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Episode 417: Halo: Combat Evolved (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-15 12:44:50
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

As promised, the sorta-second part of our Xbox anniversary coverage. A note from this episode's host, Stuart:

Halo, good evening, and welcome to this Chief-tastic installment of Retronauts—the ARBITER of retrogaming podcasts! Join host Stuart Gipp, returning guest John Linneman and Master Chief Jeremy Parish for a deep dive into the inaugural entry of Bungie's incredible Halo series. Fun chat—evolved!

Art by Shaan Khan and edits by Greg Leahy. Music this episode:

09:10 - Marathon: Leela

20:32 - Oni: Hurry

28:10 - Truth and Reconciliation Suite

36:44 - Covenant Dance

47:58 - A Walk in the Woods | Brothers in Arms

57:14 - Under Cover of Night

1:07:28 - Rock Anthem for Saving the World

1:18:59 - Devils... Monsters...

1:29:00 - Halo ("Warthog Run")

1:37:36 - Enough Dead Heroes (Anniversary version)

1:50:30 - The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe

Closing - Rock Anthem for Saving the World (continued)

(Selections come from the original version of Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox unless otherwise stated)

Files

Comments

rodarkone

I was just thinking about Halo :) … damn what a game

Robert

Hoped to play Halo Infinite on this day, but this 20th anniversary podcast would do.

Michael Castleberry

"Halo is overrated!"- early 20s me just butthurt that my stoned friends kept sniping me from the other side of maps lol

Jason Williams

FYI - this is the third episode in a row where the artwork did not come though, either in the podcast app or as a direct download on Patreon.

SilverHairedMiddleAgedTuxedoMask

I'm fairly sure (jokingly) EGM magazine was getting paid by Microsoft to promote this game since they were the #1 fanboy for it for YEARS after launch. The writers/editors would constantly all put it in their "What we're playing" info boxes well into 2004 and when they did a "Top 200 Games Of All Time" list in 2005ish Halo 1 was already in the list in the Top 20 and Halo 2 was somewhere up the list as well. Then they had a "Best Franchises of All Time List" and somehow Halo beat Metroid despite at the time there were only two Halo games around. I remember the sheer love of Halo by EGM became an ongoing joke online.

Wood Duck [Legacy Edition]

It's funny how Halo got such a meathead BRODUDE reputation (from the excellent multiplayer I guess) when the setting and story is a really brilliant and mostly intelligent blend of decent sci-fi and action. Going back to playing the original game in the MCC though wow it's a very limited palette of enemies and environments sometimes. Which just shows how great and varied the AI behaviours could be for the time, keeping things interesting.

Stephen Kiazyk

Ooh, I get to right on the internet! There was a PS2 port of Half-Life (of all things) that included a separate co-op campaign called Decay, that (at least according to Wikipedia) was released on Nov. 11, 2001, a full 4 days ahead of Halo: Combat Evolved. Having played both, I will say that history definitely remembered the better of those two co-op console shooters.

Steven Babb

Great stuff! Early in my college days and after, my brother and friends would play 3 player Halo 1 and eventually 2 until late into the evening. It was so fun and balanced enough that no single one of us really dominated the rounds. This was great because no one ever felt like they were losing too much. Anyway, we'd shout with delight when one of us in game got a 'head shot.' Cheers!

Andrew O.

I was expecting at least one of you to have a dissenting opinion or to at least play devil's advocate. I guess I'll have to be the one to say that Halo, while being a good game, is not deserving of all the praised heaped upon it. Yeah, I said it! You did touch upon my biggest gripe with the game, although you basically brushed it off: repetitive areas. Sure, changing enemies and their placement freshens things up a bit, but you know what does that and more? New areas! What if you played Super Mario Bros, got to 4-4, then you started going backwards through the levels in the New Game Plus mode? All the goombas (grunts) are now buzzy beatles (flood). Would that be better than the 32 unique levels we got? It's like a linear Metroid-vania with no interesting mechanics for backtracking with. It could be laziness or lack of time that got them there, but it certainly isn't good design. Let's talk about good design from a game released about 1.5 years prior: PERFECT DARK. Sure you can't jump and the vehicles are underwhelming, (yeah it had vehicles!), but the campaign had unique levels, memorable characters, and gameplay objectives! Wow, remember objectives? Where you'd have to do other things besides killing? And the objectives varied by difficulty? What a concept! You talked about how Halo limited the number of weapons to two because cycling a long list on console sucked? Yeah, Rare knew that. They made a radial ("quick") menu with pagination! There was also firing range challenges. Plus, every weapon had an alt-fire mode. Halo offered two-player cooperative play? Yeah, so did Perfect Dark. The objectives made the experince that much cooler. They even had a mode called "Counter Operative" letting the other player control the enemies! As far as multiplayer, yeah Halo is cool with it's LAN play. If the N64 was capable of it Perfect Dark would've surely supported it. What did it get instead? Four players and up to 8 bots with varying levels of difficulty. Plus detailed stats, a ranking system, and challenges. It had more gameplay options too. You could even save your created player to a memory card, (complete with stats), for when you went to your friend's house. Perfect Dark is an underrated masterpiece, especially considering the hardware. Everyone talks about Halo like it saved the FPS genre on console, but I'd argue that it sanitized it.

Louis-Philippe

Good stuff there. I don’t have any attachment to Halo, but I have fond memories of Oni which you mentioned in passing. Didn’t know it was a Bungie game!

garret

Great episode! Some thoughts: Stuart did a great job! I'd love to hear him host more episodes but… his audio quality was distractingly poor compared to others—I hope you can get him a better mic! John Linneman was great (as always) and I'd love to hear him on more episodes too! But… it seemed like John was interrupted by Jeremy and Stuart too often and wasn't given a chance to complete his thoughts a lot of the time.