Title: Halo: Anniversary
Developer/Publisher: 343 Industries/ Microsoft Studios
Game Genre: FPS
Multi-player: 2 Player Co-op (Local and Online), Up to 16 Online Competitive
Age Rating: 16
Length: Medium (Approx 5-10 hours Story)

My Impressions

Playing the original Halo on my house mates Xbox was one of the main reasons I ended up buying an (original) Xbox rather than a Playstation 2. Since then Halo has become the main FPS franchise for the Xbox brand and is rightly considered an all time classic game.

It is now 10 years since Halo was first released and in recognition of that Microsoft have decided to Spruce up the game with new graphics and online capabilities and re-release it. The question is, will the remastered game bring back good memories or will it be a case of mutton dresses as lamb?

Thankfully the gameplay holds up well even after 10 years and since Halo originates from a time when online multiplayer on consoles was not established the single player side of things is quite strong. Aside from the changes in graphics and a remastered soundtrack, in terms of core gameplay Halo Anniversary seems to be identical to the original game including well known glitches and exploits, and the most well known of them “the grenade jump” is needed to get some collection achievements.

In fact the collectables which take the form of skulls and terminals are the only real change to the layout of the game, and even these are built into the existing geometry of the level. The skulls act like the skulls since Halo 3 and once collected can be activated from the level select menu to alter aspects of the gameplay. In contrast the terminals give short films which give extra background to the Halo lore and can be replayed in the extras part of the main menu.

One of the much talked about features of the game is that you can switch between the original and updated graphics at the touch of a button. This feature is probably one of the best ways of showing how far graphics have progressed in 10 years, since the difference is dramatic and the original game is painful to look at compared to the new graphics. That being said a few of the character models look slightly off when compared to their appearance in the original and sequals.

There is also limited Kinect Functionality with the main bonus feature being the library, where you use voice recognition to switch to analyse mode and then scan objects of interest (of which there are 45 in the game). I quite enjoyed this feature but unfortunately I found that Kinect didn’t like the way I said “scan” and it would often take multiple attempts to scan an object. There are also other voice commands but I did not use them that much.

The main downside to Halo Anniversary is that the multiplayer is done using the Reach engine (and the Xbox 360 thinks you are playing Halo Reach) rather than the Halo engine, and are also adaptations of the original maps rather than straight forward spruced up versions. While I can understand the reasoning behind the choice (not to split the Halo player base) it is still disappointing. The only positive is that the maps are also available as a DLC pack for Halo Reach costing 1200 MSP and you get a code to download it for free with Halo Anniversary. The other disappointment is that while there is online co-op, there is no matchmaking for it.

Overall Halo Anniversary is a fun game to play and despite the slight disappointment with the multiplayer part is well worth buying, especially since it is typically priced at £30-£35 in the UK rather than the normal £40-£45 for a new game. Given how good the game looks I wish some other games would get spruced up in the same fashion and I wonder how long it will be before there is a Halo 2 special edition sprung upon us.

My Recommendation and Rating

Buy

Its Halo Combat Evolved but with much better graphics, there is little more you need to know before deciding if you want to buy it or not.