Honestly when I got an Xbox, I think around 2002 and got Halo CE with it..

I really did not find the game amazing.. 

I finished the game did not had any idea what was going on..

Spoilers:

Their were only two levels I enjoyed...The second one were you go out of the crashed pod and need to find other survivors of the pillar of Autumn...And the one where you get dropped on a Island and can drive whole around it. But the rest were most of the time annoying and boring. The first level of the flood...So horrible....I remember I could not find the way out and had a hard time finding it;..and also the other level were you have to follow spark in the installation and continue got attacked by the flood...

Their was really a lot of copypasting going on....They easily could make those levels shorter but then the singleplayer would probably only last for four hours I guess.

Story wise I still think Bungie fail...Their are so many questions and things going on that makes no sense..

For example SGT. Johnson....You see a vid in Halo Ce where he gets attacked by the flood...Did he survive no idea;...Then at the end of the game you know you are the only one left and an pelican...But that pelican crash in the last level so you escape halo with an other ship ...then you can assume you are the only one left.  and johnson probably died....Surviving the flood and surviving the destruction of the Halo ring no way..

Probably when they were making Halo 2 Bungie did not expect that Johnson would be that popular and brought him back;...But instead of giving a good explanation how he survived they just put him in the game and you may wonder;..Really makes sense that you hear you were the only one left in Halo Ce and then you play Halo 2 and one of the first persons who say hi is Johnson...Yeah makes sense..

If really Bungie cared about the story they should have done it different example:
You know that their were Covenant  on Halo who survived, they should have captured Johnson (covenant would do that to find the location of earth) and when playing through Halo 2 their should have been a level where you find  a prisoner that ends up to be Johnson;.;(Could be an emotional moment if doing it right). 

Nah if you only played the Halo games I really don't see how you can like the story;..At his best it is B-movie material, but serious I think Bungie thought...'The Halo fans don't want a good story they want fun gameplay'... 

But if you read the books like Halo the fall of Reach...Then yes the Halo Unverse is amazing..;And in fact when I read the book and played Halo CE again I loved it....And so I end up with around 10 figurines of Halo, 7 books and 5-6  halo comic series but that is not thx to Bungie but thx to guys as Eric Nylund.