![]() Reach is a prequel to Combat Evolved, and entering its world means accepting that (almost) every Spartan soldier on planet Reach will die. That desperate tone remains throughout the campaign. A group of Elite Zealots ambushes you in a shadowy relay station, comes within inches of killing you, then drags a Marine corporal as a meat shield into a darkened room, where his helpless screams echo before fading completely. They leave mutilated interrogation witnesses lying in pools of blood. ![]() They speak in squawks and guttural barks. Its first mission, “Winter Contingency,” paints the Covenant as a vicious, insidious force. Halo: Reach, on the other hand, is laced with horror story trappings. Halo 3: ODST is still unlike any other Halo It’s his stoic demeanor that makes the surrounding anxiety palatable. The Halo series gets a lot of storytelling fuel out of the horrors of this whole situation, even though Master Chief is rarely fazed by it all. Also, that ring is actually a life-erasing weapon. What’s more, a world-eating network of starving parasites just joined the fray. The universe is being engulfed by a violent crusade that threatens to all but eliminate the human race. They’re an intergalactic conglomerate of religious zealots that either train for war from childhood, or enslave whole worlds to make them fight against their will. None of this is to say that the Covenant can’t be scary as well. It doesn’t matter that I’m 7 feet tall, 1,000 pounds, and enveloped in an energy shield - in those moments, Combat Evolved is absolutely terrifying. But then my motion sensor is awash with Flood signatures, and the soundtrack escalates into a frenzied orchestral shriek. Whittling down the hierarchy of a Covenant squad, for example, demands far more strategy and encourages the use of the full array of weapons in the game. Halo’s Flood-centric chapters are not necessarily the most fun ones. Thus, he meets the Flood: “the only enemy the Covenant fear.” He hears something slithering toward him. ![]() The footage ends, and Chief realizes he’s in the same room where the carnage unfolded. After passing through hallways littered with mangled bodies - human and Covenant alike - Chief watches footage from a discarded helmet cam in which a squad of Marines is torn apart by a wave of tentacled, parasitic creatures. “343 Guilty Spark,” the sixth mission, leads the Chief to a derelict facility in the bowels of a remote swamp. In Halo: Combat Evolved, Chief is a stranger in a strange land, not only looking for a way off the titular ring world, but also trying to figure out what exactly the ring world is. The Halo series is at its best when it veers into outright horror.Ĭonsider the game that started it all. The most memorable Halo moments are the ones that made me feel vulnerable. And if you think I wasn’t fist-pumping the first time I saw Master Chief boogie-boarding an antimatter bomb through space and into a Covenant cruiser, you would be incorrect. I love a good power fantasy as much as the next person.
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