HALO: CE and HALO: CE Anniversary comparison

Games Other Halo
#1

When playing CEA I realized a few things that were different about the original graphics that weren’t true for the original game. The old graphics were much to dark and sometimes on the snow levels when you looked up at the sky the gray outlines of the plateaus were showing and it wasn’t much of a snowstorm as the original. In Truth and Reconciliation the shield doors of the ship are a weird shade of purple-pink, and the terrain is a little empty. I can understand difficulties with the engine and everything, and how hard it was to make Anniversary, but that’s a little too bad. Now the people who never played the original aren’t going to be able to see what the actual game was like. I liked the game, and understand the choice to make it for the XBox 360, but it almost seems like it ruined the original. I wonder what they’ll do for the anniversary of HALO 2? I know I would only make a remake if I knew it was perfect. I know some of my friends agree, and they didn’t really like CEA. But HALO is different than MW or more modern types of games. It has a different feel that makes it HALO. Like Bungie, 343 is staring of small but hopefully they’ll grow into something big.

I was disappointed that only two people could play campaign over Live, but at least it’s playable over Live. Yeah, I also would have loved the original maps with enhanced graphics for multiplayer, maybe even with the ability to change graphics, because that’s what I was expecting; that would have been awesome.

#2

> When playing CEA I realized a few things that were different about the original graphics that weren’t true for the original game.

This is because CEA is a port of Halo PC, though even that might not be fair to HPC, since classic mode has even more rendering problems than HPC does.

Classic mode really is an abysmal representation of Halo 1, though. Despite the moderate picture quality improvements, the original game has vastly superior aesthetics, especially with how well the original sound layer goes with it.

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As for Halo 2, that’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I’d be too worried. I don’t have H2V, but from what I’ve seen in videos it looks like it’s rendering the game reasonably well. And while the 360 has that horrible ghost images problem, I’m sure those sorts of things would be fixed in a port, and aside from that issue the game looks great. My point being, while there have been stupidities and bugs, Halo 2 has had more luck than Halo 1 with getting ports and emulators to actually process the original visual content.

#3

I wish CEA had been done differently. The only reason I still keep it around is because of the skulls. Though I’ve recently got CE so I might not even play it anymore.

CEA’s apparently based on PC. Yet it did not come with the options (2 sensitivities, level of detail control i.e. particles, shadows). It did not come with the fixes (the crouch, the hold X to enter vehicle). Why anyone would consider ‘press X to enter a vehicle a good experience’ I do not know. That should have been fixed. It’s annoying when I’m using a vehicle for cover and I have to back up a few inches to reload my gun…

CEA should have been like this:

1. CE (Xbox NTSC would be preferable but I’d certainly like to give PAL a try) with subtle gameplay changes, new graphics, new models, achievements, skulls, terminals, improved controls (for the tank, perhaps for the Banshee, and as mentioned above, a better crouch), new options.

Gameplay changes wouldn’t fix everything. They’d be limited to the rarely seen/noticed stuff and the grievances:

-plasma rifle Zealots can’t melee
-human combat form allied with Covies on The Maw
-1 fuel rod Grunt on Keyes dies when he’s dropped off by a dropship
-not spawning the Flood in the chasm before Final Run on Two Betrayals. It’s possible to skip on ahead without spawning all the Flood but this does not spawn the Banshees. This has no real purpose other than exploring and I’m sure first-time players have encountered this before.
-no sniping Flood. The conveniently placed sniper is pretty much only meant to be used on the Covies

Things that should not be touched:

-One shotting Hunters with pistol. It’s not necessary to use the pistol on Hunters. It’s completely optional
-spawning additional marines by running ahead of your current ones
-bridge jump, shield bump, early Banshees, classic tricks
-Flood melee resistance
-vehicle physics
-melee radius, blast radius, projectiles, weapons
-general AI behavior
-friendly fire. It’s pretty funny watching sword Elites slaughter their own allies. And watching marines shoot each other in the back and say witty comments

I’m uncertain about these:

-marine snipers sniping their buddies. In the chasm on AotCR, bring a bunch of marines and by standing in a certain location, they all get sniped.
-stealth Elites with visible swords. I’d rather have easier to see cloaked Elites with cloaked swords than Elites that have visible swords but are freaking hard to see (in CEA)

Sound and dialogue would not altered. A skull for that would be better. There was a skull where the gun fire audio would be swapped but somehow, that would have affected gameplay and it was dropped. Music should be switchable in the options.

2. Theater. Or at least Blind skull. Or even better: total hud control in the options. Really, the only hud effecting skull that was reasonable was Fog.

3. includes digital download of Xbox CE

4. Forget about Firefight. That should be separate DLC worked on later.

It’s especially a grievance when the firefight map uses a common firefight location yet it fails to replicate the same feel. Why not the hub, the rockslide area, or the area that has marines at the top of the hill? The blocked off routes, the AI following you around everywhere, it feels too limited. The rockslide area would have been much more better since you had a lot more cover and much more area to cover.

5. The original mp experience in new graphics. Doesn’t have to be online but that would be pretty cool. When I tried out H3 matchmaking, I got pwned. But when I joined a Halo PC game, it really depended on the number of players and my mood. I had some fun competitive times.

The splitting the community excuse is bs.

6. Simple map editor. Doesn’t have to be Forge 2.0. Just include the basics.

7. No exclusive features (except 3D), preorder should be fair.

Around $60, maybe more, but it would be worth it.

