I feel like it's one of those games that got famous because it was the first FPS game that was designed to accommodate consoles and was shipped with Xbox.

I literally watched a few videos that attempted to explain what's so special about Halo, and it all seems like a bunch of made-up bullshit. One guy was talking about the "mysterious" atmosphere of that first location after you crash-land on that ring-world, and he was like "look how quiet it is, there are no sounds other than the covenant" and like ... yeah, that's how nature is, go outside and listen, you weirdo. I mean you can literally hear birds and shit, there's nothing different about the location, except a cool skybox. And then later in the video he was explaining how the gameplay is so deep because you use different weapons for different enemies, which is like ... yeah, that's how most shooters are. Then he said, if you throw your grenade at the little guys, they'll run away, while throwing it at a big guy will make him charge you. So I tested that in the game, and nope, the little guy charged me. I think they just run in any random direction, it just happened to be my direction this time.

I played the game for 2 hours, and I only had some mild fun driving the warthog. The actual on-foot shooting gameplay seemed very dull to me. To begin with, the huge static reticle and absolutely no feedback from your best and most common weapon is just incredibly frustrating. There is no zoom either. So most of the time you're just blindly firing at the upper half of your enemy, hoping some of those bullets will reach the head. And, because it's near-impossible to land headshots (unless you use a sniper-rifle), there is no skill to shooting enemies, which makes every encounter boring. Speaking of the sniper-rifle, for some reason it takes you out of the scoping mode if you get hit, which is also really frustrating. And I get that it's more realistic that way, but what kind of realism are we talking about in a game where you're a space marine called Master Chief shooting Pixar-animated aliens? I don't care that it's more realistic, I wanna have fun. And, if you wanted to add realism, you could've added some accuracy-level management, like increasing accuracy when you shoot in short bursts, when crouching and not moving. How come that doesn't take precedence over this annoying bullshit? Then there's the alien weapons, which are much weaker and have even less feedback somehow. One of them even has homing projectiles, which means you shouldn't even try for headshots anymore. There might be more interesting weapons later down the line, but I couldn't force myself to keep playing.

The level design is very basic. It's always either an open location with some objects thrown in for cover or a bunch of corridors. Not that you couldn't make it work, but these enemies really make every fight a chore. So, I counted 5 types of enemies (sarcasm incoming):

1. The little guys that always run around. Because we all love tiny mobile targets that are hard to hit, right?
2. Guys with tactical shields. Because we all love when the enemies have an unfair advantage.
3. Big guys with sturdy armor. Because we all love bullet-sponges.
4. Big guys with a sword. Because we all love getting one-hit-killed.
5. Even tankier guys than #3 that move slow and have rocket launchers. These are actually alright, except the game doesn't give you any heavy weapons to deal with them in these early encounters. Not even a shotgun, unless I somehow missed it.

It's almost like they were trying to come up with the most annoying enemies.

The graphics are incredible for 2001, especially for a console game, though aesthetically I didn't find them very appealing, probably because of constant dark corridors and cartoony-looking enemies in a game that tries to make you take it seriously. I think they should've just gone full cartoon and made it more colorful and whimsical. There's a tonal dissonance to the art style.

This is pretty much all I have to say about my experience with this game.