It’s crazy to think back to when the first hints were dropped about this game’s development. Or should I say, leaks. The voice of Master Chief himself, Steve Downes, was conducting an interview with GameZone this past February. When asked about his involvement with the assumed Halo 5, he said we shouldn’t look for a new chapter in the Reclaimer Saga until 2015, but could look forward to a re-release of Halo 2. This train of thought made sense. 343 Industries had already release a remastered version of CE with Combat Evolved Anniversary in 2011, ten years after it being the featured launch title for the Xbox, Microsoft’s first foray into the world of home video game consoles. CEA was met with generally positive comments and scores from pundits and fans alike . Naturally, this would give mandate to 343 that Halo followers everywhere would eat up a Halo 2 Anniversary, with updated graphics for the campaign and maybe, possibly, perhaps, a way to play Halo 2 over Xbox LIVE again. So, heading into E3 ’14, hype buzzed uncontrollably about 343 either officially acknowledging the existence of said H2A or would put the rumor to rest with a “no-show.” But when matriarch and patriarch of the company Bonnie Ross and Dan Ayoube took the stage to address the audience and the world, I think it’s safe to say most were surprised what was slated to be released on November 11. Halo: The Master Chief Collection would feature all campaigns for the numbered Halo releases, 1080p/60fps for all games* (H2A runs at a slightly lower 1328×1080), Halo 2 getting the remastered treatment with updated cutscenes, and every conceivable piece of multiplayer content, all playable over LIVE with the original engines on dedicated servers. Needless to say, Mr. Downes revealed just the tip of the sci-fi FPS iceberg as Xbox One owners would be getting way more than initially “leaked.” So now we’re here, in a post MCC release world. How is it? In short: amazing. But please, allow me to elaborate…
The real “hot ticket” installment in this release is Halo 2 Anniversary. The sequel that came to solidify an IPs place as the defining 1st party franchise for the Xbox brand. Maybe more importantly, it made Xbox LIVE the envy of anyone interested in playing online during that console generation. Not to be completely overlooked, however, is a very good campaign. Because the LIVE service was not operational at launch, CE‘s legacy rests on single player/co-op with MP LAN support a close second. Instead of resting on the fact that online play would be a boon for H2 and would sell millions of copies regardless, Bungie still made sure the “Chief’s story” was just as action packed and fun in ’04 as it was in ’01.
Employing the same ebb and flow to engagement as CE (linear point A to point B advancement in mostly CQC situations with a handful of strategically spawned Covenant or huge pockets of heavy resistance with dozens of combatants in wide open areas), H2 put a stronger emphasis on intensity during fire fights. Betting that many players would be seasoned campaign vets and may even play through in co-op, enemy AI is more ruthless and pushes more when you’re attempting to recollect ammo and regain shields. There is also a new Covie foe in the form of Brutes. In terms of size, they’re only outdone by the gestalt Hunters, but are way more agile and usually appear in larger numbers. The same hyper ruthlessness applies to The Flood. Their closing speed to land melee attacks seems faster, their “collective consciousness” lends to smarter fighting, and the ones that have weapons take longer, more accurate shots. While their appearance is less numerous in H2 than CE, their effect is no less important to the pacing of the campaign. In case there are folks reading this review that may have never played through the first two campaigns, which given their age is possible, I won’t divulge any real plot points. Just know the events of the first game weren’t enough for the alien scum to back down from their opposition to humanity, which means Chief must apply more boot to the rear end of hundreds more bad guys.
The gameplay mechanics seem as strong as ever, despite me not playing the H2 campaign in several years. As can be the case with many re-releases of even the most heralded of games, things might feel “dated.” The more influential, ground breaking, and innovating a title is, the worst the effect can be in lieu of many games following in its design footsteps and running those principles into the ground. But for whatever reason, playing this, as well as the other three “story modes,” didn’t share in that curse. The CE campaign is truly iconic, in large part because of the way it makes the familiar uncanny in the latter stages. For those that remember the missions, think about it. Several of the ten missions take place in the same area as a prior chapter. The Pillar of Autumn, Truth and Reconciliation, and Assault on the Control Room share the same basic level design as The Maw, Keyes, and Two Betrayals. While playing, you instinctively “know” the place is familiar, but it takes on such a different complexion the second time around that you get a real uneasy feeling about the return visit. And, of course, the stakes are higher and the game is now more difficult. Halo 3 and Halo 4 are the newer kids on the block with them being released on the 360. Playing stages in each, the tactile maturity of the games comes to light.
