Like most popular gaming franchises, Halo also has a lot of titles in the series. And if you haven’t played the game yet, or have played it all and want to revisit it, then here’s a complete guide on all the Halo games in order of their release date.
Halo is a super popular military science fiction, action-adventure, and real-time strategy game that made its debut on Xbox before arriving on various other platforms. The series revolves around a group of supersoldiers named Spartans, spearheaded by Master Chief John-117 and their companion Cortana, an elite artificial intelligence.
The game deals with the interstellar war between humanity and an alien race called Covenant headed by Prophets, their religious leaders. They worship an ancient civilization called the Forerunners, which were destroyed by a parasitic organism called the Flood.
The game commences with the destruction of the human planet of Reach, where Noble Six and then Master John take over to destroy Covenant during the various invasions across the timeline.
The first Halo game arrived in 2005 and has sprung into three series called the Original Trilogy, Reclaimer Saga, and Spin-offs offering a tonne of new characters, weapons, vehicles, gameplay elements, enemies, and more. With more than 81 million copies sold, the Halo franchise is one of the most popular video game series.
All The Halo Games in Order:
1. Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)
Release Date: November 15, 2001
Platforms: Xbox, Windows, Mac OS X, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Halo Timeline: 2552
Part of: Original Trilogy
Halo: Combat Evolved started it all. Released on November 15, 2001, Microsoft released the game with its first-ever video game console Xbox. It is a first-person action-shooter game where the player plays as Master Chief John-117, who is a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier.
Along with artificial intelligence, Cortana, he set on a journey to find the true purpose of Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.
Master Chief is equipped with state-of-the-art weapons, and is tasked to defend himself against the aliens called The Covenant on this world. It was the first FPP game of its kind and soon set the standards for future FPP games across the globe.
The game soon arrived on Microsoft Windows (PC), Mac OS X, along other Xbox consoles in the following years marking its great reception selling more than 5 million units by November 2005. The game received an HD remake a decade later.
2. Halo 2 (2004)
Release Date: November 9, 2004
Platforms: Xbox, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC, Xbox Series X/S
Halo Timeline: 2552
Part of: Original Trilogy
The second game in the series, Halo 2, was released on November 9, 2004, on Xbox. It soon arrived on Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC with its arsenal of new vehicles, enemies, weapons, and online multiplayer mode.
The graphics were significantly improved with the sequel that came out 3 years after the first installment. The story continues after the events of Halo: Combat Evolved and features the protagonist Master Chief along with the alien, Arbiter.
Master Chief conflicts with the Covenant, the humans at the United Nations Space Command, and the parasitic organisms called The Flood. As of August 2007, about 8.46 million copies of Halo 2 were sold in the United States and elsewhere. It became an instant hit and the best-selling video game for the first generation of Xbox consoles.
3. Halo 3 (2007)
Release Date: September 25, 2007
Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Halo Timeline: 2552
Part of: Original Trilogy
Halo 3 is the franchise’s third installment and the original trilogy’s last title. It deals with Master Chief, the protagonist, pit against parasitic Flood and the Covenant.
The game brings new weapons, plot points, vehicles, and gameplay elements that weren’t available in the previous installment, and it introduces file sharing, saved gameplay films, and more.
Master Chief is battling Covenant and Flood while trying to rescue Cortana, his AI companion, during the game’s events. The third installment sold more than 14.5 million copies per the latest update smashing all previous records. Post-Halo 3, the franchise entered the Reclaimer Saga.
4. Halo Wars (2009)
Release Date: February 6, 2009
Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows
Halo Timeline: 2531 CE
Part of: Spin-Off Series
The events of Halo Wars commence roughly 21 years before the original game, making it the first per the chronological order.
The plot revolves around the Spirit of Fire investigating the planet Harvest for Covenant activities. They soon discover that Covenant has found a Forerunner facility at the UNSC’s main outpost on the planet’s northern pole. This marks the troops’ first encounter with the aliens they must tackle.
It received a Metacritic score of 82/100, while Eurogamer and GameSpot gave it 8.0/10-point and 6.5/10-points, respectively. Halo Wars was the first installment in the spin-off series and sold over 1 million copies by March 19, 2009. Half a decade later, Halo Wars: Definitive Edition, an enhanced version of the 2009 game, arrived for Xbox One and Windows.
