A few notes here: Single player maps are not supported via menus as multiplayer maps are. They appear in the multiplayer map selection screen, but must be loaded manually through the console to prevent the game from crashing.
Also, Halomaps divides the maps into custom, modified, and CMT singleplayer maps. Custom maps are designed for single player, and there are currently about 35 released. Modified single player maps are either set in multiplayer maps (such as Blood Gulch) or are modifications of the campaign levels. There are currently about 200 maps out there, most of which I have not played, and most of the maps I have played were not worth the time it took to beat them. Go by the score given on Halomaps, and stay away from anything lower than 8 or so.
Single player campaign maps
----------------------------------------------
These maps are usually part of a series, and tell a story.
Area 52 - 55
These are innovative in that they are not only the first single player maps to tell a semi-coherent story (interestingly through the use of area-sensitive dialog that loops), but they are actually multiplayer maps. That means that you can co-op through the level with up to 16 allies.<br>
The series starts with Area 52, which is really just a multiplayer map with AI bots in one room. Area 53 begins as you wake up in a cell, escape through the ventilation system, fight through a mysterious complex, and finally make your escape in a warthog run very similar to the final campaign level. Area 54 has you fight your way through a Doom-esque dungeon and even gives you two alternate endings and a final boss. Area 55 pits you fight against terminator robots as you seek revenge against the final boss.
The three maps together will take you about an hour or two to finish. 53 is the most fun, while 54 is the longest and most innovative. 55 is not very fun and doesn't feel complete.
CMT SPv1
This is a simple campaign mod with various "improvements," namely various Halo 2 and custom weapons, some new vehicles, and altered visuals. It is a fun and refreshing change from the classic campaign, although some of the changes are arguably worse than the original content, and many of the weapons are too powerful--especially the minigun and sentinal major beam, which can both destroy a Wraith in seconds.
Play time is the same as the campaign; about 10 hours.
CMT SPv2
Only the PoA level was officially released, and the rest were released in their incomplete form when the team threw in the towel on the project. All maps are present, although only about half are actually playable all the way through.
What sets this apart from the other maps is the fact that it not only changes everything in the original maps, but adds significant new portions to them. In many cases these new portions can effectively double the map in size. For this release, the textures and models are significantly improved, the guns feel much more like they should, and most importantly, it is FUN.
Total play time is hard to determine, but up to 20 hours.
CMT SPv3
So far only the third level is released. It does not feature the extended levels of SPv2, but includes many advanced features with the Open Sauce version, namely including VISR mode and improved graphics, which make it feel very much like playing a later Halo game.
Total play time for the one map is the same as normal campaign; about an hour.
Halo Covert Ops
This is probably the most impressive in terms of scope. Essentially, you are a battle-weary ODST who has been moved to a remote space station due to PTSD or something. While one of the marines is asking about your past, the station is attacked by the Covenant, and you are placed back into active duty and shipped to Earth to help with the fight there. From there you are free to choose how the game will progress, and will eventually uncover one of several conspiracy plots.
The total game is 6 levels, although you will only play 3 or 4 in a typical campaign. All of the levels are set in various multiplayer maps, and make very creative use of storytelling through flashbacks and dialogue between the player and NPC. Also, all of the speech in the game is entirely text, which is a refreshing break from poorly-executed voice acting and recycled lines from the campaign that barely fit the current situation. There is some new content, but the majority of the game focuses on Classic weapons, enemies, and vehicles. At the end of the game, you are given a rank based on which ending you got.
The story will take about an hour or two to complete, but there are about 4 main story plots to play through.
Lumoria
This is the first and only 100% custom, story-driven campaign for Halo CE. It is a two-part campaign, and only part 1 is currently out. Part 2 should be out soon.
The story here is that humans found a Forerunner world, but after deploying a team of scientists to determine its origin and purpose, the world is invaded by the covenant and the scientists are pinned down. So, a Spartan and some ODST's are sent to eliminate the Covenant forces and rescue the scientists. Upon finding the scientists, you learn that the world serves as a database/index of all life in the galaxy, and could lead the Covenant to Earth's location. That is the end of part 1.
Part 2 picks up as you launch a campaign against the covenant's push toward the central database of the world. Along the way, you fight your way through many scenic landscapes and ultimately face off against a rampant AI that is in charge of the world of Lumoria and a nearly-invincible Elite. Part 2 is significantly more refined than part 1, and is frankly some of the best fun you can have inside of a custom campaign map. This is a must-have for everyone who has CE.
