The Ultimate Halo: Combat Evolved Critique 

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I like to think that Chief killed the marines in the pod during the crash because he wasn't sitting and bounced around inside, crushing everyone else.

A 2 hour Halo CE critique? I’m interested 🔥

For the fate of the Marines on Silent Cartographer, you hear what happens to them over the radio. They notify you that more Covenant drop ships are in bound. Cortana will tell them to try to get inside the building you’re in but they’ll respond that the drop ships are closing in too fast. They say they’ll hold off the Covenant as long as they can, but it’s evident through the tone of the transmission that it’ll be a last stand. Cortana ends the transmission with, “Give them hell Marines.” She’ll then proceed to tell you that you need to leave before more Covenant reinforcements arrive.

one of the things I adore about those first 3 levels of Combat Evolved is that it wordlessly introduces players to the 4 kinds of Covenant Infantry and their specific roles. First, in Pillar of Autumn, the player encounters the core of the Covenant's ground force: Elites and Grunts. Leaders and Fodder. Next, in Halo, Jackals are introduced to the fold, acting as shock troopers, scouts, and snipers with their Point Defense Gauntlets, lastly in Truth and Reconcilliation: Hunters, the Heavy Infantry. by separating the Covenant species like this, it gives the player a chance to somewhat safely figure out each enemy's core combat loop.

You are right about Bungie's intentions of the Forerunners being Humans! The original storyboards for Halo 2's ending shows the Arbiter uncovering some Forerunner remains in a tomb, which is revealed to be a Human skeleton. I have always enjoyed the way Bungie portrayed the Forerunners and implied the connection between them and humanity, as it gives the story a sort of cyclical nature that ties into other circle metaphors found throughout the rest of the series, like the Halo rings themselves

The one issue I have with 343 Guilty Spark, The Library, and Two Betrayals, is that if Cortana had just taken thirty seconds to explain what she found, a lot of trouble, as well as the argument that starts Two Betrayals, could have been avoided.

For all of my countless playthroughs of this all-time great game, I never knew you could take the elevator back up to the surface and see dead Marines pre-Flood reveal on 343 Guilty Spark.

You made me realize how much of a barbarian I was for not paying attention to environmental storytelling. I'm glad my eyes are open b/c now I can't help but notice it in other games too

I remember playing this game for the first time on PC back in like 2005 or so. The multiplayer online was absolutely incredible.

the pillar of autumn also teaches you how to climb ladders with prompt instructions on the bridge.

Combat Evolved was my first FPS game and I still go back to play it every now and again. Thank you for making this video 🙏🏻

42:55 this is actually explained how they died! During your progress through the map room section underground you get a radio call from those marines that an overwhelming amount of Covenant dropships are inbound and Cortana advises them to take cover in the structure but they then reply that there isn't time and will hold them off as long as possible to buy Chief time to find the Cartographer.

The lighting effects were so amazing for 2001; the scintillating light from plasma fire or muzzle flash reflecting off of the walls/surroundings was incredible.

You should make videos that deep dive into the different enemy types, and how they changed along with each game. Like a video for grunts a video for Jackal’s, a video for hunters.

Question: During your analysis of the mission Halo, you speculate on how Halo Infinite will go about open area encounters as if you have not played the Halo Infinite campaign. Was this section recorded long before Infinite was out or is there something new coming to Halo Infinite that I am not aware of?

I remember getting this back in 2001. Was blown away. It’s hard to appreciate these days but back then there was nothing else like it at the time.

Thankyou for taking the time to fill ours with great content, your hard work shows and is appreciated 😎

7:10 "About time you showed up." *Screams of death*

I really enjoyed the circular style of the different chapters. Pillar of Autumn / The Maw Truth & Reconciliation / Keyes Assault on The Control Room / Two Betrayals 343 Guilty Spark / The Library* These are all arguably the same places* but with different objectives and slightly different level design.

I remember back in the day. Getting the achievement for beating the campaign on laso difficulty was a bitch. Ah, listen memories that aren't even from the original iteration of this game being typed up as if it were a fine regalement of such a fine yarn to mi grandkids around the fire place.

