Halo: Combat Evolved multi-player was added as an afterthought. In fact, there was even a lot of debate at Bungie about whether or not they were even going to include multi-player at all. When they decided to include it they rushed it. Entire maps were made by a single person, some in a single day. Very little testing was possible. These multi-player modes were loved and cherished cause they were played over LAN, almost exclusively with close friends in very small networks of people. At the time it was completely magical and fresh and new.
But was it any good?
That all depends on the answer to the following question: Did Bungie, as an afterthought, while in a rush, somehow create the most perfect and balanced and enjoyable multi-player experience of the last two console generations?
Think about it for a minute. Think about the environment you played CE in. You had this brand new console that was capable of doing incredible new things. You were generally playing in split screen with people you cared about. There was never any lag. There was never any obnoxious trash talking. There were never millions of people exploiting the game’s faults and many unbalances, there were never millions of people breaking the maps. And for most people, you had very few similar experiences to compare it to. It’s almost impossible to look back on CE as anything but a perfect experience.
Think about the time Halo CE came out. It was the turn of the millennium. Hands down, Halo CE was the very beginning of the video game home console shooter experience. People had nothing to measure CE against.* Most people didn’t even know if it was good or bad, most people didn’t even know what was balanced/unbalanced. There weren’t terms like ‘casual’ and ‘hardcore’. The word noob wasn’t even invented yet. Face it, when CE came out there was no competitive console FPS scene. Halo WAS the console FPS scene. When CE came out most people weren’t judging things like spawn-weighting, kill times and net-code, most people were just staring at it with bulging anime-style eyes and love hearts floating above their heads.
Halo kicked off the arms race and these days it’s more competitive than ever and with so many high fidelity experiences available on the market, it’s not surprising people pick apart every detail with critical eyes. When most people first played Halo they were like a child that had been handed a triple choc ice cream. It was perfect. Now, after 10 years we’re all grown up and a whole lot less impressed and we react more like a food critic slowly chewing a mouthful of premium steak and deliberating over the ratio of basil to tarragon.
And this isn’t a bad thing, not by a long shot. As an older guy I can attest that when you look back through your life, most things from your past seem ideal. Nobody cooked muffins like your grandma, your first kiss was electrifying, your first car was incredible and chances are that movie from your childhood you thought was awesome is probably actually pretty bad (I was recently watching some of the original Transformers cartoons that dazzled me as a child and they are SO camp and tacky it’s utterly embarrassing). As you get older you get more mature and discerning. It’s natural to look back on things through rose tinted glasses. And so we should.
Halo CE wasn’t amazing because it had perfectly balanced maps, guns, and game play. It was amazing because it was your first love. It was amazing because it was the beginning of the journey. Back in 2000 CE had virtually no competition. When you stepped out onto Halo for the first time it launched the xbox, it started a console generation, it broke the graphical barrier and that’s why it blew your mind. When CE came out you couldn’t help but be filled with gooey feelings and perfect memories.
I’ll ask it one more time. Which is more likely?
A. That Bungie got to the end of the development of Halo CE and, at the last minute, decided to rush a multi-player mode with minimal resources and managed somehow to accidentally create the most perfectly balanced and enjoyable Halo multi-player to date. And the same people who created the ideal game couldn’t (despite having much more time, testing and resources) improve on their accidental genius formula.
or
B. The fond memories of your first steps into the incredible Halo universe have somewhat buffed your memories of the experience beyond what they really were.
disclaimers
- I know goldeneye was a FPS before Halo. I have been playing video games since they came on cassette tapes. I don’t really consider Goldeneye competition to Halo cause it was only local play. And it had no second analogue stick and no frame rate. Actually Goldeneye is another good example of nostalgia. Most people talk about how incredible that game was but when they go to play it they can barely stand the experience cause it’s so gimped.
Also, I’m not saying that Reach is perfect by any means. It has many faults. In fact I think each Halo game has it’s fair share of faults.
