Halo: Combat Evolved Review & Storyline

Halo 4 came out today and I'm looking forward to it.  Even though it looks awesome I am still bent on the fact that 343 Industries is making it instead of my beloved Bungie, who I still miss. For those of you who do not know the last six Halo games have been made by Bungie; and they did an awesome job at making every single one.  So in memory of their awesome games, I decided to begin where it all started; Halo: Combat Evolved.  The first installment in the Halo franchise caught the world by surprise, but was quickly welcomed with open arms. Selling a record-breaking high of over five million copies worldwide by November 9, 2005, the highest sold video game of its time.  Developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Studios. Bungie is responsible for the last six game Halo games, but for an unknown reason handed over the reigns of the series to 343 Industries about a year ago, and if your a die-hard-Halo-fan like me, I was saddened by this.  343 looks likes it shows some promise, but I don't think their ever going to be able to fit into Bungie's shoes all the way.  They are more than likely making Halo 4 because they want to make a name for themselves, but its gonna be pretty damn hard to make it better than Halo: Reach.  But I gotta give them credit for going all or nothing like this, they are either going to receive love or hate from the long time fans of the series, including me.  Anyway about the game.  Halo is set in the twenty-sixth century, with the gamer assuming the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier part of the Spartan II program, he is also supposedly the last Spartan alive.  The player is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence who occupies the Chief's neural interface.  Players battle various aliens of the Covenant as you attempt to uncover the secrets of the mysterious Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.  The game has an awesome story, award-winning mutiplayer and never gets old.  Beginning immediately after the events of Halo:  Reach, the game opens up as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace near a mysterious ring-shaped artificial world, called "Halo" by the enemy of the game, the Covenant.  Also in-lies the title of the game and why its named Halo.  A Covenant fleet attacks and heavily damages the Autumn.  Captain Keyes initiates "The Cole Protocol", a procedure designed to keep the Covenant from finding Earth, in which could find out by capturing Cortana.  Thus, to prevent this he orders Master Chief to escape with Cortana and protect her at all costs.  While Keyes prepares to land the ship on Halo, Chief and Cortana escape via escape pod, which then crash lands on the ring. Cortana and Master Chief are the only ones who survive the impact of the escape pod crash.  Keyes survives the  Autumn's crash landing. but is captured by the Covenant.  In the second and third level of the game, the Chief and Cortana gather human survivors and rescue Captain Keyes, who is imprisoned aboard the Covenant ship Truth and Reconciliation.  Once rescued, Keyes orders the Chief to beat the Covenant to Halo's control center and to discover what the Covenant want with Halo.  Chief and Cortana travel to a map room called the Silent Cartographer, which leads them to the control room.  There, Cortana enters the systems and, discovering something urgent, suddenly sends the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes while she stays behind.  While searching for his commander, the Chief learns that the Covenant have accidentally released the Flood, a parasitic alien race capable of spreading itself by overwhelming and infesting other sentient life-forms. Keyes falls victim to them while looking for a cache of weapons.  The release of the Flood prompts Halo's AI monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, to recruit Master Chief in retrieving the Index, a device that will active Halo and prevent the Flood from spreading beyond the facility.  After the Chief retrieves and prepares to use the Index, Cortana re-appear and warns him against the activation.  She has discovered that Halo's defense system is a weapon designed to kill all sentient life in the galaxy, which the Flood requires to spread, a revelation which Guilty Spark confirms.  Faced with this information, the Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy Halo to prevent its activation.  While fighting the Flood, the Covenant, and Guilty Spark's Sentinels , Cortana discovers that the best way to prevent its activation is to cause the crashed Pillar of Autumn to self-destruct.  However, Captain Keyes' authorization is required to destroy the Autumn, forcing the Chief and Cortana to return to the now-Flood-infested Truth and Reconciliation to search for him.  By the time that they reach Keyes, however, he has been infected beyond the piont of no return by the Flood.  The Master Chief retrieves Keyes' neural implants directly from his brain and retreats to the Autumn, where Cortana activates the ships self-destruct sequence.  However, 343 Guilty Spark reappears and deactivates the countdown, discovering the record of human history in the process.  The manually destabilizes the Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactors, and he and Cortana narrowly escape the destruction of Halo via a long sword.  Outside the campaign you could team up with friends, although considering that Xbox Live did not exist, you had to team up with friends on a LAN party.  Overall the game is awesome and is still available as an Original on the Xbox Live Marketplace.  I'd also like to say thanks to Bungie for making these last ten years of Halo awesome all the way and I'm gonna miss you guys.  So get the game, start where it all began, remember all the good times, and hopefully look forward to more good memories.  Heirs to the next ten years of Halo.  Farewell and see you Thursday.  This has been Jacob Arnold, signing off.    

Halo Combat Evolved: E3 2000 Trailer