At 10:14, you walk out into a hallway full of enemies that don't know you're there yet. This is another test of everything you just learned. Enemies that don't see you can be instantly, silently killed from behind, and the motion tracker lets you see where everyone else is while you focus on killing them one at a time. This segment also introduces you to stealth, which is a recurring mechanic in CE. As for obvious tutorials, Bungie developers have done presentations on their play testing sessions for CE. They mentioned how they needed to keep adding more and more obvious visual and auditory cues to teach players things like the grunts running away when you kill an elite. At 15:20, this is also your first introduction to the needler. Its projectiles are bright glowing pink in a darker green environment. Pink and green are complimentary colors, making your first exposure to these homing needles as eye-catching as possible. The game teaches you they track you without needing to tell you. New players will, of course, want to pick one up and use it themselves. They'll find it's very effective against elites and grunts, but completely ineffective against the jackals they've just introduced. The jackals are also very strong against your human weapons, which leaves you with the plasma weapons. This is teaching you that plasma is better at dealing with shields. Just to further drive that point home, jackals are the only enemies that use charged plasma pistol shots against you, which drain your shields instantly. Around 18:00 you're talking about non-linear level design that still funnels you into tighter linear design. This is also where the game first introduces the sniper rifle. All 3 areas you can go give you a sniper rifle in a spot where you can shoot the enemy, but they can't shoot you. Even before the intro to Truth and Reconciliation, the game is making sure your first exposure to the sniper rifle shows off its strengths. T&R is also the only level in the game that does not feature the pistol, and where your sniper rifle starts with more reserve ammo than a weapon is normally allowed to hold. On top of that, this is also one of the only levels sniper rifle ammo pickups are liberally strewn about in. The sniper rifle and pistol are the only two headshot-capable weapons in the game, so T&R as a whole is a test of your sniper rifle usage. It's also a test of balancing conservation of "power weapon" ammo with more common ammo in a game with a 2 weapon limit, which was also novel at the time. I can't agree with T&R's hallways being uninspired. Even today, the Covenant architecture is visually unique and gorgeous. Texture resolution is normally the most dated aspect of older games, but Bungie's clever use of strip textures make the whole scene appear much more high-resolution. Combine that with excellent reflective shaders, and you've got something that still looks great today. This game came out in _2001_. Even Halo 2 often fails to live up to looking as good as CE. 1:25:00 This is a fun theory, but I don't think it's accurate. There are some Bungie dev commentaries out there where they talk about how they slapped Two Betrayals together. Even without that, signs of rushed development are most obvious in Two Betrayals. It feels like it has the least polish of any level. There are more rocket flood here than anywhere else, checkpoints are much more sparse than other levels, and some of the music cues are weirdly timed or in the wrong order. There's also quite a few gold elites just thrown in there, as well as a lot of the encounters just feeling samey. Every other level you backtrack through also has significant changes except Two Betrayals. 1:36:30 Cards on the table, this is one of my favorite parts of the game. This is Halo entirely taking the training wheels off. You know how your kit works, you know how the enemies work, and you already know this environment (because of T&R). The game throws everything it's got at you. It's also worth pointing out, the flood do actually have a set number of spawns in these hallways. The thing that many players miss is that the flood spawn *behind* you, a ways back, and the next wave is scripted to show up when the current wave is almost dead. If you jump down from the upper level, you're going to have a rough time. If you take your time and go around through the hallway, you can kill a lot of the flood before they've, well, *flooded* you. Also, the shotgun is essentially a straight upgrade over the assault rifle. The game knows this, and it expects you to be using it during this part.

Love these vids, can't wait to experience them all together like this! Thanks for the content as always.

Whoa looking forward to this man ❤ By the way, have you ever thought of doing a video on each Halo game where you list your personal favourite and subjectively the best and worst levels from each game? A trifecta if you will. I know for some Halo games...my personal favourite levels don't always match up with what is subjectively the best level 😂

Played the hell out of Silent Cartographer in Halo demo 😁

Love the long-form content Ben! Been having it on in the background listening intently while gaming. This’ll be one I come back to again and again.

I’m certain this man deserves more subscribers and popularity with his amazing quality of content

I love these long videos! Thanks Ben good work

Banshee comes in handy for that last push on Assault on the Control Room. Just open the door & get back in

As a long time Halo fan, this video has my seal of approval. Great work.