5. Halo 3: ODST (2009)
Release Date: September 22, 2009
Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
Halo Timeline: 2552
Part of: Spin-Off Series
Technically the fourth installment in the franchise, the events of Halo 3: ODST occur in 2552 during the events of Halo 2. The game continues when five Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODST) members are set out on a mission to find the missing teammates in the city of New Mombasa.
The game introduced FPS mode again in the Halo series while allowing players to choose the single-player mode (Disc 1) or go for multiplayer (Disc 2) when they purchase it.
Halo 3: ODST was released as a side story to support the storyline of Halo 3; however, it transformed into a full-fledged game selling more than 2.5 million copies within the first two weeks after its release. The game soon became a part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
6. Halo: Reach (2010)
Release Date: September 14, 2010
Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows
Halo Timeline: 2552
Part of: Spin-Off Series
A part of its spin-off series, Halo: Reach was the last game Bungie helped develop. Some gamers consider Reach as the last ‘actual’ Halo game.
Halo: Reach is set just a few moments before the events of the first Halo installment. The game leaves Master Chief but introduces a multiplayer option made a part of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, released a year later.
The player controls the character of Noble Six, a supersoldier squad member before Master Chief took the mantle. The human planet Reach is under attack, and as the theme of the game goes, it is ruined by the alien Covenant, which marked the onset of the first Halo game.
7. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (2011)
Release Date: November 15, 2011
Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Windows
As the title suggests, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original Halo game. Released on Xbox 360, the game arrived on other platforms after a few years.
The game brought HD visual overhaul, online multiplayer mode via Xbox Live, Kinect support, remastered and new sound effects, and more features. The game is part FPP and part TPP following the events with the protagonist Master Chief.
The human ship, Pillar of Autumn, flees planet Reach to an uncharted space after a random slipspace jump. They discover a ringworld orbiting a gas giant. Covenant attacks Autumn, and that is when Jacob Keyes, Autumn’s Captain, transports the knowledge and database of Cortana to the Master Chief.
The installment received critical acclaim with 82/100-points on Metacritic, while GameSpot gave it 8.0/10-points.
8. Halo 4 (2012)
Release Date: November 6, 2012
Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox 360, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Halo Timeline: 2557
Part of: Reclaimer Saga
The next game in the Halo games in order series, and the first in the Reclaimer Saga series, Halo 4 follows the events of cybernetically enhanced supersoldier Master Chief and AI Cortana battling new factions that were born out of remains of the Covenant.
Five years after the original trilogy ends (and two spin-offs), Halo 4 enjoys a bunch of new enemies, weapons, and gameplay elements that weren’t a part of the previous titles.
Halo 4 was first released on Xbox 360, and soon, it arrived on Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox Series X/S in the following years.
The game made a gross of US$200 million in sales on the launch day itself. An estimated million people played the game on Xbox Live within 24 hours post the release. More than 8 million copies of Halo 4 have been sold as per the last available update.
9. Halo: Spartan Assault (2013)
Release Date: July 18, 2013
Platforms: iOS, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Windows Phone
Halo Timeline: 2552 – 2557
Part of: Spin-Off Series
Halo: Spartan Assault was released on July 18, 2013, as a twin-stick shooter game with a top-down perspective. It made it the first mobile game and received a mixed response enough to spark the launch of its sequel in 2015.
The game arrived with a bunch of downloadable content, 25 single-player missions, a new splinter faction of the Covenant, and the player is playing the character of the lead Sarah Palmer along with Edward Davis. The events set in Halo: Spartan Assault occur between the events of Halo 3 and Halo 4.
The controls on Halo: Spartan Assault depends on the host device, i.e., virtual joysticks on smartphones, while Xbox 360 and Xbox One users will have to use a physical gamepad to play. Finally, Windows PC users will have the option to either use a gamepad or mouse and keyboard.
10. Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2014)
Release Date: November 11, 2014
Platforms: Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Cloud Gaming
Halo: The Master Chief Collection, as the title suggests, is a compilation of games in the Halo Series. This collection includes Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3: ODST, Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4. It was first released on Xbox One and later ported to Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.
