Review: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

Ten years ago, Halo became the game that almost-singlehandedly sold the original Xbox, and along the way won the hearts of many a console gamer. Since then, the sci-fi franchise has gone from strength to strength. Halo 3's first-day sales set records when the game was released - although it was later knocked off of its pedestal - and it's still the best-selling game on the Xbox 360.

But many of the people who played the later Halo games haven't actually played the original, Halo: Combat Evolved. The game sold five million copies to Halo 3's 14.5 million. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary offers the opportunity for those who missed out the first time around to play a classic game, with modern graphics and a few little easter eggs.

If you haven't played the first game in the Halo series before, it follows the same character as Halo 2 and Halo 3, Master Chief, as the super-soldier tries to save the human race from the Covenant. The Covenant are a group of various alien races who believe, in a nutshell, that humans are an affront to God. The plot may sound simple, but mythology in the Halo universe runs far deeper than in your average shooter.

The story hasn't changed much in Anniversary, with one notable exception - hidden within the games are collectible 'terminals', which each provide a little bit of history of the Halo universe, or fill in minor plot holes in the game. There's one in each level, but they can be hard to find: they're often placed in little holes off the beaten path, or on levels where you're using a vehicle and thus driving quickly past all the scenery.



What has changed dramatically is the way the universe looks. This is obviously the main drawcard for Anniversary, and it really is remarkable what 343 Industries have done with the original Halo's game engine. The graphics are high definition, although not quite as fantastic as in Halo: Reach, because the anti-aliasing isn't as good and the edges of objects can be jagged. The textures and colours are far deeper. Every planet is more colourful and every dead Grunt more detailed - your enemies now have lines and marks on their bodies that weren't there before. If you decide you want to check out how it looked ten years ago, at any point in the game you can hit the 'back' button on your controller and it will revert to 'classic' graphics. The game picks up exactly where you left off, so you can even change in the middle of a firefight or a cutscene.

343 Industries was obviously very careful in its treatment of the game mechanics, though, and (fortunately) resisted the urge to tweak and modernise the original game. You can still kill an Elite enemy with a light tap of your military-issue Jeep, the Warthog, and the pistol is still as overpowered as ever. When PC World spoke to the executive producer of Anniversary, Dan Ayoub, he said that 343 had even been careful to replicate the same bugs in the code that gamers have always had fun with, such as vehicles that fly for miles when grenaded.

If you have a Kinect sensor, there are a few voice commands you can use. Saying 'grenade' will make your character throw a grenade, and saying 'change weapon' will, shockingly, switch weapons. Most of this is easier and faster to do using the buttons on your controller, especially since there's a noticable lag between voicing a command and seeing it done. Sometimes Kinect doesn't hear or understand your command properly - the closest we've got to support for Kiwi accents is Australian English - and an Elite will kick you in the face before you can get a grenade off.

The one thing that Kinect integration really does bring to the party is the ability to analyse your environment and scan in certain objects and characters. You could say 'analyse', then hover your crosshair over a dead Grunt and say 'scan', and that particular type of Grunt will be added to your 'Library'. The Library is essentially a Halo wiki, with information about the scanned object including name, history, height, and weight.



The multiplayer function in Anniversary includes a collection of the old Halo: Combat Evolved maps, created on Halo: Reach's engine. That means rather than the old-school multiplayer experience you'd get at a LAN party in 2001, you just get Halo: Reach online multiplayer on some new maps. For me, this was the biggest disappointment as multiplayer in Halo has become the franchise's biggest draw card. There is, however, an 'Anniversary Classic' playlist in the multiplayer that replicates the original experience fairly well. Again, the pistol is still overpowered, and you can use any of the extra Reach abilities like jetpacks or armour lock.

Die-hard Halo fans will not be disappointed with the campaign, though. 343 Industries really has made Anniversary with that audience firmly in mind, and treated it so carefully and tactfully that I was surprised at how little was changed. If you love Halo, you'll love Anniversary.

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