I love how casually cortana tells the marines to "take him down boys" regarding the chief like that's some easy task. If only someone had told the covenant to "just take him down boys" maybe they would have won the war.

Oh man, I felt like this has been a long time coming... A culmination of a lot of nostalgia-laden love for this legendary game! Congrats and big thanks, Ben! 👍❤

this must of been a looootttttttt of work. You definitely have the best critque videos. Bar none.

@1:47:00 When you mention going to the armory to grab the rockets, if you go all the way to the wall on the far side and shine your flashlight through the window of the closed door, you can make out INVISIBLE Flood combat forms moving around! If you shoot or startle them, the door WILL open...

Whenever I hear you talk about 343 Guilty Spark I always come away liking the mission more and more! :)

Wow Ben thank you for taking the time to make this video

You might be my new favorite RU-vidr. I can’t image the amount of time you spend making this video. This is content💯

The game's level design feels intentional. It's chiral - the 2nd half is just the 1st half backwards, back to the POA. Because you're familiar with these places, it hits way harder to see what the Flood has done to them.

keep making long videos like this 🔥

Can we get an ultimate halo 2 critique? 😉

I think my favorite part of assault on the control room is where you have the opportunity to steal the banshee if your attentive you'll notice in the hallway where you took on the elites prior to the last circular room there's an active camouflage pickup and if you take care of the hunters in that room and the grunts and jackals in-between the two doors then backtrack to the camouflage pickup then make a mad dash to the banshee it makes it much easier and its obvious thats how bungie intended to reward the more attentive and skilled players

I had fun playing this game on the old Xbox in the corner of the room upstairs with my neighbor a lot, never realized it was ten years old at the time. Great game, part of my childhood as well as my dads early adult life too. Truly multigenerational

I love your videos Ben!

Absolutely sensational. Your best yet.

A pleasant Friday surprise. This’ll make a great watch in the last two hour of work this week

Whats good Ben, cant wait for your next CE stream🤙

Ben, this is your millionth video about Halo CE.........and i love them all.

this game opened up so much imagination and wonder in me as a kid in 2005. I remember going nuts when I found a spoof like magazine/manual of it in borders. I took that thing with me everywhere.

Really like your points about the construction of halo CE’s story - coming back to play it as an adult I was struck by how effortlessly functional the story is. It’s not groundbreaking, and it’s not intended to be, but it builds a world that can be fleshed out in the future in a story that has very little fat. It means that for players that just want to be pointed in a direction and told to kill aliens, the story is super accessible for them anyway. Meanwhile there’s just enough there to pull in people that want a bit more on this version of the future. And of course it lays a good foundation for the much more detailed world building of games like halo 2 or reach, without limiting any possibilities for future writing.

Golden era Bungie (Joe) excelled at dialogue and had some pretty well known actors that knew how to deliver. Some of the actors stuck around but it will never be the same without the right vision. Halo fans long for the day we get a Halo game we want to learn to recite.

Under Cover of Night is by far my favorite track from Halo:CE, if not any game. It’s just so fitting. Mysterious, ominous, and epic like Halo. One reason I fell in love with Halo. The music.

one of the VERY FEW games from that era that still feels good and modernish, and that solidified the FPS genre and control scheme, and it probably helped spawn speedrunning and still has a huge following and constant community doing it. The story it portrays through just a couple simple cutscenes and the worlds they built are incredible now, let alone in 2001.... especially with the graphics, movement, gunplay, enemies and their introduction, loads and checkpoints, and THE MUSIC and sound, my god what an AMAZING soundtrack/foley job they did. That view of the ring on most levels in the day time is BEAUTIFUL as well

Your videos are amazing, hope you keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to future content. Love from Sweden!

You can actually skip part of assault on the cintrol room if you shoot the banshee on the brudge with a rocjet or kill the elite before he gets inside. Then just fly straight to the door.

The Library intentionally made that way for immersion into the story. To show how exhausting is fighting with flood mentally and physically. To have a hint of why forerunners would fell to flood despite having tech superiority. I am not a machine which need flashing lights to be entertained always. Alone, dark, very alien, creepy, never ending nightmare could be entertaining as well. And I love the Library the way it is.

