
The Guardian | [60] |
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary received generally positive reviews. On aggregate review website
The remastered visuals were positively received; reviewers such as The Inquirer's Chris Martin and The Escapist's Russ Pitts singled out the graphics-switch button for praise.[59][61] The Guardian's Steve Boxer called the feature "utterly fascinating—a bit like ... archaeology on your console", and said that the visual overhaul improved areas where the original game engine was weak, such as rendering outdoor environments.[60] While praising most of the game's refinements, Watters singled out the Flood as enemies he thought the original game envisioned better, saying "the simplicity of the classic look feels more sinister and alien".[54] Hamza Aziz of Destructoid appreciated the visual updates, but not some of the resulting audio–animation syncing issues.[51]
Reviewers disagreed on how the core gameplay of Combat Evolved, unaltered in Anniversary, had aged over ten years. Writing for GameSpot, editor Chris Watters opined that "the fundamental mechanics of the game have ... endured well", with responsive controls and challenging enemies.[54] PALGN writer Adam Guetti agreed, praising "rock solid" controls and tight gameplay,[57] while Mike Wilcox of The Sydney Morning Herald argued the anniversary edition "[proves] a game with a winning formula doesn't wither with age".[62] IGN's Steven Hopper felt that the level design was dated, the repetitious environments making it easy for players to lose their bearings, and that vehicles handled poorly.[2] Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker wrote that while the best aspects of the game remained, other aspects—such as the level design and fighting the Flood—were no less frustrating after ten years;[55] Digital Spy's Matthew Reynolds echoed the sentiment, praising the game for presenting situations unsurpassed in later games while faulting irregular checkpoints.[58]
Critics had split opinions on Anniversary's additional features. The stereoscopic 3D effect was alternately praised and dismissed: Matt Miller of Game Informer wrote that the feature "doesn't add anything to the experience",[53] while Aziz described the feature as "fantastic", considering its use in Anniversary to be more subtle and pleasing than in other games. Aziz also applauded the narrative terminals, although he criticized the Kinect voice command support for being slower in combat than pressing buttons.[51] Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica enjoyed the improvements of the Halo maps in Anniversary's multiplayer mode, but criticized the inability to play said mode via four-person local split screen as in the original game.[63] Reynolds agreed with 343 Industries's choice to use Reach for Anniversary's multiplayer mode, writing that the map pack offered "a smart way of reintroducing players back into the game", as well as commending Halo's combat for offering an alternative to contemporary military shooters.[58]
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Remember you can connect with up to three other Xboxes with up to four players on each 'box in multiplayer games.
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It's funny, I've told this story a few times, but we were initially intending Classic Mode to be in the menu, so when you started the game you could choose which mode you wanted to play in. But before we had the menus hooked up we just had it living in the game. And very quickly, I remember playing it and I was like, 'No, no, no, no—you need to be able to do this at any point, this is way too much fun.' And quickly it turned into our most popular feature and something that people talk about the most, and something that people have a blast with.
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{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Wilcox, Mike (January 12, 2012). "Xbox pioneer has familiar ring to it". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on May 8, 2012. Retrieved April 15, 2013.
- ^ Kuchera, Ben (November 14, 2011). "Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary awkward but ultimately fulfilling for fans". Ars Technica. Condé Nast Digital. Archived from the original on December 3, 2012. Retrieved April 15, 2013.
External links
- Media related to Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary at Wikimedia Commons
- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary at Halo Waypoint
- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on Halopedia, the Halo wiki