My main concern as a fan of these games was how they would play on the Xbox One controller. Full disclosure: I prefer the 360 pad to the One’s input device. I think the trigger construction is more effective for shooters and the thumbsticks are leagues better. However, none of these games feel clunky or awkward to play, which is a huge relief. The new controller’s construction doesn’t get in the way of any mechanics, and allows the four entries to display their own flavor of “feel.” CE still has that “heaviness,” even at 60 frames. Chief has a lot less bounce to his step compared to the later releases, melee attacks have more oomph, and shooting an AR at close range seems way more decisively dangerous than the H3 and H4 models. I could go on, but the examples are to illustrate that the relationship between each game’s engine and control programming will strap you into the seat of a proverbial time machine to a place where it’s likely your chosen “power position” was sitting Indian style, with your face mere inches away from a hulking CRT television acting as a glowing beacon of light in an otherwise pitch dark house or apartment. In the same proportion, the lightening and “free-ing up” of the gameplay design can be felt in H2A. The first time I hit jump, I about fell off the map because of how much higher the leap had gotten and how much further Chief could float forward. There’s also a tightening up in combat. With MP being such a huge factor, the aiming mechanics needed to gel a little more. Some of this may be attributed to more articulately programmed aiming assists like friction, but nonetheless, midrange engagement became much more prominent after CE, and the design of subsequent entries reflects this shift.
Speaking of controls, MCC has several thumbstick configurations and button layouts to chose from. All of the unique configs from each game are available, as well as a few “Universal” settings for when button mapping doesn’t quite work from title to title. Since H3, I’ve played Bumper Jumper. But because this wasn’t around for the first two Halo games in lieu of the original Xbox controller’s infamous black and white face buttons, a true one-to-one assignment is impossible. So instead of having to assign Jumper proper and losing functionality, the Universal Bump and Jump selection intelligently moves some things around to make it palatable for all four games and all modes. It’s these little details, littered in all facets of MCC, that signals serious time and effort by 343, Certain Affinity, and others was put into this collection and wasn’t treated like some underdeveloped port just to milk the 1st party cash cow.
No more is that effect evident than in the presentation department. After playing MCC for several hours, I can definitely say my favorite aspect of replaying the campaigns is seeing and hearing how astronomically better everything looks and sounds. It is absolutely astounding. To clarify, the 2011 Anniversary edition of Combat Evolved is included in MCC, so you’ll be able to do the in-game graphical swap for CEA and H2A by pressing the View (Select/Back) button. And with the power of the One hardware, the switch is instant. And man oh man is it staggering. The work 343 and Saber Interactive did on CEA for the 360 in 2011 was impressive then and is a little more so now with things running at full 1080 and 60fps. Going back and forth between old and new on a stage like Guilty Spark is eye opening to how far the capabilities of in-game design have advanced in terms of details, textures, draw distances, and dynamics. And this effect can be seen throughout CEA. But for some reason, the work done on H2A in this respect is noticeably better. It truly looks like a completely different game. All major pieces and backdrops have been thoroughly enhanced and retouched. The level Delta Halo is a great example. The portions where Chief is behind the six pedals of a Scorpion tank are jaw dropping. In 2004, the walls of ancient alien temples were a murky brown with limited patterns and some 2D foliage. The 2014 version of the same catacombs feature varied colorations and environment uniqueness with dynamic lighting and shadows. I probably spent a good three minutes with the tank halted, hitting the View button tens of times while slowly moving the right stick around so that a new piece of the level would show up on screen. And while the environments look great, they might be overshadowed by the increased character model detail. All participants, enemies and UNSC friendlies alike, are painstakingly developed. The look of an Elite’s armor is epic and threatening. The follicle movement of Brute fur seems more true to form to real life animals with comparable hair. Again, this is yet another list I could exhaust for a paragraph or more, but when you inevitably tap View to get the “then and now” effect, you’ll see what I’m talking about. If we’re ranking the look of each game at its best, H2A and Halo 4 are definitely the prettiest, as H4 looks close to being purpose built to take full advantage of the Xbox One hardware. It doesn’t have that harsh “edge” that the original release had on the 360. It’s much more buffed out and smooth. This isn’t to say that CEA and H3 look bad, they don’t. They look better than they ever have thanks to the resolution and frame rate bump. But the aforementioned two are ever so slightly ahead of them.
