Twice may not be right?  There’s an argument to be made that Halo: Campaign Evolved is actually the third remaster of the Xbox original, but I’m going to choose to think of the version from the Master Chief collection as just a port of the Xbox 360 version.

Anyway.  I’ve bought basically the same game four times.  Let’s not explore that too closely. Usually it’s been for cheap.  This wasn’t, because I wanted to play it near release date and because I wanted a disc version and those are probably going to become scarcer and scarcer as we get closer to the all-digital future.

It was, at least, cheaper than your normal new release.  That’s been a bit of a theme this year – I’ve played through the Fatal Frame II remake, and the Black Flag remake, and now this, and all three of them have been ten to twenty bucks less than the full price we’ve been trained to accept.

I went into it kind of dreading the back half of the campaign, because it really does drag in places in the original version, and I strongly approve of most of the revamped level design in the remake.  The Library could maybe have stood to be a little bit longer, because you really don’t have a lot of time with 343 Guilty Spark in this version and his cheery and rather unhinged commentary is something I wouldn’t have minded more of, but I am probably the only person to say “you know what Halo needed? Just a little more time in The Library” ever.

Speaking of levels, I realized on this run that I never remember “Truth and Reconciliation”, probably because it has the misfortune to fall between the intro levels and “The Silent Cartographer”.  That’s just my mind doing it a serious disservice, because it’s really good.  It’s pretty linear compared to later levels where you have a lot more freedom in how you get from point A to point B, but I like the way you double back into areas and see them from new perspectives and has some of the best combat arenas.

One thing I didn’t really explore during my sessions was the sheer number of options you have for how you want to approach the game.  The options philosophy is decidedly a  “have it your way” sort of thing and is unexpectedly transparent.  Like, usually you start a game and you’ve got “Easy”, “Medium”, “Hard” and “Masochistic” without much insight into what each one does.  Halo makes it clear which numbers are going up and down with each setting.

You can also set a ton of options about how the world is presented to you, doing things like customizing which HUD elements you want, hiding the highlights over dropped enemy weapons, or turning off waypoints.

I could see long time fans turning off all the visual noise for maximum immersion, and I think that would be a great way to experience it,  just blowing things up to that sublime Halo music and listening to grunts and their endless litany of complaints, taunts, and panic.

I wouldn’t QUITE characterize Halo as an amazing soundtrack that happens to have a game attached to it, but it’s close.

Final thought on the campaign before I move on, though:  This was very weird to see in the end credits.  I hope the XBOX team can pull off a miracle with the Helix, because a future with only one relevant high end console is not a particularly bright future.

One of the big draws of the package, because “play the same game again just prettier” only goes so far, is a neat 3 hour campaign where you get to see John-117 and Johnson hanging out, cracking jokes and shooting lots and lots of Covenant.  I’m not sure where this fits into the overall continuity or if it was designed to patch a gap or something, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s a buddy cop movie and I like me some buddy cop movies.

The designers also took the opportunity to load up the bonus missions with all kinds of things from later games, since naturally they would be very out of place in the main campaign.  So you get to fight a lot of Brutes and you get to play with a few different weapons, like this Needle Rifle that I did not remember from any previous game but which I absolutely fell in love with.  Apparently it was only seen in Halo: Reach.

Come to think of it, wasn’t the SMG new to Halo 2?  It shows up in the regular Halo campaign in this release.  Maybe they figured they could slip that one in.  They slipped in health regeneration, after all.

Also, even though it’s set on a Covenant ship, the level designers found an excuse to give you the option to use all your favorite UNSC weapons in the bonus missions.  There’s even a story justification for it, which I will not spoil here.

Regardless of whether or not it is a Big Dang Lore Drop, I really enjoyed it and am also glad that it wasn’t shoehorned into the original campaign.  It means that I can go back and just play it again by itself someday.

I’ve been putting off dealing with some Life Stuff so I should probably take a short break from binging new games for a while, but it’s been a nice routine to just get off work, hang out with my wife for a bit, eat dinner and then settle into a comfy chair with controller in hand.