The original game that helped turn the Xbox console into a household name, Halo: Combat Evolved's high-concept storyline and living room multiplayer established a new benchmark for the FPS genre when it first arrived. Not just a system-seller for the Xbox, Halo was one of the most influential FPS games of its time and blazed a trail forward for the genre with its split-screen multiplayer and a cinematic campaign that made good use of Master Chief's agile aggression to tear through Covenant forces. A smooth-as-silk action experience even after 20 years, the original Halo is a founding father of the modern-day first-person shooter and one of the biggest reasons why the genre has found so much success on home consoles.
With Bungie fully committed to the development of Destiny, Halo 4 was a make-or-break moment for 343 Industries, a studio that had been tasked with carrying the franchise forward into the future. The debut mainline entry from the studio is a game that pushes the Xbox 360 to the bleeding edge of what that console is capable of on a technical level, while the story attempts to establish a more mythical status quo for Master Chief as the Prometheans enter the picture. Halo 4's multiplayer proves to be more divisive, though, as it adds more modern features to its arsenal, such as a dedicated sprint button that had longtime fans up in arms and a focus on loadouts that strip some magic from the usual multiplayer main course. Still, 343 Industries made an impressive first impression with Halo 4, proving that the studio was more than up to the task of handling Microsoft's main event franchise.
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With a universe caught in the middle of the best war machines that humanity and exotic alien races can throw at each other, it was only a matter of time before someone saw the potential for a Halo real-time strategy game. Developer Ensemble Studios took a crack at that idea in 2009, creating a Halo riff on the genre that was a console-exclusive for the time. Surprisingly, the game runs like a treat, and the tight controls, always-satisfying rush of building a base, and unleashing an army in the direction of assembled Covenant forces establish Halo Wars as an underrated classic. The genius moment here is that Halo Wars is an RTS that is stripped down to its bare essentials, tossing any superfluous content straight out of the airlock in favor of a lean and mean tactical experience. The fact that a game this good-looking runs smoothly on the Xbox 360 is nothing short of a modern miracle, and it wouldn't be long before a sequel built further on that foundation.
"Halo 4" was 343 Industries' first crack at picking up where Bungie left off. All in all, it wasn't the near-franchise-ending catastrophe that "Halo 5" was but it still failed to live up to the pedigree of the previous games. Still, it was a pretty fun shooter with a compelling multiplayer mode. 2ff7e9595c
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