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Submit Your Comment On Halo 1's Multiplayer For The Deepest Dive (Patreon)

Published:
2020-08-24 16:00:06
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

We're coming up on the grand finale of The Deepest Dive for 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved. It's time to submit your thoughts on the first game's multiplayer!

Also, because we're continuing to grow, please keep your one comment to around the length of a tweet. We want to get to as many comments as possible so we can't read extensive novels from everybody. We hope you understand.

Please submit a comment below with your specific thoughts on the game's multiplayer. Let's talk about your favorite mode, map, gun, competitive memory, please get specific. The more specific you are, the higher the odds of us reading your comment during the discussion. We'll finish collecting comments on Tuesday morning.

Remember, you can watch us record The Deepest Dive live on Tuesday at 9am Central if you're at the $10 Backstage Pass tier on Patreon. The link will be in the Backstage Pass tier on the Discord. Thanks for your support!

Here's a link to the first discussion in case you missed it, any help sharing The Deepest Dive is appreciated! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHS7fLRvVnQ

Files

Comments

ImABiggyBoi

One of the things that gives Halo it's insane legs as a multiplayer title is it's custom games. I think we played them almost exclusively on our community game night. Why do you think it is that they're not at popular in other titles? Is it an issue with monetization? Is it to keep development or server costs low? The only recent title that I can think of to embrace the tradition is overwatch, and once again, I find it to be more enjoyable than a sweaty ranked match. Interested to hear what you lovely cohorts think!

Ben Shively

It’s incredible how well the multiplayer for Halo CE holds up compared to other first person shooters from this era. My friends and I have had great nights playing split screen on Blood Gulch for hours on end. Something about the tight controls, timeless art style, and incredible map design make it shine above many of today’s modern first person shooters.

aManNamedBabs

Does anyone else remember downloading a mod that would trick their Xbox into thinking it was on a LAN when it was really connected to a functional, unofficial online multiplayer server? I remember feeling so smart figuring this out back in the day and it truly was a first taste of what Xbox live would bring with the future games

Dunder

Are you getting humiliated in Hang Em High? On the wrong end of a bloodbath in Blood Gulch? Well then follow these advanced tips from a seasoned Spartan to help take your Halo multiplayer skills to the next level: 1. Human weapons like the pistol, rocket launcher, and assault rifle can be reloaded while actively using another gun. Rapidly hit the Reload, Reload, Switch Weapon buttons (XXY default) to pull it off. 2. Items such as invisibility, overshield, and power weapons spawn on a timer. For example, on Hang Em High, the invisibility spawns exactly every minute and the rockets respawn every 2 minutes. Back during dorm life, my buddies and I would set a kitchen timer as soon as the match started and grab power ups as they respawned. 3. The physics of the game allow for a well placed grenade to knock a power up or weapon off a ledge to a new area. This can help turn the tides if you aren’t holding the high ground.

Chris H

Wow Spartans! Welcome to the super-duper official Halo 1 multiplayer map rankings, as voted by the MinnMax Discord community. 13. Chiron TL-34 12. Longest 11. Rat Race 10. Damnation 9. Derelict 8. Wizard 7. Boarding Action 6. Prisoner 5. Sidewinder 4. Chill Out 3. Battle Creek 2. Hang 'em High 1. Blood Gulch Blood Gulch entered as the heavy favorite and was dominant in the rankings, placing at #1 in 2/3 of all ballots. A strong showing for the map viewed by many as THE Halo multiplayer map. Meanwhile, Chiron TL-34 was far and away the lowest rated. Clearly Bungie agreed with this assessment, as it is one of only three maps to never reappear or be re-imagined in later Halo games (joining Rat Race & Boarding Action). As for the maps added for the PC edition & MCC, Danger Canyon and Timberland led the pack, with Gephyrophobia being the clear loser. Thanks for the great discussions on one of my favorite games of all time!

Radiant Spec

Halo 1 on PC was the first time I discovered modded game servers. I would meet my best friend every day after school on one of the 3-4 servers we frequented. One spawned us on Death Island with weapons that fired scorpion tank rounds and we had a blast launching each other across the map. It would pave the way for our future love of Halo 3 Forge custom games and other janky games like the Day Z Arma mod and Garry's Mod.

Fizz

Is the plasma grenade stick the best kill in any multiplayer game? To this day my Halo multiplayer tactics are built around sticking enemy players all because of a high school LAN party where I scored a killing spree sticking the same kid five times in a row. He screamed, ‘who the hell has all those sticky snowballs!?’ and stormed out, it was amazing.