You’ll also hear big differences. Another iconic aspect of Halo has always been the soundtrack. Marty O’ Donnell and Michael Salvatori have as much to do with the brand being instantly recognizable by its presentation as anyone, and their contribution to affirming the epic nature of the series cannot be understated. The Anniversary edition of the Halo 2 soundtrack is a great “retelling” of its elements. Doing the aforementioned graphical swap also switches audio tracks, including the music. This portion of the remaster was handled by 343 audio designers Paul Lipson, Lennie Moore, Brian Trifton, Tom Salta, and Brian Lee White, along with engineers at Skywalker Sound. They re-recorded the original composition with the San Francisco Symphony and multiple choir groups. For a fan, I can totally understand a feeling of hesitation. I mean, how often is a cover better than the original? Almost never. But the work done on this set is more of an appreciation. No major aspects of any track have been changed, it’s just been infused with more, well, everything. The H2A soundtrack is more boisterous, more driving, and believe it or not, more emotional. Along with the music, weapon sounds are reborn as well. The clack of an SMG has lost that chintzy/tinny quality and has been replaced with a disrupting whirl of bullet fodder. The sniper is super loud and bass-y. The sword crackles with a hair raising static treble. Every weapon has had some sort of re-imagining, which heightens the tension of fire fights all the more. Aside from great gameplay, the series has always featured an interesting (albeit somewhat cryptic) story.
To tell major plot points, non-playable cutscenes have been the prescribed narrative solution. Of course, we’re starting to see a recent trend of games going away from pre-rendered because of the increase in verisimilitude and immersion that can be had from the player needing to be ready to get back on the controller at any moment. But for epic scripts, such as the ones in MCC, the short breaks between levels make sense. To that, H2A‘s cutscenes got completely redone by Blur Studios, a CGI outfit in Venice, California known for Academy Award nominated work. For the sake of brevity, I’ll leave it at this: these are the best pre-rendered cutscenes I’ve ever seen in a game, and it’s not close. All AAA games with pre-renders should feature Blur’s work. After playing through the entire H2A campaign, I can’t wait to do it again in co-op just to re-watch that movie.
If you plan on grinding out the campaigns, try killing multiple achievement birds with fewer stones and give Playlist a go. This MCC innovation lines up campaign sections within each entry, or across multiple games in logical groupings. Predictably, many of them are of beginning-to-end ilk, like the LASO campaign playlists, which have you attempt each game on Legendary difficulty with all Skulls (gameplay altering adjustments) turned on. The more interesting ones are those that feature stages from multiple games, like Flooded, which is all of the levels where the infestation is most prominent. My favorite might be Epic Battles, which chooses the biggest heavy engagement chapter from each installment in a four part act of attrition! This also makes it easier to see the similarities and differences amongst CEA, H2A, H3, and H4‘s campaigns. Within each, there are moments that call for temerity and those that demand heightened caution. But for the most part, you’ll need to survey each checkpoint’s battlefield layout (enemy types, vehicles, elevation changes, reliable cover, ect.) and go about vanquishing the Covenant/Flood/Prometheans at an aggressively deliberate pace. Whether that be in solo runs or co-op sessions.