Overall, this is one of the most expansive and fun campaigns out to date. The team has decided to stick to the classic Halo arsenal, and mostly canonical enemies from other games and books, which is a wise decision in my opinion. The first level takes a bit longer to finish than most classic campaign maps; about an hour and a half to two hours. More attention has been paid to every small detail than any other map to date. The skybox is fully custom and gorgeous, and an observant player will notice distant beam towers shooting their beams silently into the sky. There is a very large variety in the environments you fight in, although it mostly feels like a marriage of the Halo campaign map, the Great Journey map from Halo 2, and some things were taken straight from the E3 2000 demo. Really, the only downfall that this campaign has is poor and choppy dialogue execution and fake accents. Still, this map is non-stop action all the way through, and left me saying "Wow" when it was over.
Firefight Single Player Levels
-------------------------------------------
These levels are single player but focus exclusively on action, rather than any sort of storytelling. The player must fend off waves of enemies that become increasingly difficult. This is styled after the ODST/Reach gametype of the same name.
Firefight Airlock
An ODST-styled map in a very well-designed map that suits firefight well. The map itself is fun, but the icing on the cake is the added music menu, which gives you four songs to set your Covenant-blasting to. My favorites are "New Divide" by Linkin Park and "When You Were Young" by The Killers. 20 waves to fight, which equates to roughly 30-45 minites of play.
Firefight Descent
Here is one of the best single player experiences to grace CE so far. Unlike other maps, this map was designed from the ground-up as a firefight map, rather than an adapted multiplayer map. The gameplay is very close to that of Halo Reach, the arsenal is mostly custom, and the enemies are Halo 2 canon minus the brutes. Music is provided in the game and is mostly techno remixes of various songs from Halo through Reach to give it a more edgy, cinematic feel. Every round has around 10 waves of bad guys, and powerups are granted at varoius intervals. The last wave of every round is a special round where deaths do not count against you, and you must fight against special enemies--such as scores of sword-wielding Elite Zealots or Jackal snipers with rocket launchers. Gameplay is immensely fun, and the author of the map said it offers unlimited gameplay, although I have not had more than two hours to play it so far.
Miscellaneous
-----------------------------------
DMT-Air
This is a fun map that doesn't play quite like anything else. You are an Elite...on a hoverboard...racing around through High Charity from Halo 2. It only takes a few minutes to beat, but it is fun to try to get a gold medal for the map.
Also, Halomaps divides the maps into custom, modified, and CMT singleplayer maps. Custom maps are designed for single player, and there are currently about 35 released. Modified single player maps are either set in multiplayer maps (such as Blood Gulch) or are modifications of the campaign levels. There are currently about 200 maps out there, most of which I have not played, and most of the maps I have played were not worth the time it took to beat them. Go by the score given on Halomaps, and stay away from anything lower than 8 or so.
Single player campaign maps
----------------------------------------------
These maps are usually part of a series, and tell a story.
Area 52 - 55
These are innovative in that they are not only the first single player maps to tell a semi-coherent story (interestingly through the use of area-sensitive dialog that loops), but they are actually multiplayer maps. That means that you can co-op through the level with up to 16 allies.<br>
The series starts with Area 52, which is really just a multiplayer map with AI bots in one room. Area 53 begins as you wake up in a cell, escape through the ventilation system, fight through a mysterious complex, and finally make your escape in a warthog run very similar to the final campaign level. Area 54 has you fight your way through a Doom-esque dungeon and even gives you two alternate endings and a final boss. Area 55 pits you fight against terminator robots as you seek revenge against the final boss.
The three maps together will take you about an hour or two to finish. 53 is the most fun, while 54 is the longest and most innovative. 55 is not very fun and doesn't feel complete.
CMT SPv1
This is a simple campaign mod with various "improvements," namely various Halo 2 and custom weapons, some new vehicles, and altered visuals. It is a fun and refreshing change from the classic campaign, although some of the changes are arguably worse than the original content, and many of the weapons are too powerful--especially the minigun and sentinal major beam, which can both destroy a Wraith in seconds.
Play time is the same as the campaign; about 10 hours.
CMT SPv2
Only the PoA level was officially released, and the rest were released in their incomplete form when the team threw in the towel on the project. All maps are present, although only about half are actually playable all the way through.
What sets this apart from the other maps is the fact that it not only changes everything in the original maps, but adds significant new portions to them. In many cases these new portions can effectively double the map in size. For this release, the textures and models are significantly improved, the guns feel much more like they should, and most importantly, it is FUN.
Total play time is hard to determine, but up to 20 hours.
