halo1 is the game that brought me back into console gaming. i had lost interest in consoles shortly after the playstation1 came out. that’s probably a good 7 years that i ignored console gaming entirely.

i played halo for the first time probably in 2003ish at a friend’s house and i thought it was amazing. the graphics were great for the time and the gameplay itself is timeless. the feeling of being on the surface of an alien planet felt authentic, large and semi open-worldish. the music was awesome too and the enemies actually felt alive instead of like mindless automatons. the final kicker that brought it all together though was the story and lore. i was completely drawn in at the time by the halo universe and determined to finish the game. this in contrast to a lot of classic FPS’s where the focus is usually on gameplay and graphics alone and the story/lore is insignificant. i enjoyed plenty of old FPS’s but i would mostly just mess around and use cheat codes eventually to check out later levels. but i was never compelled by these games to keep playing besides for simple amusement. from my memory, halo was the first FPS that i played that vastly improved on the formula and proved that the genre was capable of producing memorable games.

i’ve recently started replaying halo1 on an xbox360. it’s been over 10 years since i first played the game. it’s funny how badly 3d graphics age over time. as i said above i remember halo’s graphics being amazing when it first came out…nowadays they certainly are not that. the outside environments in particular lack a lot of details. however, to the game’s credit a lot of the game’s building interiors that consist of only hard angles still look pretty good.

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