Developed for the Xbox 360 by 343 Industries/Saber Interactive/Certain Affinity

Published by Microsoft Studios

Rated "M" for Mature. Contains blood, gore, and violence.

It’s too soon for a remastered version of Halo. While yes, ten years have passed and time moves quickly within the culture of video games, it’s not enough for a sense of nostalgia to set in. A release like this should be as much about emotion as the technology. Playing the game, I find it’s still an all-too-familiar experience. It’s only been a year since the release of Halo Reach and in a franchise that has been so consistent in themes, characters, and look it’s hard to feel like we’ve been away from its alien glass-and-steel corridors for very long.

Much has been done to update the game towards the quality of its sequels. Achievements have been added, a co-op version of the story is now available for online play, and the selection of multiplayer maps have been expanded and upgraded using the Halo 2 engine. If it’s your first time playing Halo, these will help make it feel like a modern game experience.

The most significant change is to the main story itself. Both its soundtrack and graphics have been bumped up through several generations of quality to match the High Definition capabilities of the Xbox 360. You can toggle back-and-forth between the old and new, but the added details match many we’re used to from the sequels, so it’s hard to say you’ll see anything new. Commander Keyes looks much younger than I remembered him, but the make-over on the vehicles, weapons, and Covenant enemies matches what we’re already used to on the Xbox 360.

New tricks have been added for Kinect owners. You can use voice controls to toss grenades and reload weapons while a Kinect “scanning mode” will pick up hidden encyclopedic entries from the walls and environment. These were not available in time for this review (Microsoft will add them after the game goes on sale through an Xbox Live update), but they seem more of a novelty than a necessity.

I did have the chance to play the game in 3D. On a 3D TV your on-screen information will “float” over your eyes and your gun barrel will be enhanced with perspective. It’s not the best use of 3D and I found that after playing for twenty-minutes I quickly became used to the effects and was no longer impressed by them.

There are new cut-scenes, made using the comic book-style of motion graphics. You have to collect them by discovering kiosks set here and there in the Halo world. Each one offers a very brief bit of back-story designed to help set-up the next chapter coming with Halo 4. They’re well done, but they’re a throw away item. Not worth worrying about if you miss them playing the game, and not worth buying the game for.

It’s important to remaster video games as it helps preserve the culture and keep important titles accessible. Halo is certainly a landmark game, but I find it hasn’t had the chance to fade from memory enough to make revisiting it feel special and to preserve it, would rather have a new edition early in the lifespan of a new console rather than this late in the Xbox 360’s.