CMT SPv3
So far only the third level is released. It does not feature the extended levels of SPv2, but includes many advanced features with the Open Sauce version, namely including VISR mode and improved graphics, which make it feel very much like playing a later Halo game.
Total play time for the one map is the same as normal campaign; about an hour.
Halo Covert Ops
This is probably the most impressive in terms of scope. Essentially, you are a battle-weary ODST who has been moved to a remote space station due to PTSD or something. While one of the marines is asking about your past, the station is attacked by the Covenant, and you are placed back into active duty and shipped to Earth to help with the fight there. From there you are free to choose how the game will progress, and will eventually uncover one of several conspiracy plots.
The total game is 6 levels, although you will only play 3 or 4 in a typical campaign. All of the levels are set in various multiplayer maps, and make very creative use of storytelling through flashbacks and dialogue between the player and NPC. Also, all of the speech in the game is entirely text, which is a refreshing break from poorly-executed voice acting and recycled lines from the campaign that barely fit the current situation. There is some new content, but the majority of the game focuses on Classic weapons, enemies, and vehicles. At the end of the game, you are given a rank based on which ending you got.
The story will take about an hour or two to complete, but there are about 4 main story plots to play through.
Lumoria
This is the first and only 100% custom, story-driven campaign for Halo CE. It is a two-part campaign, and only part 1 is currently out. Part 2 should be out soon.
The story here is that humans found a Forerunner world, but after deploying a team of scientists to determine its origin and purpose, the world is invaded by the covenant and the scientists are pinned down. So, a Spartan and some ODST's are sent to eliminate the Covenant forces and rescue the scientists. Upon finding the scientists, you learn that the world serves as a database/index of all life in the galaxy, and could lead the Covenant to Earth's location. That is the end of part 1.
Part 2 picks up as you launch a campaign against the covenant's push toward the central database of the world. Along the way, you fight your way through many scenic landscapes and ultimately face off against a rampant AI that is in charge of the world of Lumoria and a nearly-invincible Elite. Part 2 is significantly more refined than part 1, and is frankly some of the best fun you can have inside of a custom campaign map. This is a must-have for everyone who has CE.
Overall, this is one of the most expansive and fun campaigns out to date. The team has decided to stick to the classic Halo arsenal, and mostly canonical enemies from other games and books, which is a wise decision in my opinion. The first level takes a bit longer to finish than most classic campaign maps; about an hour and a half to two hours. More attention has been paid to every small detail than any other map to date. The skybox is fully custom and gorgeous, and an observant player will notice distant beam towers shooting their beams silently into the sky. There is a very large variety in the environments you fight in, although it mostly feels like a marriage of the Halo campaign map, the Great Journey map from Halo 2, and some things were taken straight from the E3 2000 demo. Really, the only downfall that this campaign has is poor and choppy dialogue execution and fake accents. Still, this map is non-stop action all the way through, and left me saying "Wow" when it was over.
Firefight Single Player Levels
-------------------------------------------
These levels are single player but focus exclusively on action, rather than any sort of storytelling. The player must fend off waves of enemies that become increasingly difficult. This is styled after the ODST/Reach gametype of the same name.
Firefight Airlock
An ODST-styled map in a very well-designed map that suits firefight well. The map itself is fun, but the icing on the cake is the added music menu, which gives you four songs to set your Covenant-blasting to. My favorites are "New Divide" by Linkin Park and "When You Were Young" by The Killers. 20 waves to fight, which equates to roughly 30-45 minites of play.
Firefight Descent
Here is one of the best single player experiences to grace CE so far. Unlike other maps, this map was designed from the ground-up as a firefight map, rather than an adapted multiplayer map. The gameplay is very close to that of Halo Reach, the arsenal is mostly custom, and the enemies are Halo 2 canon minus the brutes. Music is provided in the game and is mostly techno remixes of various songs from Halo through Reach to give it a more edgy, cinematic feel. Every round has around 10 waves of bad guys, and powerups are granted at varoius intervals. The last wave of every round is a special round where deaths do not count against you, and you must fight against special enemies--such as scores of sword-wielding Elite Zealots or Jackal snipers with rocket launchers. Gameplay is immensely fun, and the author of the map said it offers unlimited gameplay, although I have not had more than two hours to play it so far.
Miscellaneous
-----------------------------------
DMT-Air
This is a fun map that doesn't play quite like anything else. You are an Elite...on a hoverboard...racing around through High Charity from Halo 2. It only takes a few minutes to beat, but it is fun to try to get a gold medal for the map.
