It appears the Escapist fucked up sometime during the typing of my original rebuttal, so I'll repost...
Fine, I'll bite, but I'm going to let you know that I'm not going to engage in pointless back-and-forthing that has mired this thread in five pages of mindless babble and implied witticisms.
First, I'm going to pull in some lore and research to help explain the game mechanics that made sense to all of us except you.
By category:
Movement.
According to the novels, and other information sources pertaining to the Halo universe, the reason why movement is "so slow" in Halo is because the weight of the armor (nearly a half ton, not the assumed 400 lbs) coupled with the low-friction contact generated by the Chief's energy shield creates a "fat man on ice" effect. Add to this the fact that the Halo rings have "close or similar gravity as Earth", this might have an even greater effect. The heavier something is, the harder it is to move.
Which seems like it could be strange coincidence, or as what it is, facts generated
after the game came out to explain technical issues. This is the basis of Halo Lore.
In truth, it's likely that the developers wanted the player to move at a rate that was conducive to tactical movement: swift and steady.
The movement rate is generally the same that individual soldiers and entry teams move at when entering and securing a hostile area. The speed at which the Chief moves is probably the best or, at least, second best (to the Call of Duty series and most other post H:CE) in a FPS. Halo is not designed for the twitch-kiddie brand of shooters like Quake, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, or hell, even Doom or Wolfenstein. There is no run button in Halo simply because you don't need one. Swift infiltration and exfiltration from a combat zone is accomplished by peeling-out, using cover and return fire to suppress the enemy until you've reached a safe re-engagement distance, or by vehicle. However, this seems to have been "fixed" in later iterations of the game where an abundance of booster pads and jet tubes were added to multiplayer maps and some single-player segments.
Shooting.
This is another part where tactical aspects and twitch-kiddie clash. Firing each weapon is unique in that each weapon is different and thus is expected to aim differently. Let's take Halo: CE and say, something like Quake. I'm admittedly no expert on quake, but from what I've played of its multiplayer and single player, the only differences between each weapon is the color of the projectile and the power of the projectile. Generally, each projectile fires linearly with little flight path deviation. This of course, does not include shotguns from either game.
The point of quake is to nail the bad guy with the most concentrated highest power level of fire and kill him quickly. Halo handles this differently. It requires you to engage a target with your full inventory. This creates the effect of a layered combat zone consisting of long, medium, close, and personal levels of engagement. You can use a sniper rifle at close range, but in reality (pertaining to the game) your best choice would be a weapon with the mechanics appropriate for the type of engagement. I'm getting the feeling that the primary reason you thought the weapons were unbalanced was because you were using them wrong. There is a right way and a wrong way to use a weapon. Yes, the Magnum was broken and the sniper rifle is a little too accurate, but Lore explains this by citing that the Spartan's helmet targeting systems couple with the current weapon's on-board computer to provide the most accurate shot to the Spartan.
What it all boils down to is each weapon is purpose designed for a specific use.
When it comes to the auto-aiming, I' have no comment as I don't believe the game was adversely affected by the auto-aim feature.
Weapons.
This is the section where you held the most fallacy and incorrect opinions. It's pretty obvious that no research was put into your section of the review concerning weapons.
Let's do some time travel here.
Gunpowder had been around since about the 1st Century AD with gunpowder-based weapons being around for only slightly less time than gunpowder. It's taken nearly a thousand years for firearms to evolve from iron tubes packed with rocks and gunpowder to the Flintlock and Wheel Lock, to paper cartridge and metal cartridge weapons. It wasn't a little more than a hundred and forty years ago that the primary weapon of choice was still fired by pouring a measure of powder down an iron tube then ramming a lead shot down after it. Shortly afterward, with the advent of the metal casing, weapons design changed rapidly. First came breach-loading rifles, then bolt-action rifles, then magazine-fed bolt-action rifles, revolving cylinder rifles, and then recoil-operated magazine-fed rifles, to the staggering amount of new mechanical firing systems invented within the past twenty years. At this point, firearms innovation has pretty much stagnated with the peak of this generation being the G36, HK417, SCAR, and Masada (ACR), which all operate off a very similar firing system. Experimental weapons like the rail gun and laser rifles are massive and require insane amounts of power to operate, much less operate properly. We are just recently able to mount rail guns and high-power lasers to vehicle platforms, and these still require support vehicles to carry power supplies and ammunition (and other fuel sources). Economically, these are the worst weapons on Earth and, even five hundred years into the future, similar weapons would be massively expensive to produce and use.