#4

all in all the only thing thats changed is the sniper sight (the new one is ewww) and the graphics (much better) but there is still the stupid problem with shooting JUST beside a wall but the bullets hitting an invisible section of the wall thats seethrough like with the trees but it happens with cliffs and stuff p.s. love all according to plan coolest achievment

#5

Everything in Anniversary is better than the original, in my opinion, but I still didn’t like Anniversary because I didn’t like the gameplay in the original. I started with Halo 2, so going back to the clunkiness of Halo: CE was quite jarring.

#6

> Everything in Anniversary is better than the original, in my opinion, but I still didn’t like Anniversary because I didn’t like the gameplay in the original. I started with Halo 2, so going back to the clunkiness of Halo: CE was quite jarring.

I started with halo 2 as well! However, I don’t think halo Anniversary was bad. It’s just they said they weren’t changing ANYTHING for game play.

#7

CEA was my first time playing CE apart from the PC demo on the one level “the silent cartographer” and i thoroughly enjoyed it. I completed the campaign twice on heroic and went skull and terminal hunting. Yes all your arguments are reasonable but c’mon, who cares if the sniper doesn’t work on flood you got the pistol, and the melee doesn’t work on flood in any of the halo games. CEA is what is says on the box, the original game with remastered graphics. I don’t understand what more you want? it’s great 343i bothered to put in the original graphics and skulls and terminals. Despite what people say, the Anniversary multiplayer is quite enjoyable and the whole game cost only $60 which I think is great value. I’m very happy with CEA, don’t know why your not.

#8

> but c’mon, who cares if the sniper doesn’t work on flood you got the pistol,
>
> and the melee doesn’t work on flood in any of the halo games.

Did you just skim through my complaints and pick out the smallest issues? :confused:

The sniper isn’t that much of a big deal to me, which is why I listed it last. It never appears in H3 Flood encounters, unless you take a beam rifle from the supply case outside before entering.

I’m not complaining about the inability to kill Flood by meleeing. In fact I said I wanted that intact. I was praising CE for making the melee have an effect on Flood (stun). And fyi, melee works on Flood in H3. For combat forms, you can hit them anywhere. For pure forms, you can punch them in the face or use the brute shot/energy sword.

> CEA is what is says on the box, the original game with remastered graphics.

It says ‘new graphics and 100% faithful gameplay deliver all the mystery and adventure of the original’ but there are multiple differences from the original, not to mention the increased lighting in the new graphics and lack of fog in the old graphics, which change the atmosphere drastically.

Comprehensive info about how it is not 100% same gameplay can be found here but there are some posters here who have identified discrepancies as well (i.e. Banshee fuel rod falls much faster). I’d be more trusting if it had explicitly said ‘based on the Xbox version’. Merely saying things like ‘the bridge jump still works’ is insufficient.

> I don’t understand what more you want? it’s great 343i bothered to put in the original graphics and skulls and terminals.

The original graphics are buggy and the terminals are a one-time thing to watch (and it was inevitable that they’d appear on YT, which is where I first watched them).

Half the skulls are lame/redundant. Recession, Boom, Eye Patch, Grunt Funeral, and Grunt Birthday (that’s only graphical) are deliberately engineered to compromise CE’s gameplay and make it like Reach, especially when they’re combined. Here’s how:

Recession = weaker AR, weak pistol, nerfed needler
Boom = grenade nukes, exaggerated blast radius a la Reach
Eye Patch = makes getting headshots with the pistol a chore, does not preserve or enhance the original gameplay other than making it ridiculous. Ruins the Banshee. One thing I don’t like about the H2 pistol, the H3 carbine, the Reach needle rifle is that you have to empty half of the clip to get kills with them. Eye Patch puts the CE pistol in the same category.
Grunt Funeral = a more stronger version of jetpack Grunts, ends up clearing rooms rather than being used strategically

While Foreign and Malfunction are a waste of skull slots. Foreign eliminates the 3 most unique weapons of CE. They had effects as I’ve pointed out here, effects that eliminated the simple running and gunning type of combat. And Malfunction is simply pointless. Blind would have been better since they didn’t include Theater, as that was it’s original purpose.

Bandanna is way op. Infinite ammo would have been good enough but the grenades had to be made infinite as well.

As for the classic skulls, they’re ok, but Thunderstorm and Catch would have been interesting. There are places where I’ve wanted Grunts to lob grenades at me but they don’t throw enough even on Legendary. There are places where I’d like to face only Elite majors but I get minors most of the time.

> Despite what people say, the Anniversary multiplayer is quite enjoyable and the whole game cost only $60 which I think is great value. I’m very happy with CEA, don’t know why your not.

The 10 second countdowns still exist, the Firefight didn’t support the addition of friendly AI (so the friendly AI can’t be modified apart from modifying the enemies).

The location choice for Installation 04 is merely a warm up. The 2 other areas had better combat.

Actually, it costs $40.

#9

I thought it was pretty damn solid. I liked a few of the levels when I was younger but never really had the “experience” with the campaign that most people had until I got to play with updated graphics. The new graphics made it all come together for me and some of the terminals really made the story better too. The weapons sound the best in the series now. The kinnect library is really good for the lore as well and to drool over the models. I now finally see why people loved the original campaign so much thanks to anniversary.
Are there some things I don’t like? sure. Johnson looks funny,poor netcode and truth and reconcilliation is too bright to name a few. I would have liked a theater mode. Its not perfect, but I think this was a great way to do it. I can always play the original if I want the original graphics to be completely faithful.

On the other hand, I think Halo 2 had some serious faults that I would like to have some toggle options for. I.E jackal sniper damage and brute AI/characteristics to name a couple. I think they will have to do a more extensive version of the multiplayer too.

I am more excited at the propest of a halo 2 remake then for halo 4 (and I have the limited edition pre-ordered already!)

anyway, just my thoughts,

I love it, warts and all