Halo: The Master Chief Collection brings together Master Chief’s four-title journey into one comprehensive package. Unfortunately, numerous bugs marred the game’s launch. These have slowly been and continue to be addressed by 343 Industries, and with each patch, the package has slowly become one worthy of being the centerpiece of one of gaming’s most popular franchises. Our review code was provided several weeks after the game was released, so this coverage reflects the state of the game not at release but after the application of several updates released prior to and during the review period that included dozens of additions, tweaks, and improvements.
Halo fans who are looking for an all-in-one set will find most of what they’re looking for here—but not quite everything. The Chief is the star of this package, so all of the series’ spin-offs and side stories, including Halo Wars, Halo: ODST, and Halo: Reach, are absent. While that’s a shame, given the unique noir-style approach taken with ODST and the polish of Reach, what’s included is fairly impressive in its own right. Halo: Anniversary Edition, Halo 2: Anniversary Edition, Halo 3, and Halo 4, as well as a rocky but gradually improving comprehensive multiplayer component, make for a substantial package that brings together some of the genre’s biggest releases.
Master Chief’s debut, Halo: Combat Evolved, is covered by a slightly enhanced version of 2011’s Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Aside from a frame-rate boost and resolution upgrade for 1080p support, multiplayer has switched from the Halo: Reach-engine-powered version of 2011 to one based on the 2001 original. A host of control-scheme options allows players to adjust the button layout to a wide variety of settings, which is helpful for those who are coming to the series used to layouts established by later first-person shooters, such as having “X” reload instead of engaging a melee attack. Another option allows for the graphics and audio to be adjusted on-the-fly between the original version and the new one, which made for a surprisingly strong distraction. The core of the gameplay, however, remains unchanged. This means that players get the traditional tight gunplay and floaty jumps, but also a significant amount of repetitive level design. It had been years since I played through the first campaign, and my time with the collection both highlighted some unique elements I hadn’t fully appreciated and reminded me of just how mind-numbing progression can become.
Several Bungie-isms stood out when Halo was first released in 2001, such as its focus on telling a grand sci-fi epic touches of humor. The story of humanity’s failing war against The Covenant and the discovery of the Halo is now much more grandiose and suitable to the graveness with which the lore is traditionally presented, with the remastered sound effects and music doing a fantastic job in portraying the scope of the struggle and otherworldliness of man’s strange new enemy from the stars. As dire as mankind’s prospects may seem, the game included some lighter notes, with the Unggoy grunts’ tendency to flee with their hands in the air being a highlight. But beyond being a funny gag, the benefit of hindsight revealed just how novel and ingenious of an idea it was to have a low-ranking unit run around in confused fear whenever their commander is killed, and especially to have them regroup once they regained their composure. This type of representation of a command structure is rarely, if ever, demonstrated on the ground level in other shooters, which I now find very odd, considering the hierarchical structure of armies. And that’s not to mention how it represents morale in a way that other shooters don’t bother to consider. Similarly, the early experiments with stealth also added an interesting variable to how one chose to progress through the levels. Not only does each room, corridor, or tower feature larger areas with numerous objects to maneuver around and use for cover, often placed at just the right spots, but in many instances, there will be sleeping grunts or patrolling elites that can be silently taken down with a melee attack. In many instances, nearly half of an area can be safely cleared before having to engage in a firefight.
However, as interesting and forward-thinking as the game can be, it also has an unfortunate tendency to repeat large chunks of sections. This happened with such frequency that I often to take breaks because it became so monotonous. I recall this formulaic pattern sticking out at the time, primarily because of an extended fight against the Flood in what appeared to be an endless four-room building; now, though, that same copy-and-paste design seemed strikingly prevalent throughout the campaign. It wasn’t just that I felt as though I was going through the same rooms, repeating the same handful of sequences (e.g., catwalk to a tower to a large room that lead to another catwalk), but enemy placement was often the exact same in each area. This cyclical formula is incredibly tiresome and stands in stark contrast to the more thoughtful elements. So from a design perspective, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is by far the weakest of the pack.
On the other side of the coin, Halo 2: Anniversary proved to be a welcomed surprise. Not only is the campaign more varied, with fewer corridors and more open spaces, but it also features a pace-altering—and at the time controversial—switcheroo element that has the player swapping between Master Chief and the Arbiter. And on top of that, the anniversary edition’s upgrades are far and away the most impressive of the set; it looks wonderful, sounds great, and features some phenomenal rendered cutscenes from Blur Studio. At the time of its release, I found Halo 2’s campaign to be somewhat underwhelming, with many of its more subtle adjustments lost on me in light of the more noticeable changes to the weaponry: aside from being able to dual wield weapons, Master Chief had his automatic machinegun replaced by a scoped-, burst-fire rifle and his pistol by a submachine gun. That may seem minor now, but at the time, replacing what were very popular weapons, and in such a combat-heavy game, was a pretty jarring change. However, Halo 2: Anniversary really brings the campaign to life. The visual upgrades do wonders in highlighting unit personalities during combat and differentiating characters during cutscenes, which were rather crude even for its time, and the remastered music adds the kind of tension and grandness that I found lacking in the original score. For those wanting to compare the experience then to now, Halo 2: Anniversary also features the same switching option that swaps audio and video between the new version and the decade-old original. Although, for all the blocky graphics and architecture, I found myself continually impressed with the scale that Bungie managed to achieve back in 2004. After swapping from the strange default inversed control scheme, I was off and running, blasting through the story with new purpose and enjoying it far more than I had.
