Halo: The Master Chief Collection (for Xbox One)

By Timothy Torres

Broken games are the new norm, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection ($59.99) is the latest in a long line of AAA foul-ups. It should have been the system-selling savior that would raise Microsoft's Xbox One to the same height as Sony's PlayStation 4. Instead, this Xbox One exclusive titleis a rushed, unfinished, and buggy mess with a barely working multiplayer mode that's made continually worse by developer 343 Industries' attempts to patch it. This isa shame since Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 (now with its own spiffy Anniversary Edition), Halo 3, and Halo 4 are just as good as you remember. Halo: Master Chief Collection is a smorgasbord of classic first-person-shooters, and a real bargain...when it works. This review focuses on Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2's drastic enhancements; Halo 3 and Halo 4, which arelast-gen games, didn't needmany tweaksmore to bring them up to contemporary standards.

Halo: Combat Evolved Is Still RelevantThe individual Halo games hold up really well. The first Halo, especially, is so well-designed that it is well worth revisiting or playing for the first time. Some of the copy-and-paste level design is as bland as it was 13 years ago (oh, the Library), but the core gameplay loop of shooting, grenading, and switching binary weapons feels as fantastic today as it did then. There are some weird additions to this edition I could do without, like random terminals placed around the world that bring you to the Xbox App store to download the Halo Channel, which is related to the Halo: Nightfall streaming TV series. But other than that, Halo: Combat Evolved (as the first Halo is now called) is still an excellent experience.

Halo 2 Is the CenterpieceHalo 2's Anniversary Edition is the Master Chief Collection's pice de rsistance. 343 Industries added new character models, textures, and lighting to upgradeBungie's venerable sequel to makeit a visual match for the better-looking games in the series.

All of Halo 2's cut scenes have beenredone, and they are gorgeous and well-directed. To get a sense for how much has changed over the years, you can switch between the new scenes and the old-school in-game engine scenes at any time. Unfortunately, there's a big audio delay if you do. You can also switch between the new paint job and the original graphics while playing, and it'sstartling to see how far graphics have come in little over a decade. The original Halo 2 looks quaint, but its gameplay, which introduced dual-wielding, a powerful energy sword, and online multiplayer to the series, is just as good as many contemporary shooters.

However, Halo 2 Anniversary doesn't play at1080p. Though the game maintains 60 frames per second, it uses a lower 1,328 by 1,080 resolution. It is an obvious difference compared to the other games, which all run at 1,920 by 1,080p and 60fps. It's easy to tell because Halo 2's HUD looks a little squeezed in too close to the edges of the picture. Apparently, this downsizing is a necessary compromise to allow for the seamless switching between the old and new engines.

Collection OptionsThe menu for choosing the games and their various options is clean and easy to navigate. You can easily customize your controls with a variety of preset configurations, and you can access multiplayer from the get-go. There are tons of avatars, nameplates, and clan tags to unlock as you play the games, and you can check your campaign and multiplayer stats to see how many matches you've played, the number of assists and headshots you've allotted, etc. There are global and friends-only leaderboards, too.

Then there are the cross-game playlists. These are preconfigured assortments of missions culled from the various games. If you wanted to only play the Arbiter's missions from Halo 2 and ignore Master Chief's side of the story, now you can. If you only want to play the missions that take place in open spaces or tight corridors, you're free to do that, too. But you can't play multiple playlists at the same time. If you begin one and start another without finishing, you have to overwrite the first. This is a bummer if you choose to play the entire 45-mission Master Chief Saga that encompasses all four games, take a break, then decide to try out another, like the Final Four, which groups up the final missions of all four games into one super-climactic romp. Maybe multiple save files for playlists willcome in another patch.

Bugs and Multiplayer MishapsI've mentioned patches a few times because 343 Industries is patch-happy. 343 released a massive 20GB day-one patch, because there wasn't enough room on the game's 45GB Blu-ray disc. That act should've been the dead giveaway that the collection would be laced with problems.

So what is 343 fixing? According to the official patch note, a hell of a lot. After looking at the list, it's a wonder this collection shipped at all. Personally, I even after installing the patch, I ran into some bizarre audio issues while playing, like sound effects lasting way longer than they should. The distinct hum of the Covenant Plasma Pistol continued long after I stopped firing it in Halo 3. Additionally, Halo 3's sound effects are way too loud. At the same volume, Halo 2's sound is much lower, so there is definitely still an issue with the sound mixing. Besides the occasional frame skips, I didn't experience anything else too earth-shattering playing the campaign missions, though the exhaustive patch notes and reports of numerous issues like input lag during campaign co-op and Halo 3 and Halo 4 not even starting for some users is proof enough that this collection of old games was nowhere near ready.

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Halo: The Master Chief Collection (for Xbox One)