Michael Moran

Halo multiplayer is one of my earliest memories of sacrificing comfort for a competitive edge in adopting the "claw" grip for my controller (curling your right index finger over the A button so you can jump/reload/melee without moving your thumb off the stick sacrificing the ability to aim). Are/were any of you "claw" grippers? Any other silly competitive concessions come to mind? e.g. lowering graphics to see enemies easier in PUBG or playing RTSs on outdated square resolution to keep the minimap closer to the center of the screen. Halo was the start of trying to min-max(one N) competitive advantage over fun/comfort for me

Nick from Atlanta

In high school, I took drafting (I promise this relates to Halo) for 2 years. Our school had what our teacher claimed was the most advanced drafting lab in the state of Florida. Each desk had its own computer, and despite our teacher always warning us not to do it, whenever we had a substitute teacher nearly the entire class would download the PC version of Halo and play LAN. We somehow never got in trouble for it, despite even having a school administrator come in one time while we were playing. It's still probably my favorite Halo MP memory. Nick from Atlanta

Bread

The first time I played Halo multiplayer (and Halo at all) was at a Game Crazy promo booth set up at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where a handful of Xbox consoles had been lan'd together. A couple years before I had read it described it as "Almighty" in an issue of Game Informer so 11 year old me was awestruck, this was it, the almighty video game! I didn't understand how to play at all, then promptly lost in a Soul Calibur 2 tournament also hosted by that same booth. Still sticks out as a great memory in my head though.

Ben Fitter

Had a blast going back to Halo CE multiplayer. It holds up very well, but one small thing stuck out to me like a sore thumb: spawns. I'm not positive, but it seemed like it was only determining spawn locations based on where the other players were, rather than where they were looking at. It was especially noticeable when playing snipers on Hang 'Em High, where it seemed like half the time I would spawn with someone already zoomed in on my face, or vice versa. As soon as we switched to some Halo 3 and Halo 2 anniversary, I didn't notice any of the same issues. Are good spawns something we've all learned to take for granted?

Luke Strain

I achieved peak childhood gaming bliss playing Halo multiplayer. I was in 7th grade and my brother was a freshman in highschool. His church youth leader was a college student who lived down the street. He invited my older brother over to play Halo LAN. They had one extra spot and my brother brought me along. So my first non-local multiplayer experience was two hours of 16 player Halo with my cool older brother and his cool college friends (at least that's how I saw them) all in one house yelling at each other from room to room. It doesn't get any better than that when you are 12.

Donnie

I can’t believe how fun a multiplayer shooter this old is. No stupid kill streaks or insane amount of weapons to learn. Still some bad spawns but not CoD level bad! Obviously what really helped it though is playing with the community. Just a bunch of people joking around not worrying about scores or yelling at each other, even with Hanson repeatedly running his teammates over!

Mark Ramirez

Dear Ben & the Dive Team, There is a lot of blood in this game. I noticed a little in the campaign, but it really stood out to me in multiplayer. The gallons of blood that pour from from these pour spartan bodies is hilarious. I remember growing up my mom being very hesitant due to the amount of blood, but the sheer amount makes it more comical than gory. Anyone else remember halo gore pushback?

Spencer Botine

I have this vivid memory of a Halo LAN party I went to in middle school. My friend’s dad owned a salon, so they set up a dozen or more TVs and Xboxes and we all sat in barber chairs and played Halo all night. Such a weird locale, but it worked incredibly well.

JakeTwitchin

BLOOD. GULCH. It’s low hanging fruit, but I think Blood Gulch has a huge hand in the overall popularity of the first Halo. This sucker debuted in Halo CE, was remade for Halo 2, and got a spiritual successor in Halo 3 (which was remade in halo 4.) Halo 5 has another spiritual successor and a bunch of Forge renditions of the original. It even popped up in the first Halo Wars. Is there any debate on if this is the most important map in the franchise? The most important map in console shooters? The most important map in video games? Rust (cod) and Dust (cs) be damned- it’s Blood Gulch for me.

Cade Mead

Having never played the Halo 1 multiplayer before, I wasn't aware hijacking vehicles wasn't added until Halo 2. It was annoying in the campaign, but even more so against human players that know what they're doing. Luckily, there aren't too many vehicles on the maps.