Unless there is a miracle compound found which can be used to reduce the power requirements and size of these weapons, in the 2550's, a rifle that fires a metal projectile from a gun that cycles (at that point) legacy cartridges like the 7.62 NATO, .50 AE, 20mm NATO and Double and Triple-O Buck or Rifled Slug, it's
extremely likely that "locking and loading" for Space Marines would have a very identical meaning to Marines today.
Now, consider that for the longest time (including our current history, if you will) that Humans in the Halo universe had no idea that aliens existed (as the Covenant). With humans being the primary antagonists and protagonists in conflicts at the time, there would be no real need to advance weaponry further than what was already available; the cheap and easily mass-produced cartridge-based projectile.
Not saying that some advances weren't made. For example, the SMG fires a 5x23mm Caseless FMJ round. The round itself is in the same caliber range as most common assault rifles today, as well as new SMG rounds. At this point in firearms development, the caseless round is still far off, but not too far. At the rate engineers are going, we should have a fully functional rifle that uses a caseless ammunition, fieldable by individual infantry and in mass use, within the next twenty years. Metal Storm is real and several attempts at an economical CPIR have been made within the past fifteen years, with mixed results.
On the other side of this argument is the Covenant. The covenant is not a race of aliens, but a union of mixed species, each bringing their own skills and technologies to the proverbial table to achieve the will of the prophets.
Taking the technology of each species, and adding what they've gathered from the Forerunners, it's easy to see how and why the Covenant has shields, plasma weapons, beam swords, laser rifles, and weapons that shoot crystalline shards.
Continuing on, the advancement of technology doesn't relate to the amount of fieldable weapons. At most, today's infantryman carries two weapons: a rifle and a pistol. Some may carry between one and eight grenades, depending on the mission, and may even carry a knife or hatchet for personal engagements. In most cases, the only time a soldier will carry more than one weapon would be if he was a grenadier, in which case he would have a rifle-mounted grenade launcher as well as a rifle and pistol.
When referring to the capabilities of the Spartan, the reason he didn't carry more than two weapons in Halo: Combat Evolved is because he wasn't designed to. According to Lore, however, the Spartan's Mjolnir armor only had hard points for one or two extra weapons, not including grenades or other secondary weapons. As the games advanced, as well as the armor in later games, you are able to carry more weapons and even combat support systems. But I digress.
In all practicality, have you ever tried to lug around eight weapons and ammunition for each? I have. It's impractical and generally stupid. You end up carrying your primary weapon and secondary weapon and just enough ammo to use each one for a short period of time, then you have to carry another weapon and ammo for that one. Usually, this means you're carrying a different caliber of bullet that is most likely being held in a different magazine, or even in a linked belt. Some weapons aren't exactly user-friendly, requiring a crew of two people in some cases to manage ammunition and parts. Guns and ammunition aren't light, which would have an affect on
movement. This is an important link in the trifecta that culminates in...
Level Design.
The environmental design specialists at Bungie had a very unique and important task: Build a completely new alien environment that has the ability to function in theoretical science and make it a fun, interesting, and easily navigable environment for the player to explore.
Pulling from Halopedia:
The Halo Array, Halos[1] (as they are referred to by the Covenant[2]), alternatively known as the Sacred Rings[3] by the Covenant, Fortress Worlds[4] by their creators, and Installations by the AI Monitors that run them, are seven massive ring-shaped installations constructed by the Forerunners throughout the galaxy over one hundred thousand years ago as a last resort when combating the parasite known as the Flood. When nothing else could be done, they activated the rings which killed all sentient life forms within three radii of the galactic center. Not only are they weapons of last resort, but the Halo installations are also research facilities, mainly for the study of the Flood.
