-broken ai, behavior ranging from erratic to passive and braindead, directionless at times. an enemy can be seen in sight shooting at your direction, but be just a couple inches too close to a wall and be shooting straight into that wall point blank instead of you, and won’t even bother to move to get a better shot, not only for just several minutes but an indefinite period of time, if you stand there long enough.
-reuses assets from halo infinite and halo reach, a game thats at least 15+ years old by now. its quite telling that establishing a solid and cohesive art direction where every asset and model fits in aesthetically wise with one another is not a serious concern for halo studios. this helps in reducing the immersion, seeing familiar assets from previous halo games in what is effectively supposed to be a faithful true remake of halo combat evolved, where “”“everything has been built from the ground up”””, to quote the developers themselves in an interview.
-the remixed soundtrack lacks some of the power and dynamic impact of the original. halo’s music was deliberately used to establish mood, tension, mystery and grandeur, but the new mix sounds flatter and less impactful, undermining moments that were previously carried by the music alone. in addition - weapon/vehicle/environmental sound effects and cues have been mixed and altered as well in the same vein as the remixed OST. muted, flat, less impact and little distinctive character.
you should be able to easily recognize specific weapons firing off, grenades thrown to the floor, weapons overheating, certain enemy attacks, vehicle threats, footsteps, etc without any effort. you shouldn’t ever have to second guess what a sound is in the middle of the action. this only serves as a distraction.
-poor performance/optimization, stuttering in gameplay/cinematics, frame rate drops, crashes, softlocks, video/audio desync, audio popping, and even GPU crashes at the very worst
-unnatural dialogue, stilted and unusual performances that fail to capture/exceed the intended tone of the original. certain tones and inflections were employed in the original to establish a solid atmosphere and sense of urgency to the plot. but thats more difficult to get a feel for when voice lines sound off-putting and strange, as if a less-than-ideal take from a voice actor was chosen for the final release, and the end result comes off feeling like a amateur theatre play.
not only that but the cinematography and the camera angles for cutscenes are unusually still and static compared to the original game, with there being plenty of out of focus shots in what results in the environment being unclear and blurry. lots of stiff, slow body language, awkward facial animation, strange prolonged close-ups and slow movement in supposedly tense situations, same for the camera, feeling as if its very carefully framing characters performing certain actions in a delicate manner rather than capturing the intensity of a dramatic scene. what kind of emotions is a prolonged close-up of sgt. johnson’s side portrait while he’s taking cover from covenant fire with his squad supposed to invoke from the player as they’re watching, aside from boredom and confusion?
-simplified level design that makes combat evolved more linear than ever before, when such a big and important part of the original game was its massive and expansive levels to explore. areas that were originally designed around exploration, navigation and discovering your own route are increasingly structured around moving the player toward the intended destination in a linear path.
-excessive use of waypoints and markers significantly damper the immersion thats associated with exploration, undercutting the tone and atmosphere of certain levels like 343 guilty spark for example, where you’re wandering around a mysterious and foreboding foggy dark jungle, with the flood every now and then very briefly making subtle yet easily missable appearances in the distance, keeping you weary at all times, but now you have a unnecessary, tacked on, bright waypoint at the very focal point of almost everything you see and experience.
-oh by the way, stuff like the flood lingering in the distance is broken too due to the poor AI not triggering at the right times/distance from the player. (encounter scripting failures)
-increase in graphical fidelity while going further from the artistic direction of the original. if you didnt like the halo: anniversary remaster and its numerous creative liberties, chances are you won’t like this either.
-integration of new gameplay mechanics while not rebalancing the game around the existence of said mechanics. (ex. sprinting) this trivializes many combat encounters, if the crippled AI didn't already do that to an extent.
-ai for the flood is also broken. something that was once genuinely scary and nerve wracking to encounter for the very first time in the original game is now yawn inducing and boring in comparison. directionless, slow, indecisive on where to go and what to do, and often found standing around doing nothing, probably watching paint dry.
-unbalanced arsenal. the assault rifle now has increased damage and range, and ammo for it is now plentiful, significantly putting the incentive to experiment with halo’s weapon sandbox and adapt to different tactics on the fly at a detriment. why waste your time and bother with other weapons when the definitive answer to all of your potential problems is already within the palm of your hands at the start of the game?
-linking to a microsoft account is still mandatory to play. this is self-explanatory, no one likes nor cares for this. if you’re genuinely, sincerely that concerned about having a leg up over the original halo on the xbox, consider removing the mandatory microsoft account login if you want to win some sliver of approval from the players.
-apparently lacks PvP multiplayer (but does have 4 player online/split-screen coop.) the competitive PvP multiplayer from the original halo is undoubtedly an iconic and essential element of the game, regardless of who you are and your relationship to the series. to have such a vital and integral part of the game completely missing in a $50 triple-A release…? this aint it, chief.
when a developer studio’s sole objective in a remake is to basically copy someone else’s homework thats already been figured out and completed, yet they manage to mess up and ruin just about every aspect of their work somehow, despite the fact that no originality or thought is really needed on their behalf as long as they copy and paste everything faithfully as 1:1 as possible with no deviation, you know something is horribly wrong. ill use some of campaign evolved’s new additions to make an example -
sprint lets you bypass situations.
the stronger, more abundant AR allows you to ignore weapon/tactical experimentation.
additional weapons further muddy the original sandbox.
broken AI reduces enemy pressure and tension.
simplified and increasingly linear level design reduce environmental problem-solving.
the information-dense, navigation centric HUD trivializes exploration and severely undercuts atmosphere and mood, especially in key areas of the game.
the remake treats Combat Evolved as a foundation to be modernized, something to be fixed rather than as a deliberately constructed system whose individual limitations and rules were part of a carefully balanced design.
the fact that unpaid modders from the halo community have more skill and knowledge in game design compared to halo studios is utterly baffling, considering they’re a several million dollar development studio. its even more astounding that they haven’t learned anything valuable ever since developing halo 4 as 343 industries 14 years ago. where exactly did all of this money go, if not towards creating a quality product? You had one job. one job. All of this could have been easily avoided. its so halover.
