It seems like a really weird choice. The original Halo doesn't have the best campaign in the series (a couple of iconic levels in the first half, but the second half drops off badly) and yet another revamp of the graphics isn't going to disguise the fact that this is an FPS from 2001. Without any form of multiplayer, it's a significantly worse package.
Meanwhile the Halo Master Chief Collection is superb and contains six full games (at least two of which are categorically better than Halo 1) plus a fully integrated multiplayer mode from across the series. If they were serious about this, that's what they'd have gone for.
Sign of MS's long term strategy to abandon hardware and just focus on software delivery and Gamepass, perhaps.
I'm more concerned that it's a sign of MS realising that they can milk ancient franchises by selling barely-improved remasters to the PlayStation audience at a high price. See also Gears 1.
Did you use the original controls or the updated ones? I tried both and hated them equally, for completely different reasons.
Glad to see my new career as an influencer is going well, even if my sphere of influence only extends to one person so far.
I've been playing Doom: The Dark Ages, which is a completely ridiculous videogame and, incidentally, a terrible Doom game. It completely misunderstands what made the original Doom so good - the pacing, the suspense, the transition between flickering hallways and sudden attacks, the way you had to mentally map spaces out in your mind, the intricate levels and well-hidden secrets - and simply goes all-out with an audiovisual onslaught that never lets up for a second. You are shooting things, hitting things with flails or smacking things with shields pretty much every second you are playing this game, while a comically loud metal soundtrack grinds out in the background and more and more monsters spawn in around you.
It's really quite brilliant even if it seems to be based on the popular misconception of how Doom played, rather than what it actually was. Dok would hate it. I'm having fun. Maybe you can try that one next cav.
Two in one day, it's been a while since that happened.
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
This is such an oddity. A crossover between two series that were huge at the time but which haven't seen new entries in years now, and the only Wright game still stuck on the 3DS, in itself now a dead platform.
It's kind of great. It's a Phoenix Wright game but with the investigation sections replaced by Layton-style wandering and puzzling; the crossover works perfectly. Both characters and their respective sidekicks get their chance to shine, and there are some truly great moments that I won't spoil here. It's got a bizarre fantasy-style setting that's unique to both series, and a bravura ending that I understand has been quite divisive but which I personally thought was very clever and tied everything together surprisingly well. And it's got amazing production values for the 3DS, with loads of voice acting and some really high-quality anime cutscenes. The pacing is a bit wonky (it goes a bit visual-novelly in the middle section, with little in the way of courtroom drama or puzzling) but it pulls it all together in the end.
Will it ever get a rerelease? Who knows. If you've got the means to play it, though, and you like either of these two series, there's a lot to enjoy here.
Super Mario Galaxy
Still an all-time classic, with one of the greatest soundtracks ever, and possibly my favourite 3D Mario game. In these days of open-world exploration and millions of objectives, it's refreshing to play something that drops you into simple platforming challenges and tasks you with getting to the end. I had a LOT more fun playing this than I did with DK: Bananza, and I'm definitely going to get all 120 stars before moving on.
One thing that I didn't remember, though, and which surprised me a little was how quickly this starts to run out of ideas. The first few hours are a riot of invention and then it… just kind of does it all over again. The comets are straight asset reuse (do this level again but with a time limit! Fight this boss again but with only one life!) but even the galaxies themselves repeat. Honeyhive Galaxy is great but Honeyclimb and Gold Leaf feel like rehashes. Battlerock Galaxy is cool but Dreadnought Galaxy is pretty much the exact same thing. So it feels like it fizzles out quite quickly, overall, and definitely seems like they stretched themselves thin to hit that magic figure of 120 stars. I'm interested to see how Galaxy 2 fares in that regard, as I've played a lot less of that one in the past and can't really remember how it all pans out.
Garwoofoo