Neither humans nor covenant designed and built the Halo rings. Aside from designing and building the Human and Covenant ships and environments, weapons, character models, and vehicles, the level designers also had to build these individual
ring worlds where the vast majority of the story arc of the Halo universe centered.
From research, it's discovered that the rings are later rebuilt continuously by the Forerunner's AI that have been put in a perpetual
auto pilot mode for the purposes of maintaining the Halo structures, containing the Flood, and building new rings when necessary. Consider that the original Ark and Rings were built by the Forerunners following a sort of formula that would be appealing to organics. Then figure in that after millennia of wear, the original rings were repaired and rebuilt so often that the AI created a more efficient way to design the rings and, over time, generated a copy-paste formula for building and maintaining Halo rings.
Now you're thinking with algorithms!
The current Halo rings can be seen as the result of the AI, not the Forerunners, designing them. This would explain the (hated?) misunderstood and generally (confusing?) mechanical appearance of the Library and other interior sections of the Halo rings. Out went the user-friendly organic designs with visual markings and organocentric design features we would all be familiar with, and in came the cloned hallways, walls, data ports, and maintenance corridors. Of course, the Caretakers would have made sure to include features that a Reclaimer would recognize, including the lovely upper terrain features.
Then, you have to realize that the Halo rings are weapons and inherently not designed to be pleasing to the eye. Would you put curtains, a la-z-boy and a coffee table inside an AK-47? Likely not.
From the standpoint of the level designers, vehicle, and weapon designers, there was a compromise that needed to be reached. There are about 18 different objects that the player could interact with (probably more) that had to be usable in each level (including weapons and vehicles). Each one had to be able to move through or be usable in each part of the game by the player or the AI. There would be no point in including certain weapons and vehicles if all the levels were either open fields or narrow hallways. Variety, as it comes to the Halo games, is taken up mainly by the exterior of the Halo rings.
Anyways, on to...
Multiplayer
Halo's multiplayer success is in its simplicity. Bungie discovered that you don't need all the mods and frills found in all of the other multiplayer modes for games at the time. Where console gaming was just experiencing its own renaissance, PC gaming had been around for years and had throngs of dedicated gamers devoting hours and hours of their time to modifying the games they played to "make them better".
The beauty in H:CE's multiplayer is that it was a simple set of maps and game modes that allowed a group of ten or so players to instantly drop in to a game and begin playing. No need for downloading mods, no massive change in frame rates caused by performance issues. Everyone had the same basic game and, by that, equal chances of performing well in each multiplayer round.
In your section of the review, it's obvious that you are a scalding PC gamer that's decided to nitpick what's decidedly a very basic game that started a phenomenon that has billowed into something very nearly a religion to many people. You don't like this.
A good multiplayer game doesn't need bots or background music or user-generated content to be playable. It needs functionality. The better a multiplayer segment performs, the better the gamer feels about playing it and then the game enthralls a larger and larger player base. I can nearly guarantee you, though, that the majority of the players that are playing Halo since H:CE played the single player first, then the Multiplayer. Multiplayer was never the selling point for any game until recently and Bungie knew that when they created H:CE. They pushed for story and playability and only after when the game become a massive success, did it also show that the online multiplayer community would benefit from greater levels of attention. Thus, the sequels and map packs.
Halo became a legacy game in which it actually
did have influence on many other games later on. Numerous designers have said that they have referenced
Halo: Combat Evolved when developing their games. It introduced new ways of thinking to the aspects of level design, AI creation, game physics, and environmental and story details. Games, especially first-person shooters, are becoming more like playable movies, where the player is the action hero and center of the story and the game progresses as if following a Hollywood style of scriptwriting.