The game still gets new updates and DLC after all those years. Each game listed above got an HD Remaster in this collection and includes a multiplayer beta of Halo 5: Guardians and six Halo 2 maps that were made from scratch for the collection.
11. Halo: Spartan Strike (2015)
Release Date: April 16, 2015
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, iOS, Windows Phone
Halo Timeline: 2557 – 2558
Part of: Spin-Off Series
Halo: Spartan Strike has two parts. The first part occurs during Halo 2, while the second is based on Halo 4. It is a top-down perspective game where a supersoldier Spartan-IV fights against Covenant in the city of New Mombasa and finds an object called Conduit, which can open Forerunners portals across the globe.
Conduit opened a portal to transport to the ringworld Gamma Halo to avoid the city’s destruction. A new faction of Covenant is also behind the Conduit that could help them bring back Promethean reinforcements.
The game lacks a multiplayer mode and received a Metacritic rating of 86/100-points and 66/100-points for iOS and PC, respectively.
12. Halo 5: Guardians (2015)
Release Date: October 27, 2015
Platforms: Xbox One
Halo Timeline: 2558
Part of: Reclaimer Saga
Halo 5: Guardians is the sequel to Halo 4 and uses the same motion capture technology for character animations. The game uses a game engine to scale its resolution providing 60fps.
The game offers two fireteams of supersoldiers where Master Chief heads the Blue Team and Spartan Locke leads the Fireteam Osiris. Master Chief’s team goes off the radar, and it is the second team tasked with finding them.
The game enjoys a first-person perspective where everything happens from the character’s perspective, while some sequences in the game switch to a third-person perspective, such as riding on vehicles.
Although Halo 5: Guardians received a lot of positive acclaim, the split-screen feature received a lot of backlashes. It became the best-selling game of October in the US five days after its release and has sold at least 10 million units so far.
13. Halo Wars 2 (2017)
Release Date: February 21, 2017
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One
Halo Timeline: 2559
Part of: Spin-Off Series
The sequel to Halo Wars, Halo Wars 2, follows the events just after Halo 5: Guardians, where the Spirit of Fire arrives at the Ark, an installation by Forerunner responsible for constructing and controlling the Halo rings.
It shows conflicts between forces at the UNSC, after which the Banished takes over the Ark. The game was released on both Xbox One and Microsoft Windows (PC) as a real-time strategy title with both single and multiplayer modes, where the latter is available for both cooperative and competitive modes.
Halo Wars 2 received a Metacritic rating of 70/100-points on PC and 79/100-points on Xbox One. It received plenty of positive responses from the masses. Later, the game received a lot of downloadable content and cross-platform capability between PC and consoles.
14. Halo: Recruit (2017)
Release Date: October 2017
Part of: Virtual Reality (VR)
Halo: Recruit is the first-ever Halo game to arrive in virtual reality and requires users to have mixed reality (MR) gear to play it. The game developed by VR Studio Endeavor One and overseers 343 Industries offers an immersive experience in a shooting gallery where you can blast off Covenant as they appear.
15. Halo: Fireteam Raven (2018)
Release Date: Late 2018
Platform: Arcade
As mentioned, Halo: Fireteam Raven is an arcade game released as an exclusive at the Dave & Buster’s in North America, and later, it arrived internationally.
It has recently received an update, such as skins and armor permutations themes on Fireteam Raven, and it was added in the Halo: The Master Chief Collection as a part of Halo 3.
16. Halo Infinite (2021)
Release Date: Dec 2021
Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows
Halo Timeline: 2560
Part of: Reclaimer Saga
In the third chapter in the Reclaimer Saga and the latest title in the Halo games in order series, Master Chief returns after being lost for 167 days with Halo Infinite. The fate of humanity lies on his shoulders now.
Halo Infinite, which was dubbed Halo 6 early on, offers an expansive storyline with more action and fun for the players. It puts Master Chief against the most ruthless foe ever, The Banished, introduced during the events of Halo Wars 2.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the article, as we have listed down all the Halo games in their release order. If you plan to play the games, you should definitely play them in this order. When you revisit the game after finishing all the titles, you can go through the chronological order for freshness.
I hope you enjoyed reading and learning about all the Halo games in order, and if you did, then make sure to share it with your friends and leave your feedback in the comments section below.
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