48:40 Shoutout to whoever that other marine was that shot the hunter in the back with their own sniper

"There's two of us in here" Also served a purpose in the level as a way to call attention to your shield and that you would begin to take lasting health damage. The trigger for the line is the first time your shield is low.

Outstanding job!

Halo CE is the only one in the Bungie era I find difficult wanting to replay it because the padding in level design drags down the overall experience. There are more levels in that game I dread replaying than any other in the series not because of its difficulty, but because it gets boring halfway through. It's a personal opinion I know, but CE is the one game in the series that could use a very good remake like what we've gotten from RE2 and Dead Space. That being said, CE is a perfect time capsule that shows Bungie's slow progress into perfecting their game design by the time between Halo 3 and Reach. It's still a classic that deserves the praise it gained innovating the FPS genre.

Good video Just to say by the way, you forgot to put the card linking to your mission ranking video up at 1:29:48, thought you'd might like to know 🙂

Listening to these get me throuhh my work day

51:29 the dodge by that elite was perfect

7:53 is the absolute core of what made Halo what it became. When you think about CE in the context of its time, you are comparing it to Doom and Quake and Goldeneye. All of them were corridor shooters that were limited in scope by the hardware of the time. Halo started off the same; Shooting enemies in corridors. And then suddenly you're on the ring and you have this massive sandbox map with a never before seen skybox and the ability to complete it in whatever order you decide. Unheard of in 2000 and 2001. Halo is the single greatest game in history BECAUSE of that context and because of what it did to set itself apart. Games would not be what they are now if Bungie hadn't juxtaposed PoA and Halo against each other like they did.

Did people actually think Cortana's comment about the cave not being a natural formation was awkward? I thought the point was that the cave was obviously Forerunner tech and that's how she knew it must lead somewhere and have a purpose. If it looked natural, it would have been confusing what she was talking about when she said it wasn't.

Absolutely love this video - are you considering doing one for Halo 2?

Damn my game time in CE from 2001 can be counted, genuinely in months, and I’ve never known about the jackals and drop ship at the end of SC. I even randomly found out about how to save your guys on that map by blocking the door but never knew that. Thanks for the info.

It’s funny still being able to quote the game’s dialogue all these years later😂

Tremendous breakdown of the game!! Bravo 👏🏼

I think it would be cool if these new studios in charge of future Halo projects just rebooted the franchise from Halo 4 and took back the human forerunner approach bungie intended. 343 forerunner is way less compelling than bungie's human forerunner concept. It went from a grim story about the doomed nature of inevitable cycles and the breaking of the cycles to "humans are special and they'll succeed where we failed". Just doesnt hit as hard.

Definitely adding this to my list of videos to listen to at work

Player 1: Halo CE is legendary! Player 2: I think it's ok. Player 3: I think it's great, flawed but great. Player 1, 2 and 3: But The Library sucks.

The beginning explains it all!

I don't fully agree with some expectations for the level Keyes. Later parts are considered repetitive or too hard? I don't think it's too hard, but you do have to re-think how you approach after a death - at a few points you choose between safely waiting out ~7 waves of spawns, or follow a grenade and breach to clear a spawn point. Perhaps this is a difference in preference, as I find most of gameplay sections of H3 to be too short, wishing they were more encounters per level like H1.

In Assault on the control room… at the very start of you immediately hit x you get back in the pelican. It takes you the edge of map where it parks out of sight.

If you go deep into the armory on the maw, you get attacked by invisible combat forms

The idea of covenant in the library sounds like a really good idea. Maybe they could also be trying to get the index as well. Maybe it’d be too similar to the other later levels though

