Halo CEA Reviewed

So we've had a couple of days to play with Halo Combat Evolved: Anniversary edition.  It does appear that you need to download the classic Halo 1 multi-player maps by using the code included in your game.  Some thoughts:

Campaign: It's sad that this is 2 player only, but it's still a pretty fun campaign with great music.  It's gorgeous compared to Halo 1, but I wouldn't say that it's quite "current gen."  Hitting the Back button is neat to see the original graphics.  The Grunt Funeral skull is a game changer, it basically makes killing Elites trivially easy.  Headshot one grunt in the squad, and everyone goes boom.  Also makes it dangerous to melee grunts now.

Firefight: This is satisfyingly fun to play on the Halo 1 campaign maps, and a nice alternative to campaign.  It basically gives you a way to play snippets of the campaign as 4 player co-op, on XBL, with Challenges available.

Multiplayer: This is launched from the Halo CEA disc, but takes you into the Reach matchmaking engine.  The game types and maps prefaced by "Anniversary" are the classic game types and maps.  Beaver Creek was the most familiar, but Damnation and Prisoner showed up several times as well.  Here are averaged clan stats from clan night, some things never change: