5. Halo: Combat Evolved

Zack: Halo: Combat Evolved is a classic that deserves to be remembered for proving first-person shooters could truly work on a console and for kickstarting one of the best sci-fi video game franchises of all time. It also has some terrible campaign levels that go on for far too long, simplistic multiplayer offerings, and could be an unfair pain in the ass on Legendary difficulty. So it ends up towards the bottom of our list. We love it, but compared to the rest of the series…eh.

Ari: Zack’s on the money. Halo: Combat Evolved is a genuine classic. Purists will say that it’s deliciously streamlined, that it set the tone for the series, and that paved the way for first-person shooters to work with dual-stick controllers. That’s all true! But the original Halo lacked so much of what makes the series rule—like online multiplayer and a firefight mode—in later entries. So I’m not totally sold on its merits, on how well it holds up today, but I found myself quite moved by a colleague’s case for the game…

Carolyn Petit, Kotaku managing editor: The game that started it all, Halo: Combat Evolved felt revolutionary at the time of its release, introduced so much of what we think still defines Halo today, established the relationship of Master Chief and Cortana as arguably the heart of the series, had maybe the series’ best-ever villain in 343 Guilty Spark, and featured one of the most jaw-dropping final sequences that any game at the time had ever had (and one that Halo 3 then imitated à la Return of the Jedi doing the whole Death Star thing again after Star Wars). On top of all that, beat by beat, it feels scrappy and alive and full of interesting choices and shifts in tone, the delicious result (in my opinion) of being made with more limited resources than so many later, heftier entries in the series have been made under.