Geoff Enright

Absolute best memory involves tons of friends at one of the kid's huge house for a sleepover. We had 4 original xboxes lanned for 16 player matches. We weren't very far apart so we'd yell insults across the rooms all night. Those pistol only matches on sidewinder, prisoner, hang em high, and blood gulch were legendary.

FlaminQueso

Hey howdy hey Hanson and the 'horts, If you'll allow me a short tale, here is the Tale of Queso's Greatest Gaming Moment. I was a wee lad playing the Gearbox port of Halo: CE on a PC against randoms. Capture the Flag on Sidewinder (one of the best maps ever). The other team grabbed our flag and went straight for the teleporter, which leaded them up onto the cliffs. All hope seemed lost since the entire team was helping to carry the flag, but I grabbed Ghost and followed the flag carrier from the ground. They made it to their base and nearly scored, but I swept into the base with the ghost and splattered them. Triple kill. I hopped out, returned our flag (instant return on Halo: CE). It wasn’t over! I grabbed their flag and hopped back into the ghost (for some reason the Gearbox port lets you drive a ghost with a flag). I drove the ghost all the way back to our base and scored, which won us the game. This is a feat i have never ever topped, and most don't believe, but its true. I swear it. Thanks, Queso

IanTClark

I played with the MinnMax community last Friday night and had a great time. I did okay and even got a second place in one game. I was playing on the Xbox with the controller. I’ve been playing solo a little bit on PC with Mouse and Keyboard and I’m just getting wrecked. It’s not even close. I think my high for a round is 3 kills at this point. I think I’ll just go back to playing the campaigns, which I’m enjoying.

Sandshrewd

Dear Deepest Divers, I know Blood Gulch stands atop Halo multiplayer maps, but where do you think it stands all time across multiplayer maps? The only other ones I can think of that compete are Facing Worlds from Unreal Tournament, Temple from Goldeneye, Dust from CS, and maybe Rust from COD. Also I don't know if this is necessarily about multiplayer, but when I remember my Halo experience I remember gaming on that giant ass controller. Worst launch controller ever?

Shawn Mills

My favorite memory of playing Halo multiplayer when it came out was playing couch co-op with my brother and friends of ours. We all would vow not to screen cheat at the start of a match but we would all end up calling out each others positions by the end. Will local co-op ever become a thing again?

Jeorin

Multiplayer was the most fun I've had playing this game. The multiplayer is just as badly designed and broken as the rest of the game, but it's hard not to have fun playing with the good people of the MinnMax community. The one thing that I feel is most important to the multiplayer, and what kept it interesting for me, is just how fast the respawn timer is. Even if you spawn right in front of someone that immediately kills you, it only takes a few seconds before you're back in the game again. This may actually be the fastest respawn timer I've experienced in any multiplayer!

Grizzled Gaming

While I do recognize its importance for console shooters, having zero nostalgia for Halo multiplayer and strictly based on its own merits, I don’t think it’s very good by today’s standards. Y U NO SPRINT! But wooooooooow, I can’t deny just how much fun it is to play with a group of friends. It doesn’t matter the map or the mode, it is always just complete insanity and I love every minute of it! There’s a reason Halo community game nights always have the highest turnout.

Nognaught

What was Bungy thinking with this!! I can't believe such a non-competitively viable game was ever released! The game has broken respawns, broken weapons, and broken map design. But worst of all, it's actually really fun? There's something refreshing about playing a multiplayer fps that hasn't been polished into a fine diamond; instead having plenty of jank that feels as though you can do far more within the engine than it's more contemporary counterparts. My question is: what happened to the good old days?!

Tyler Carver

It is amazing to me that you cannot toggle the graphics on Halo: CE anniversary, it seems like such a waste of tech. Also, the gameplay absolutely holds up in the modern day console space for shooters, so it is surprising you don’t see more people streaming it.

Nick from Atlanta

I was really struck at how well the small maps still do with more players. We had nearly the max count on maps sized for half that, and it just was a bit more hectic. Still playable! Conversely, it seemed like some of the super large maps (looking at you, Infinity) didn't play well even with a full party.

FlaminQueso

One of my earliest Halo: CE multiplayer memories is going 1v1 splitscreen on Hang ‘em High with my best friend. We would lob frag grenades at each other from across the map. Those frag grenades are one hit kill so it was always super satisfying to land a ‘nade just right. We also did 1v1 hang em high so often, we could both screen watch and know exactly where the other player was at any given time. Remember screen watching in competitive multiplayer? Thanks, Queso

Zach E

After playing the community game nights, one thing is clear: Jeff M may be the greatest Halo player alive. He won like 3 matches in a row! I gotta give love to the map Boarding Action. Two open space ships floating across from each other. While not great for close quarters combat, it's super fun when playing with snipers only or rockets only. There's some real potential with this kind of map!

