[h1]Positives:[/h1]
1. Good graphics, nearly everything has good textures and high poly models.
2. Beautiful environments, the grass, trees and rocks look amazing, almost realistic, the sand and snow interact with character and vehicle movements, such as foot steps and tire tracks.
3. The music is reused from the original game, keeping that original feeling intact with Marty's amazing music.
4. Needle rifle, battle rifle, Smg, spiker and fuel rod gun were added in from past and future Halo titles. Only down side is the needle rifle, spiker and battle rifle are not present in the main game and only available in the bonus missions, for some strange reason.
5. Grunt, Jackal and Hunter voice lines seem to be from the original game, only down side is the Elites were given new voice lines that make them sound like Infinite Elites, rather than the original.
6. Marines use their original voice lines, new marines like female marines use Halo Reach voice lines.
7. The repetitive layout of levels was fixed in this Remake, its not a complete slog to play anymore, unlike the original.
8. UNSC vehicles all look amazing, the pelican, warthog and scorpion look like the classic cool variants.
9. Most of the old encounters and environmental story telling was kept intact, only some of them were changed drastically or removed, for example, the dead invisible Elite and marines that were once present on assault on the control room was changed to only have the dead Elite, I have zero clue why change something like that, but its just a nitpick on my part.
[h1]Negatives:[/h1]
1. Bodies have basic Unreal Engine ragdolls that make the limbs flop around like noodles, extremely lazy work on the Devs part.
2. Punching enemies doesn't have a sound effect, it makes every melee feel completely loose, like punching air, not satisfying at all.
3. Unless you spend a long time messing with settings, the game will look fuzzy and blurry, unlike other Unreal Engine Games.
4. There are numerous bugs, oversites and mistakes, me and a friend found while playing, for example, a hole in the side of a mountain that will kill you instantly if you fall in, plasma shots will sometimes look like they will miss you but somehow still hit you, plasma grenades will act strange after being thrown by the enemy, they will either disappear after being thrown or sometimes go invisible and blow up, there are plenty more but I can't fit them all here.
5. Difficulty is random, sometimes the enemies are easy to fight and are complete push overs, and then other times they decide to act smart and become super hard to fight against, the enemy AI is unpredictable and constantly flip flopping from easy to hard, not intended by the Devs I assume.
6. S*icide grunts being added in ruins the game in several spots, the Combat Evolved level layout doesn't support them properly, in wide open areas they are easy to handle but in small corridors they are super over powered. (The majority of the game takes place in small and tight hallways and corridors)
7. Jackals for some reason are stronger than Elites, before the recent update especially, they shoot their plasma pistols with extreme accuracy, their lack of flinching properly made them harder to fight against, thankfully Halo Studios made an update to fix that.
8. The assault rifle is useless. in the original I would use it against grunts and flood spores, I would even use it against Elites from time to time to shred their shields, but in this game its not even good at doing that, its low damage, bad accuracy and lower ammo count makes me not even want to pick it up, I drop it to pick up better guns now.
9. Over powered Banshees, I would often get killed unfairly by banshees in this game, their plasma fire is too strong, they kill almost instantly, even on full health, this is mostly a heroic and legendary issue.
10. Reused assets, most if not all character models in this game came from Halo Infinite, some covenant crates and decoration come from Halo 5, weapon models mostly also from Halo Infinite, yet another example of laziness on the Devs part, they didn't bother recreating the original art style at all.
11. Forerunner architecture is awful, its shiny and ugly, Unreal Engine gives it a very ugly look too, its sharp, made of complex lines and more in line with Halo 5, Infinite and 4 rather than the brutalist classic Halo architecture. the classic look was rusty metal and grimy worn down structures that looked cool, what a major downgrade.
12. The Covenant vehicles look awful, the only one that looks good is the wraith, the ghost is clearly inspired by the Infinite variant, just turned purple, the banshee is a mix of the classic look with the Reach variant mixed in, overall not as good looking as the UNSC vehicles that clearly got more love and respect.
13. Cortana speaks WAY too much, the only good thing I can say about the Library now is that I don't hear her speak anymore, she points out the obvious on a constant basis and has a very condescending tone to her voice, she speaks to Chief like he is 12 or REALLY stupid.
14. Adding skulls to this game was a good idea, but most of them are useless or not needed at all, the main reason to get them all is to unlock the achievement, other than that, collecting them all is a waste of time.
Overall, too many negatives and not enough positives, if they added more content to the main game this Remake would have been cool but they decided to focus everything on the bonus missions NOBODY asked for, they could have added brutes, drones, battle rifles, spikers, brute chopper, needle rifle and engineers to the main game and they would have made this Remake awesome but they fumbled what should have been an easy home run, an easy slam dunk and a easy win overall, what a shame.
I suggest you wait for a sale to get this game.