The second half of MCC is, by all accounts, its most anticipated. As stated previously, the lasting effect Halo 2 had over the FPS genre, and console gaming as a whole, was online play. This landmark system goes beyond the great “arena-ish” style and matched loadout conventions alone. It was the way it defined the persistent lobby theory. The way a handful of Xbox LIVE friends could get together in the same sustained list of players between customs games and matchmaking. The ubiquitous nature of keeping everyone together for the entirety of an online session made it easy to settle into just playing the game and not having to struggle and fight with shoddy lobby management. Of course, such a great system would have been null and void without very fun and addictive maps and match types. By the time all the downloadable packs had been released, a wide arrange of varying map designs, sizes, and symmetries had been concocted. Sterling 4v4 selections like Lockout and Midship worked just as well as Ivory Tower did for FFA (or Rumble Pit). Big Team Battle games (6-8 v 6-8) on sprawling, vehicle laden palaces like Coagulation are easy to point to as the prescribed way to handle more that 10 players in the same match. But choices like Colossus and Headlong proved that with intelligent landmarks, scalability, building construction, power weapon spawns, and variable footpaths, that even a place considerably smaller still has plenty of character and options to handle larger player counts. Two gentleman of note that led the charge in designing the maps are Halo 2 lead MP designer, and now president of design studio Certain Affinity Max Hoberman and cohort Chris Carney. While listening to interviews featuring Mr. Hoberman these past several months about MCC, Mr. Carney’s name came up more times than not when a question was asked about the most popular locations in H2. So, everything was there: a solid lobby structure, great gameplay, tight Slayer and objective mechanics, all taking place on some of the best maps ever created for a console shooter. So, what does that leave for an encore?
As stated previously, all the maps in each game’s history are available to play. And that on-the-fly “sandbox” engine swap also applies to multiplayer. The map selected in customs and matchmaking sets up the match with that game’s mechanics. So, if a BTB game on Blood Gulch gets voted up, expect “three shoot death pistol” from across the map with a degenerative health system, meaning you’ll have health “bars” along with the patented rechargeable shield that can only be replenished by finding a medpack. Team BRs on a classic H2 map like Foundation shows off the much lighter version of Spartan (and selectable Elite) physics as well as dual wielding, increased “splash” radius from grenades and rockets, and lower melee damage. A classic H3 variant from the once much populated Social Slayer playlist is Shotty Snipers on High Ground. This displays the 360’s first Halo title in a good light: Halo 2‘s backbone with slightly faster movement speed and updated graphics. To be fair, High Ground isn’t that great of a design. The team that spawns beach is at a stark disadvantage from those that spawn in the base at the top of the hill. The beauty about this particular weapon set is that the beach team had two equalizers. For base teams that try to camp, they could be counter sniped by anyone downhill. If they try to use their elevation advantage and “push out” too aggressively, they’d eat buckshot to the face by a beach spawner in better position. While its direct predecessor is usually assigned the obligatory “best in the series” label, Halo 3 was an extremely good follow up and held a large segment of players for quite some time on Xbox LIVE. And as with CEA and H2A, it looks/sounds/feels like the same game today in MCC as it did in 2007. Fast forward to ’12, we arrive at Halo 4. Borrowing some conventions from Bungie’s last entry, Reach, like Armor Abilities, H4 also added the option to set custom loadouts and use them in matches with the “Infinity” brand attached to them. Because of this, H4‘s MP leans heavily to midrange gun battles. Whether it’s Big Team CTF on Longbow, SWAT on Adrift, or Haven FFA, expect BRs and DMRs a plenty. I know Halo 4 had a tough time carving out its own place within the fan base, which can probably be attributed in large to 343 installing some “progressive” FPS conventions of the past few years like unique starting weapons/equipment and movement abilities such as sprint. But I would argue the shooting mechanics are just as strong as any game in the franchise to this point, as 1v1 exchanges of bullets still rely on sustained accuracy over the course of several seconds and crafty strafing techniques to make the difference between fragging and getting fragged.
