Having all of the weapons of the Halo series to play with makes moment-to-moment combat choices more interesting. If I miss the spray-and-pray approach, I pick up the SMG instead. 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. From 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.

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