Halo SPV instead uses the Halo 3 version (MA5C) of this rifle: a smaller magazine, more powerful bullets, and much more accurate. I only played a couple of levels of unmodified Halo, but there's just no comparison: Halo SPV is a much better game for someone who plays sci-fi shooters here in 2019, a much more engaging shooter than the antique original.įor example, in 2001 the standard assault rifle (the MA5B in the lore) looked like a long-range rifle but it tore through its 60-round magazine with an inaccurate spray of bullets, like an Uzi loosely taped to a broom handle. On the other hand, a wider variety of characters and weapons just makes Halo, a shooter always designed to be an open-ended sandbox, a lot more fun. Enemies like Brutes (Halo 2) and weapons like the SMG (Halo 2) and even pick-up gadgets like the VISR (Halo 3: ODST) have been folded into the levels I remember from 2001.įor players who want nothing more than to relive the original Halo with nice graphics and lighting effects, picking up a Bruteshot from the deck of the Pillar of Autumn is like saluting Captain Janeway on the bridge of the Enterprise. The team has gathered characters and weapons from throughout the Halo series and spliced them into the DNA of the original. I'm more conflicted about some of the other changes Halo SPV makes. But those graphical improvements make those other aspects easier to appreciate anew. I feel shallow saying those surface elements made that much difference-after all, Halo's many innovations, from enemy AI to setpieces to regenerating health, are all still there.
Here in 2019, Halo: Combat Evolved was, at best, kind of quaint.įrom the first notes of Gregorian choir to running unarmed through the exploding corridors of the Pillar of Autumn, the huge improvements to graphics and lighting in Halo SPV had me hooked. A much-younger me had his mind totally blown by the original Halo, but today-me is old and tired. The game is good, but Halo has also suffered the saddest fate for any classic action game: It just feels kind of cute by modern standards. Finally, my PC was ready to install Halo SPV, a mod (for a mod) for an ancient game.įor the sake of comparison, I played the first couple of levels of Halo straight from the can, no mods, no graphical updates. I was forced to cruise eBay for an old boxed copy to play Halo SPV.īefore I got to SPV I had to install Halo: Custom Edition, an ancient set of modding tools still used by the Halo PC community today.
Since the fabled Master Chief Collection isn't out on PC yet (and wouldn't be compatible with this mod anyway), there's no way to buy Halo for PC digitally. Unlike the piracy gray area of region-cracking that lead to Halo Online, Halo SPV is a totally legal mod that requires a legit copy of Halo to run. "Easier" is not the same as "easy," however. Halo SPV strikes a careful balance between updating and preservation
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