Amongst all this greatly preserved and much appreciated playable nostalgia, MCC also gives us a little remastering on the MP side as well. Six Halo 2 maps were chosen to feature wholly new graphics, slightly tweaked features, and a completely new gameplay engine built just for this batch. Coagulation, Lockout, Sanctuary, Zanzibar, Warlock, and Ascension have been remixed into Bloodline, Lockdown, Shrine, Stonetown, Warlord, and Zenith, respectively. The aspects that didn’t change are the ones that make each map balanced and display good game “tempo,” namely large constructions and weapon spawns. Lockout fans have no fear, Lockdown is going to play the same as it did ten years ago, in principle. Control of the BR tower still affords that team a huge advantage as the top, or “BR 3,” is still the highest point. To counter, the top of the gravity lift and top snipe have good cover spots to put pressure on those trying to camp BR 3. What has changed, as with many others on this list, is some areas are now easier to traverse. Take the lift structure, for instance. There is now a little escape chute along the right side which leads straight down to the 90 degree elbow known as snipe bridge. The bridge itself is also bigger, with a small respite of cover in order to get to players counter-camping snipe side base. Zenith is a very fun asymmetrical map, but a lot of the features are larger in scale than most objects in Halo MP maps. The overshield bridge, for instance, has a really long footpath. In the Ascension days, getting from ovie bridge to top mid required a skill jump. Now, there’s a little extension that can be easily hopped on that leads right to the dish. The overall graphical package of the chosen six is quite impressive. No where is this more applicable than Bloodline. The layout is unmistakable and plays much the same as Coag did/does. This is where the similarities end. Canyon walls are way more interesting with a plethora of new details. Each base features a lot of “character” and has a more eroded look. And the ground foliage is a huge improvement over flat sections of varying green and brown shades. To go along with the new digs, you’ll also have some gameplay tweaks to get used to. The pace on the H2A maps is all its own. Not as slow as classic H2, but also not a quick as 3 and 4. And while all games benefit from the 60 frame refresh rate, the effect on the Anniversary set is way more noticeable. Some guns, like the sniper, have slight reticle blooms, but nothing as overbearing as the ones found in Reach. It’s kind of hard to explain, and with many more matches I could probably extrapolate better. But during play, it’s easy to notice things are definitely a bit different.
Unfortunately, about 85% of my multiplayer assessment has had to come from custom games. Of which, though, work great most of the time and is a great way to get that feeling of trash talking your friends back like we used to before broadband was as plentiful as cable television. Since release on Tuesday, MCC has been plagued with matchmaking and lobby issues. For the first 36 hours or so, I would average 1.5 matches per hour. This number should have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5. The wait times have gotten better to some extent, with subsequent server side tweaks and a content update. But it’s still hit or miss. Last night, my friends and I went on a streak of about three to four games with only a minute or two wait time from the end of one to the start of the next. As soon as midnight hit in our Eastern time zone, the Team Slayer game search came to a grinding halt. Couple this with the fact that the TS playlist was the only one that seemed to be finding matches, and our intended session time got cut short. Additionally, the uneven teams and splitting up of parties is still happening at an unacceptable clip. Of the eight or so matches we got last night, the three of us were on the same team less than half the time. And as bad as the matchmaking flubs have been, I would argue the party/lobby breakdowns are more disappointing. That awesome system created for Halo 2 a decade ago to get and keep people connected is so buggy right now that we are having to join up again after each game. And many times, the UI hits errors and won’t allow us to join up again for one reason or another. All of these frustrations with the portions of MP that are said to be on dedicated servers really detracts from the times that things do go well. When we are all able to get in the same lobby, in the same match, on the same team, in a reasonable amount of time, and put on even teams, the online multiplayer experience becomes the best that can currently be had on the Xbox One. Trouble is, that “perfect” matchmaking scenario is happening less than a quarter of the time. As a fan, I have confidence that 343 and Microsoft will iron these issues out in the next several days, and all of this will be past us. But as a reviewer that has to take on the mantle of objectivity, this does hurt the value of the game quite a bit. I’m not willing to call MCC a complete wash, because all other main aspects of the title work very well almost every time. But matchmaking is arguably the most heralded and anticipated portion, and for it to be having the most problems is a real shame.