Cade Mead

I'd like to throw in that I grew up pretty much only playing multiplayer games at a friend's house, and we agreed if you weren't screen-peeking, you deserved to lose. Agree or disagree? My other potentially hot take is that adding sprint and CoD-style controls helped bleed out the ability to compete with CoD in the long run. Moon jumps and no sprinting made Halo feel like an entirely different, unique beast.

Michael Moran

My favorite grenade weapon bounce from CE is throwing a frag over blue side tower to obtain the sniper rifle from cover as show here: https://youtu.be/6CIkdoMnJVc?t=129 What was your favorite? I thought it was so cool that weapons had physics like this built in

Adam W

One of the strongest aspects of MCC's multiplayer is the variety. There are soo many ways to play Halo with friends. You could be complete trash at one game mode and then dominate in another. It can feel that different to play. Skeet shooting, rocket races, Invisizombies, Griffball, SWAT, forge, etc. None of these things are in Halo: CE. Compared to the rest of the games in MCC, it is very much stripped down. I still manage to love playing it with the community. The broken spawns and weird physics rules (like when gently tapping an enemy vehicle results in your murder) contributes to the chaos that games can devolve into. And it is wonderful. However, fall damage is the most BS thing in a multiplayer game and continues to frustrate me to no end. Lastly, I get a kick every time I see someone throw a grenade while moving. The animation for the upper body and arms seems to cancel out the walk animation. The player character's legs no longer move and just slides across the floor until the throw animation is complete. It looks ridiculous and I love it. Adam W

Andrew vala

This weekend was a blast playing Halo PC with the MinnMax community-gaming group. It took me back to the days when we would link our Xboxes to the residence hall network and play “floor Halo”. As jank as Halo CE can be, its a perfect sandbox for creating epic stories and hilarious moments and joking about it in the hallway or discord channel after the match. I tried two solo matches Saturday morning and had about as awful of an experience as you can imagine. I won’t be returning there soon, but I’m looking forward to future community-gaming meetups. Halo is a great place for people who enjoy video games.

Chris H

For me playing Halo PC was the very first time I was immersed in online multiplayer, and I spent countless hours as a 10 year-old browsing the many custom gametype servers and discovering online multiplayer. For console players, multiplayer is strongly tied to split screen and LAN parties with online coming later in Halo 2. These are clearly drastically different ways of experiencing Halo multiplayer for the first time, how do you think your impression and memories of the game would change if you had first encountered the multiplayer in a different fashion (IE online vs local)

Crayter

Didn't realize this until playing with the community last night and getting a double kill(humble brag), but the announcer voice in halo multiplayer is really iconic to me. Hearing that disembodied voice say "double kill" brought me right back to high-school again. It wasn't obvious to me until I heard it again and had that rush of nostalgia hit me, but I think that halo announcer voice might be as iconic to me as the super smash bros announcer voice!

Dunder

Custom split screen games with friends were undoubtedly a great time, but plugging my Xbox into the college network and playing Halo CE against other players for the first time was revolutionary for me back in the day. Playing 4v4 Blood Gulch games against completely unknown opponents? As a console gamer, this was unheard of. This was Xbox Live before there was Xbox Live. Halo quickly became the go to game across the entire campus. Tournaments were played, rivalries were formed, and long lasting friendships were forged on the old furniture of college dorm rooms.

Bob Buel

I can't say I played any of Halo 1 before this year. I started into the series at Halo 2 when it first came out and just never went backwards to the original. But still, despite never touching the game before, I have had some tremendous fun with this game with the MinnMax community. This game feels so boiled down compared to what the series became and other big FPS games of today. It has a core gameplay loop that is so easy to pick up and play but difficult to master, which is so key to how fun it is. Even if every map doesn't work (like the map 'Infinity'- yuck-a-roo) and every weapon isn't balanced (like the notoriously powerful pistol), it doesn't matter because the positives so widely overshadow the negatives. No run button? Doesn't matter when you're laughing over your ragdolling body falling off a map in a multiplayer match with your buddies. Side note, I can say honestly some of the times I have laughed the hardest during MinnMax's entire existence have been during our Halo Community Game nights, and that says a lot. Whether it's getting sniped by Jeffm, running over Hanson in a warthog, low gravity rocket launchers, shotgun roulette or just the party chat devolving into impressions people can do or talking about the Wii's DVD capabilities, it has led to countless amazing moments.

