You played it like 20 years too late, for the record I was about 20 when it was released. Yes there were slogs but couch co-op at the time was fantastic with Halo, multiplayer was much improved with Xbox live and not really there for the first one. There was some way to connect to play with people on the Internet but it wasn’t simple.

Even with the slog areas (Library), with my buddies we played through coop so many times I’m pretty sure I did it solo on legendary a few times solo. I want to say this was one of the first games with regenerating shields for an fps (maybe first but my memory is fuzzy) which people mostly take for granted these days. If I recall you needed health still but that stopped later in the series too. Today I’d probably only play it for nostalgia and have been tempted to pick up the master chief collection to do that.

I see how you can think that playing it first today, but for the time it was something else.