“Halo: Combat Evolved” was released to the public on November 15, 2001. The game, made by Bungie, is an action-packed, first-person shooter game that was ‘advanced’ at the time. The whole game can take from ten to twenty hours to complete. You travel planet to planet fighting and killing aliens called the “Covenant”. The Covenant species are Grunts, Jackals, Hunters, and the Elites. I personally think that the Hunters are the hardest to take out because they have shields to protect themselves and take very little damage from attacks. The Hunters aren’t any type of boss in the game, but they are difficult to kill. You play as The Master Chief. The Master Chief is a super soldier who has been trained specially to fight the Covenant.

The Covenant drop their weapons when killed and you can pick up the weapons and use them for yourself. Guns from the Covenant include the Needler, Plasma Pistol, Plasma Rifle, and the Fuel Rod Cannon. Human guns include the Assault Rifle, Magnum Pistol, Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, and the Sniper Rifle. In my opinion, Covenant guns are better than human guns because they do more damage to enemies. Human guns in the game reload automatically when the magazine has been emptied. Covenant guns don’t reload since they are battery powered, and when the battery runs out then the gun cannot be fired anymore and you have to scavenge for another. Human guns warn you when ammo gets low, and when ammo runs out then you have to find another gun.

The game can run a little slow at times, since it is so old, and can have a few glitches. Sometimes the gun you are holding won’t show and you can’t see what you’re holding. Other times you can become part of the floor. You can even discover that the planet is hollow and fall into the void beneath the map. The guns can also be hard to identify since the gun previews are small when picking up other guns. When in a vehicle, moving fast, the game can slow down and start lagging. The game can also lag when there are large amounts of enemies are coming at you. There is no sprinting in the game, but the jump of the Master Chief is a sort of super jump so you can still get around quickly.

There is no natural regeneration in the game. Since there is no natural regeneration, the game can be slightly difficult. You can pick up health packs that are in places around the maps to regain full health. Your shields regenerate, so you can survive long enough to make it to the next level. If you don’t make it to the next level and you die, then when you respawn you go back to your last checkpoint and restart from there. One flaw, to me, is that your allies can be killed by you. There were few good things in the game, in my opinion, but the good overpowered the bad. If I think about the time when this game came out, then I can see why the game wasn’t very good.