Dunder

Bungie’s co-founder Jason Jones has said in past interviews he tweaked the code for the Halo pistol at the last moment to greatly increase its damage and get the gun to where they wanted it to be. Do you think this small act cemented the legacy of Halo multiplayer? Would the game have had as big of an impact with a lesser pistol? For me, that weapon is such an iconic part of Halo it’s hard to imagine the game or its success without it.

Ben Fitter

Playing multiplayer throughout the Halo franchise, I've learned to spend about half my time looking at the radar when I'm not shooting. It got me thinking recently, does Halo have the best radar in any FPS? In any game period? It's extremely simple and quickly conveys all the necessary info without taking up much real estate on the screen. Good guys are yellow, bad guys are red. Small dots are regular enemies, big dots are vehicles. It shows which are in your cone of vision and which aren't. It would be OP, but you can sneak past undetected by crouching. By designing it this way, it encourages stealth as an option in multiplayer, which can be hard to come by in other shooters. The only thing it's missing in Combat Evolved is the ability to differentiate between enemies that are on your level versus ones above or below you, which was added in Reach. In comparison, I was recently playing Destiny 2 and I think the radar is noticeably worse. It is much less precise, doesn't show your cone of vision, and you can't completely avoid it by crouching. All of these really made me appreciate that little blue circle in the bottom left even more when jumping back into Halo. Edit: I just booted up the MCC version and noticed the radar isn't blue anymore! I wonder why they changed it? The rest of the HUD is still blue...

Holden Hintz

Those spawns on hang em high are atrocious. Played snipers with the community and couldn’t walk like two steps without getting dropped. Anyone else spawn camping is sort of a thing of the past in most games?

Ben Fitter

Also, what are the cohorts playstyles in terms of weapon selection? Do you try to make the most out of the weapons you spawn with, or do you camp the power weapons? Which weapon do you feel most confident with?

Zack

Halo multiplayer has a unique feel among shooters because of its strange TTK. At first blush, it seems like a very long TTK compared to CoD, Battlefield, Rainbow Six, or Counterstrike because you can unload more than half of an Assault Rifle magazine before foes get into kill range, as opposed to the 3-4 bullets it takes in most of those contemporaries. But then you realize that the vast majority of weapons in Halo are one-hit kills. Rocket Launchers, Snipers, Shotguns, and both types of grenades are all capable of killing someone before they even know they're being shot at. Even the plasma pistol can kill nearly instantly with an overcharge shot followed by a swift melee. So the metagame in Halo revolves as much around map knowledge as it does around aiming skills. Knowing where and when the power weapons will spawn and controlling access to those parts of the map will get you much farther than precision no-scopes and twitch reflexes.

Donnie

My god if they just added a sprint button I think Halo 1 multiplayer might be one of the most fun online experiences I could ask for.

FlaminQueso

My go-to weapon in Halo: CE multiplayer will always be the rocket launcher. The speed of the rocket, the explosion radius, and the satisfying reload animation all make for a good time. The limited ammo for it also keeps it fair. What is your go-to weapon for Halo: CE?

LaRay M. Hare

I maintain that the best map in Halo: CE is Hang ‘E-mail High. Though I suspect this is matter of time and place. The remake of in Halo 2 Tombstone and it’s spiritual successor in Halo 3 Longshore don’t have the same feel. Question: Best map in Combat Evolved?

Sandshrewd

A few months ago you made a video on the most satisfying attacks to land in a video game and landing a plasma grenade was mentioned. I'd like to make an amendment to that. It should be "playing local multiplayer and landing a plasma grenade on your friends face, covering his entire screen in light blue while you both are screaming as he tries to kamikaze into you".

Andrew Bittner

A fun thing to do with ghosts in multiplayer or campaign is to ram ghosts into the side of a tank. Due to the floaty nature of the ghosts, they will fly pretty high into the air and you can perform some funky dope maneuvers. Thought this was particularly relevant given the Tony Hawk celebration week.

Brian W

Halo 1 multiplayer holds up great with few exceptions. Those respawns are pretty bad. Playing ranked doubles with my cousin we were constantly getting shot the second we spawned. It’s great when I do it to others but when it happens to me, come on game!