Both anniversary editions also include terminals, a carryover from later releases. These allow players to refresh their memories about the expanded backstory by watching clips of events that flesh out what happened prior to the campaign as well as in other theaters of the war. These are helpful given how much the lore has grown over the years, and the extra background info adds a great deal of gravity to the events at hand. The reward of Achievements acts as a strong incentive to access them all, but they should be viewed regardless.
Unfortunately, both games also suffer from some lingering technical issues. Aside from the new art direction taking away from the original releases’ more gritty feel, adding much more foliage and color to what were imposing cities of utilitarian concrete structures and roadways, performance is uneven at times. A recurring bug I encountered in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary saw units and items getting stuck in mid-air, either stuttering in place or being lodged between other objects. This was typically the result of a character dying, with either their weapon or their body failing to fall onto the floor. Halo 2: Anniversary didn’t have that problem, but it did have more draw-in, with entire patches of the newly added foliage appearing to suddenly grow as I approached them. Subtitles were off in both titles as well, with missing and incorrect words, spacing errors, and un-subtitled dialog scattered throughout the campaigns. It can be difficult to hear the dialog over the bombastic score, so I was especially irked that a lot of the quick chatter was left untranscribed. Even if flawlessly produced products are becoming increasingly uncommon, I don’t think it’s too much to expect that a 13-plus-year-old game (Halo: Combat Evolved), three-year-old game (Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary), and 10-year-old game (Halo 2) run without a hitch, never mind the far more powerful hardware they are running on. And given that the game has been patched, there’s been more than enough time to address these problems.
Halo 3 and Halo 4 understandably received the least amount of upgrades. Both now support 1080p and a higher framerate, which makes a more pronounced difference in the seven-year-old Halo 3. I also found that there was a cascading effect: because I enjoyed Halo 2 so much, I was now far more interested in Halo 3, and went into it with a vigor lacking during my initial playthrough. Both campaigns benefit greatly from the addition of deployables, such as shields and turrets, and larger battlegrounds. The number of corridors and repeated segments has been drastically reduced and in their place are more expansive areas and additional vehicles, which is a refreshing change of pace and keeps combat fresh. Halo 4 is still relatively new and remains a great entry in the series, but as with Halo 2, I discovered a newfound appreciation for Halo 3.
343 Industries eked out as much gameplay as possible from each title. All of the games can be played in succession from the beginning as usual, but each mission is also unlocked and playable from the outset. For those wanting more variety, a series of playlists offers the chance to go through missions of various types per title or mixed together. For example, players can fight all of the boss fights in Halo 2 Anniversary, vehicle-only segments in Halo 3, or in confined areas in Halo 4. Per-level adjustable difficulty levels and Skull modifiers, to earn additional points by adapting to rule-changes and altering how the game is played (e.g., all enemies are cloaked, enemies have more health, every fired round removes two from the clip, etc.), also inject new life into the levels. For those wanting to test themselves against friends, a small leaderboard displays who’s on top from who’s been playing on the player’s friends list. While hardcore fans will get the most out of these supplemental features, I enjoyed running through several of the playlists after spending hours with the campaigns individually.
Playlists are used to similar effect in multiplayer. They are needed, too, in order to wrangle the number of maps included in the package. The set features every map to date, including all of those from download packs as well as a few remastered variations from Halo 2. Maps are accessible through the pre-set playlists, which specify title and game type, such as Team Slayer across several titles or only Halo: Combat Evolved, or singularly by selecting a preferred title. By creating a custom game, players can choose which of the four games they want to play maps from as well as the type of game, such as Capture the Flag or Infection. Despite being a comprehensive package, there is still some ways to go. By the time I got to try it out, literally dozens of problems had been addressed and improvements implemented, yet lingering kinks remain; the game is still missing ranked matches for all but one playlist, Spartan Ops co-op mini-scenarios from Halo 4 haven’t been added (set to be added sometime this month), and it can still take a bit to get into a match.
There have been some positive changes, however. Matchmaking has been the focus of much of the patches, and it is noticeably better. Not only have wait times been reduced, but players are now better informed as to how the search is going, are less likely to get stuck at the menu prior to a match starting, are less likely to face a lopsided game due to poor team balancing, and get more accurate pop-up text. That said, I did run into a few issues, such as being put into a game as it was ending and having teammates dropped and not replaced during a match. It’ll still take a little longer to get into a game than, say, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but it’s now a far cry from the 15-minutes-to-eternity wait that players experienced on release. While the state of multiplayer might be much better today, it is absolutely mind-boggling that the game was released in the state it was at launch.
Overall: 8/10
Halo: The Master Chief Collection is not the same game it was at release, and as a result of the post-launch support, it’s now a much better representation of the series that came to define the Xbox. The patches released prior to and during our review have done a good job addressing many of the day-one issues, but several still remain to be ironed out, including minor performance and graphical hiccups during some of the single-player campaigns as well as matchmaking hangups in multiplayer. As eager as I was to revisit the series, I’m glad I didn’t play the game at launch, because I would’ve hated to see the Chief in such a state. But at least things are getting better now, and those who’ve waited will find something more worthy of the franchise’s legacy.
(This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher.)