CURSED HALO
Halo: Combat Evolved gets absurd. By Julie Muncy
EXTRA LIFE
DIARY I MOD SPOTLIGHT (^) I REINSTALL I WHY I LOVE
understand and likely do not care to.
It helps, also, that it’s hilarious.
Cursed Halo isn’t remarkable
merely because it’s strange, or
because it subverts player
expectations. Lots of mods do that.
What’s special about Cursed Halo is
how elegantly it toys with the
systems of Bungie’s magnum opus,
the unique experience it creates
while doing so, and what it reveals
about how robust Halo: Combat
Evolved’s sandbox really is.
HELL FOR SPACE MARINES
If you’ve encountered Cursed Halo
outside of this article, chances are it
was on YouTube or Twitch. Despite
the drought of new Halo games over
the past few years, a vibrant Halo
scene still remains, and over the past
year or so a lot of its prominent
players have latched onto Cursed
Halo as an object of fascination. It’s
understandable why: it’s absurd, and
absurd things are extremely fun to
watch. The mod feels, in a way,
designed for streaming, giving the
player every reason to yell and
scream and flinch at each new twist
on familiar levels. It plays perfectly
into the exaggerated affectations of
game streaming.
But if you haven’t seen Cursed
Halo before and have no idea how
cursed it can be, consider folding this
page over and playing it right now.
(Don’t worry, I’ll wait.) The mod
itself is readily available online,
though at the time of writing it only
worked with the original Windows
B
ooting up Cursed Halo
feels, for a few
moments, like any
other Halo
playthrough. The
introductory cutscene rolls,
Cortana makes some cheeky
comments, the whole thing feels
tense and grand. You’ve seen this
before. Then the cutscene jumps to
the preparations on board the Pillar
of Autumn, and set against Sgt
Johnson’s tough-guy speech to the
space marines you see a Warthog
that looks... wrong. It’s small. Like,
way too small, like the Marines
(still normal size) are about to be
driving around in go-carts.
Well, you think. That’s odd. But
everything else seems pretty normal.
You start up the campaign, settle into
the Master Chief’s several-hundred-
kilo boots, and go visit Captain Keyes.
He hands you a pistol and you rush
to battle. Only once the fighting
starts, you start firing and nobody
dies. In fact, you start taking damage
instead. It’s only then that you look
closely at the pistol and discover that
its muzzle is, um, backwards. Instead
of shooting at the Covenant, you’re
shooting at yourself.
Welcome to Cursed Halo, an
experienced Halo player’s worst
nightmare. It’s a mod for the 2003 PC
port of Halo: Combat Evolved created
by modder and YouTuber
InfernoPlus. Here everything you
remember about the game’s complex
sandbox, its mess of vehicles and
weapons, is different. Sometimes in
empowering ways, sometimes in
frustrating ways. Mostly in absurd
ways. Cursed Halo is cursed in the
way of internet memery, suggesting
something that’s just weird in ways
that don’t fully make sense. The key
here is the combination of oddness
and inscrutability, the sense that
something is going on that you do not
WORST FIRE Meet your new arsenal
BATTERY GUN
Giant magazine. Might/might
not explode.
FLACCID SNIPER RIFLE
Look, everyone’s been there.
There’s no shame in it...
THE KEY HERE
IS THE
COMBINATION OF
ODDNESS AND
INSCRUTABILITY
NES ZAPPER GUN
Fires NES cartridges.
Admittedly not very effective.
MAGICAL GIRL GUN
In the name of the moon, I’ll
punish you!
BITCRUSHED PLASMA RIFLE
Like a Plasma Rifle, but more pixelated. Actually super useful.