What Order Should You Play The Halo Games? (2024)

The Halo franchise has given birth to some of the most iconic video games, characters, music, and stories in modern video game history. Starting with the first game, Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001 from Bungie Studios, there have been 16 games set within the Halo universe. While the character Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 has become synonymous with the Halo franchise, there are some games that tell the tale of other characters and what they were doing during the events of the mainline Master Chief saga.

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Playing these games in chronological order is the best way to experience Halo from a narrative perspective, as Halo's story can be a bit convoluted, especially considering the lore that exists outside the video games. Be that as it may, with the most recent release of Halo Infinite, you'd be wise to brush up on your Halo lore. Here's the best way to play Halo in order.

Halo Wars

The first game in the mainline Halo story is Halo Wars, developed by Ensemble Studios and released in 2009. Set in 2531, Halo Wars tells the tale of the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire after it is sent to an outer colony world called Harvest to investigate Covenant that has begun to excavate the planet.

Halo Wars is a radically different genre than the first-person shooters the franchise is known for in that it is a real-time strategy game. During gameplay, you control units of soldiers and vehicles on an isometric battlefield by selecting them and pointing to the intended location on the map.

Halo Reach

Halo Reach has been touted as having one of the best stories out of the other 16 Halo games in the series. In Bungie's 2010 first-person shooter, you play as an unnamed Spartan, Noble 6, on your doomed mission with the rest of the Noble Team to save Reach from a Covenant onslaught in the year 2552.

Halo Reach is a grim tale about a futile struggle against an unrelenting alien foe, though the narrative nuances of this game are in its character development. Jorge, Emile, Jun, Carter, and Kat of the all-Spartan Noble Team have interesting stories and dialogue, a welcome change from the typical one-liner dialogue in the Chief-led Halo games.

Halo: Combat Evolved

The one that started it all, Halo: Combat Evolved, codified a new generation of first-person console shooters back in November 2001. Ironically, the OG Halo CE is the third game you should play if you were to play the Halo games in order. Halo Combat Evolved tells the story of how the UNSC and Covenant discovered the Halo's ring-world by pure luck.

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Halo CE starts off with a spectacular and harrowing descent onto the plant Halo during an intense spaceship battle between the UNSC and the Covenant fleets. You play as one of the most iconic protagonists in all video games, the Master Chief. You and Cortana embark on a mission to save the universe from the aggressive alien faction known as the Covenant and a demonic hive-mind zombie fungus known as The Flood.

Halo 2

Turns out, that zombie-making fungus from Halo Combat Evolved, known as The Flood, was more of a galactic emergency than the game led on. Microsoft and Bungie's 2004 Halo 2, the direct follow-up to the first game, continues Master Chief's story but also tells the tale of The Arbiter and his fall from grace. The story also introduces a new dominant alien faction to the fold, the Brutes. This time around, the Covenant brings the fight straight to the Master Chief's doorstep, Earth.

Halo 3: ODST

If Halo Reach holds the mantel for one of the best Halo game narratives, it does so right beside Halo: ODST. Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, ODTSs for short, are specialized soldiers that drop down from orbiting warships in pods right in the thick of enemy lines. In Halo: ODST, you play as The Rookie on a secret mission from ONI gone wrong. On your descent to New Mombasa, your Drop Pod gets knocked out of its trajectory and crash lands somewhere in the city. You wake up six hours later inside your pod and walk out into a destroyed city, at night, without communication with the rest of your squad. ODST is a SciFi FPS action game drenched in a film-noir art and music style.

Halo 3

Halo 3 is often spoken about as one of the best Halo games ever made, and from top to bottom, there isn't much to argue against. Halo 3 is set between the years 2552 and 2553, the final months of the Human-Covenant war. You play as the Master Chief, and after shrugging off a fall from space, you and your new Arbiter homie venture forward to finally put an end to the High Prophet of Truth's lies and The Flood infestation once and for all.

Halo Spartan Assault

Taking place in the year 2554 between the events of Halo 3 and Halo 4, Halo Spartan Assault from Vanguard Games, Halo Spartan Assault is a fun and brief twin-stick shooter released in 2013. Spartan Palm and Spartan Davis are on planet Draetheus V when it is attacked by a rogue faction of the Covenant that has disobeyed the cease-fire and is searching for an ancient Forerunner weapon on its moon.

Halo 4

Taking place four years after the events in Halo 3, Halo 4 goes deeper narratively as it briefly explores the origins of the Spartan Program as well as the Master Chief. You are introduced to Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creator of the Spartan Program and the brain behind Cortana. This game begins the Reclaimer Saga, and important events take place during its approximately 7-hour campaign.

Halo: Spartan Strike

Halo: Spartan Strike, Vanguard Studios 2015 twin-stick shooter, is the direct successor to Halo: Spartan Assault. Taking place in both 2552 and 2557, Spartan Strike follows a contingent of UNSC soldiers on a mission to secure a Forerunner Artifact known as The Conduit.

Halo 5: Guardians

Halo 5: Guardians, released in 2015, takes place in 2558, 8 months after the events in Halo 4. Cortana has gone rampant, Fire Team Osiris and Spartan Locke are sent on a mission to capture the Master Chief, and Artificial Intelligences across the galaxy have begun to swear their allegiance to a rogue AI.

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The Master Chief has gone AWOL with the rest of the Blue Team on a mission to find and rescue Cortana. The UNSC believes the Master Chief is a threat to himself and those around him, calling for him to be immediately detained and brought to the UNSC Infinity. You and the rest of Blue Team, ignoring orders to stand down by Commander Laskey, follow Cortana's trail in an attempt to put an end to her galactic threat.

Halo Wars 2

Halo Wars 2 takes place in 2559, nearly 30 years after the events in the original Halo Wars. Halo Wars 2 is a real-time strategy, almost a carbon copy of the original game, save for the story. The game sets up the events that would lead to Halo Infinite and introduces the new antagonist faction, the brute-led group known as The Banished. You and Captain Cutter, the Commander of the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire, control UNSC troops and special forces units on missions to defeat The Banished on The Ark.

Halo Infinite

Taking place in the year 2560, Halo Infinite once again allows you to control The Master Chief in this blockbuster Halo release to ward off the newest and most deadly alien faction, The Banished. In a first for the series, you campaign through missions on Zeta Halo in an open-world-like environment. At the beginning of the game, you are found floating in the abyss of space by an unknown pilot who is trying to escape the planet and the unrelenting Banished invasion. Soon after, you are grappling your way around the planet Zeta Halo, slowly dismantling the Banished occupancy, forward operating base by forward operating base.

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