A lot of the design choices in CE are really interesting when looked at in the context of Bungie's previous work. CE's outdoor sections work so well because of Bungie's time developing Myth. Hell, CE was originally conceived as an RTS so Bungie's terrain and enemy placement work really really well. It just so happens that the design philosophy of RTS level design happens to translate really well to a FPS title. On the other hand, Bungie's time developing Marathon seems to have really hurt CE's interior sections a lot. If you haven't played the old Marathon titles, they are full of overlong levels filled to the brim with mazes and puzzles. It makes for an interesting concept for the first few levels, but Marathon really starts to drag before you've even reached the halfway point. For reference, I think Marathon 2 has 28ish levels that take just about as long (if not longer) to beat as a standard Halo level. And it's all mazes and water puzzles. You can see a lot of Marathon's influence in CE's maze-like interiors and Bungie's penchant for trying to stretch the runtime of levels. In my opinion, it's both the good and the bad that make CE so interesting. It's the product of nearly a decade of learning. By the time CE launched Bungie had made dungeon crawlers, invented dual wielding and mouse look for fps games, made 2 RTS games, and had just landed a lucrative deal with Microsoft. CE took Bungie from a relatively small studio where one person was drawing every single sprite by hand to one of the biggest companies in the gaming landscape.

The end with Johnson always killed me😂

13:00 epic scene 🔥

2 hour video at 1 am yeah I’ve got time

51:29 that elite literally yeeted himself off the bridge from trying to dodge that plasma grenade lol

I just realized, after the diagnostics and after the guy in the bay above gets killed, the crewman who ran your diagnostics and shields says 'c'mon, we've got to get the hell out of here!', which is the word-for-word exact same sentence one of the marines says to Six while offering a hand to get him into the pelican at the end of Pillar of Autumn, after Emile is killed. The only difference is that he's a crewman now, and that he says it much more calmly than the marine in Reach.

Ben you spoil us with halo content

Halo CE is perfectly paced in both story and gameplay. It's constantly changing and the experience feels fresh. As you learn more about humanity's situation, Halo and what its purpose is, why the covenant worship it; the gameplay is expanding alongside it. You fight more types of covenant, you get more weapons available to you, vehicle combat is introduced. The first half steadily increases the stakes both story wise and enemy encounters. By the time you're fighting the covenant at full force you discover the control room and what Halo is actually for and the story gets much darker. The overwhelming forces of the covenant in the 5th mission is the antithesis of how they are in the 6th. The flood's introduction is a perfect example of the masterful environmental storytelling that coincides with the plot. It really makes you immersed in the setting and this terrifying reveal feels visceral. And from then on the gameplay and story gets more chaotic and desperate straight through to the explosive finale. It's one of the reasons why Halo CE is my favorite in the series. It also has the best balanced legendary difficulty.

The Library is my favorite level because of how bland and disorienting it is - it makes it far more terrifying and puts your entire focus on the Flood.

Playing Solo on Legendary... rather than dread, when fighting the flood, I actually felt a strong sense of relief ngl just cause they're much easier to deal with

I remember playing a demo or something of halo when I was younger and the mission was the silent cartographer but the whole mission played differently. Idk what it was I wish I could play it again

the balance for "assault on the control room" is to steal the first banshee by setting up your shot with the sniper and blowing it off the platform with a rocket before the elite can get on it!

Fun fact, the covenant ship in Keyes is not canonically the T&R

Holy fuck I cannot wait to watch this

Combat Evolved is one hell of an experience, and it's so close to my heart

hey Ben i love all your content and am looking forward to tomorrows stream, just 1 thing do yiu jnow of easily killing hunters from the front

Silent Cartographer was my favorite mission.

Ben WTF a 2 hour long video I am all for it!!!!! thats 2 hours of my life gone no question

Glad Dustin Echoes made it out

51:21 - “That was the worst throw ever. Of all time.”

By the time I reach Assault on the Control Room, I am already sick to death of the 3 enemy units: Grunts, Elites, Jackals repeated ad nauseam. That the game soon introduces Hunters and that's nice, but it is not a kind of re-usable enemy unit without setting up an larger area to fight them in, so they go underused. When the flood gets introduced, the player is made sick of them *immediately* because of the Library. Then you fight some sentinels and proceed to play the campaign in reverse by returning to previously trodden areas. By all means this is poor campaign design, but as a teenager I played it anyways because it offered a great couch co-op experience. As an adult I return to it from time to time, not because it's good, but because I like to come back and re-affirm what I've already thought about the game.

The double miss on the grenades😭😭

Lets not casually skip over the transition between silent cartographer and assault. You're on an island with ocean as far as you can see in every direction. The pelican goes into a hole in the ground and emerges in a snowy moutain area...

When just one mission is more fun and has more variety then the whole of Infinite...