So yeah, big confession: while I know the story of the core Halo trilogy and all the tropes and characters and such, I never played Halo: CE or Halo 2 when I was a kid or ever (okay, I played a little Halo 2 on my friends' console iirc, but just multiplayer not campaign). So now that I have the Master Chief Collection and finally bought some more storage space, I figured I'd try to play the first two Halos.

I'm starting on CE and oh my god it is fun. I'm surprised at how fun it is for how dated it is. I'm playing MCC which means the anniversary edition, and still I can tell that the visuals and such look 2000s-esque, but the gameplay itself still holds up amazingly. I like fighting Elites instead of Brutes. I didn't play much of the Reach campaign like I did with Halo 3, so fighting Elites instead of Brutes is refreshing.

I'm currently on the third level, "The Truth and Reconciliation". Sniping area in the beginning was challenging (playing on Heroic) but still mainly a breeze. But once I boarded the spaceship while my health was low (no health packs to be found before boarding) things took a turn. I now understand the fear of death because of these insanely good invisible Elites. I can't get past the opening part. Best I can do is stand way back in one of those hallways that they spawn in with the sliding door at the front of the hallway, and every time the door opened and no one was there I knew to start shooting. That worked for one life but then they rushed me and got me while I was reloading. Do I have to go out and find something or just survive these waves of enemies?

I've watched some of these cutscenes before but not all of them. Excited to get the whole story start-to-finish.

Anyway, how have you been? What games have you been playing?