Hello to everyone, dear mates from Hive Gaming, I hope you are all doing well, welcome to my second post about one classic that has received a Homebrew demake, and this classic is nothing less than our beloved Halo Combat Evolved.
Technical note: For this blog I'd been using the emulator Visual Boy Advance M-64.
Halo Combat Devolved - GBC (Synopsis).
This is a Homebrew video game (unofficial software) of Halo Combat Evolved, which in this case being a Demake (video game deliberately created in a retro style), the developers decided to call it: Halo Combat Devolved. This game was developed by the indie game developers Crusader Games, and was released for emulation or play on the Game Boy Color in 2022, in a demo version.
Currently it is still in development, and is available in its v2.31 version for the Game Boy Color, even with versions to play directly in web browser (HTML5) and also Crusader Games plans to release in later versions some physical copies of Halo Combat Devolved, which is a homebrew action videogame that has an impressive art style, which emulates very well the retro style so characteristic of the GBC.
Arriving on an Unknown Planet with Cortana
From a dark room showing the destruction caused by the covenant troops in their attempt to steal sensitive information from the human alliance ship, we follow our escape plan alongside Cortana, who relentlessly assists us with instructions on how to reach the ship or escape pod.
In this level almost all the doors of the ship are blocked, leaving us without many escape routes, so in this level everything becomes quite linear when it comes to achieving the objectives, and if we remember well, all this quite faithful to the narrative raised in Halo Combat Evolved (yes, the original xD ).
In addition, the Covenant's elite troops continue to give us a hard time, as they, unlike the Covenant's Grunts, are very accurate in their attacks, and can also fire in multiple directions.
Hey, the gunfights... they really are intense in this game, and it really is awesome! Because they mimic very well the kind of action that Halo Combat Evolved always presented us with, and this demake manages to mimic that feeling very well in the gameplay, despite being a game meant for the GBC. On the other hand, after defeating multiple Covenant Elite troops we managed to access the lower area of the ship where the escape pod is supposed to be located, but it was really a bloody fight, as our Master Chief almost perished.
Actually, despite being a Game Boy Color game, this game can be quite gory in some sections, showing us multiple corpses of alliance soldiers, some of them badly mangled, and you can even see how some of them are dying and die after saying a short sentence to you.
Covenant grunts, while they may be easy to take down in 1 vs 1, can actually be quite annoying when attacking in groups, greatly reducing Master Chief's protective shield.
The ammunition used by Covenant Elite troops has a more piercing element to it, as in addition to being more accurate each time they hit Master Chief, they reduce the protective shield much faster than grunts, as well as directly impacting Master's health points.
Combat in the dark. God! The combat in the dark is something exciting in this Halo demake, and kudos to the guys at Crusader Games for how they played with the sprites and capabilities available on the Game Boy Color to create these dark effects and simulate combat in the shadows, which is simply a very nice feature for this game, and which brings a lot of variety to the gameplay.
In the image above you can clearly see the contrast and how well the guys at Crusader Games play with the Game Boy Color's sprites and graphics to create those kind of light effects in the game.
Note: At the moment, the game feels really smooth and well optimised, so, let me thank for that to the Crusader Games team
The game, despite presenting in parts an advanced difficulty, is actually quite fair to the player, providing us with a very well implemented system of Checkpoints to save and maintain our progress in the campaign mode.
This fallen alliance soldier left behind an important piece of loot, which was a clear sign that things were going to get a lot tougher on the way to the Escape Pod.
As mentioned before, the loot left behind by the fallen soldier was very helpful, especially the super shield (that little pink box) that turns our shield hud pink and gives us momentary invincibility against our enemies. The AI of the Elite Covenants is a real highlight in this demake, as they always try to surround you when they have the numerical superiority.
It's constantly impressive how many different kinds of areas are packed into this ship's level. This labyrinthine section, in particular, I found quite engaging and entertaining. Always good to practice your CQC (Close Quarter Combat) soldier ; )
"Emerging from the labyrinthine section, we entered another room shrouded in complete darkness, where a Covenant ambush awaited us, though we dealt with it swiftly. What I found particularly interesting was their use of sprites to simulate 'light filtering through the door seams' – a truly well-executed effect by the way : O
Everything can't be perfect; you really do feel the need for greater enemy variation up to this point, at least in terms of sprites. But let's give the guys at Crusader Games the benefit of the doubt, because in the original Halo Combat Evolved, we weren't exactly presented with a huge variety of enemies at this stage either...
Concluding this level of the ship, you really have to give it a 10 out of 10 for the variety of interiors in its design. For example, upon reaching another control bridge of the ship, we were presented with a very detailed command zone, where the combat against the Covenant Elites felt even more exciting.
Explosions everywhere! Another very well-achieved effect in this game is that of the explosions, just as we can see in the GIF above. In that room, the explosion eliminated many Covenant aliens, but the rest offered us strong resistance, and all of this in the darkness.
These Elites troops' resistance remained fierce throughout the entire level, strongly defending their position before we took the escape pod.
Finally, we reached the escape pod, and a beautiful series of images in pure 8-bit retro style are shown to us, where we can see how we managed to land on an unknown alien planet alongside our friend, the AI Cortana.
We've arrived at the unknown planet, and here we begin the second level of the game, which, just like in Halo Combat Evolved, is called Flawless Cowboy. And it's ironic because there's very little that's flawless about it, since as you can see, we landed quite awkwardly, therefore our health is at its minimum, so we'll have to be very careful around our enemies. On the other hand, at first glance, it's very pleasing how they recreated this first alien planet of HALO, showing it to us with very vibrant vegetation.
Well, that brings us to the end of this second Halo Combat Devolved blog for the Game Boy Color. I hope you enjoyed this second blog, my gamer mates, and thank you as always for your attention if you made it this far : ) . You can count on me in bringing more blogs of This amazing demake - homebrew for our beloved Halo ASAP ; )
Credits
Credits to Bungie, 343 Industries & the guys from Crusader Games for the development of this cool demake of Halo for the GBC, as well as to all the creators of the concept art of the Halo Saga.
You Can Play & Download this Game from Here:
First Gaming Blog of Halo Combat Devolved:
All the screenshots are taken from my PC - Screen & Emulator.
You can follow me at: @paultactico2
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