Halo is an old and beloved franchise who’s greatest strength was likely its multiplayer. While a multiplayer community exists online through lobbies, match-making seems to be dead to me. One could probably write entire books about Halos multiplayer design, history and impact. However, I will only focus on the campaign which I played through solo.
The master chief collection contains 6 halo games: Halo CE (1), Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Halo Reach and Halo 4. The visuals and audio of Halo 1 and 2 includes both original and remastered versions, while the rest include only original visuals and audio.
Every halo game uses the same core game-loop: Shot, move, shot, pick up ammo or a new weapon, shot, move and repeat. The primary challenge of the game loop focuses on movement and game-knowledge. You need to position in such a way that you are behind cover, and also have access to enough ammunition. It is a reasonably simple game-loop, but it is executed very well. The shooting mechanics themselves are less important than positioning, and if you are looking for a game that does shooting well I would say only Halo 4 is up to the expected standard of modern shooters, the rest of the games are passable, but shooting mechanics are not their focus.
In addition to the first person shooter sections the games also contains vehicle sections; these sections uses the mouse to control the vehicle driving direction, instead of using the keyboard as is normal on PC. This means that you cannot watch or aim any other place than forward if you are in a vehicle. The vehicles themselves are for the most part pretty basic and simple in their gameplay. The vehicles remain very similar from Halo 1 to Halo 4. I found these sections to be very uninteresting, and I think they mostly exist to enable a power fantasy and give the player a sense of power. The problem for me is that the visuals and gameplay elements are aged sufficient that I see through the illusion immediately.
The narrative and stories are mediocre at best, and bad at worst. I am actually quite shocked at how bad the developers are at using the existing lore to tell a story. The Halo universe does not only contain games, but also contains many books. The games assumes that you know the halo lore and history before you play the games in order for it to make sense. I have not, and the narratives are a disjointed mess that feels like they have plot-holes the size of planets.
There are a few of ways to play Halo. The first way is to play at a high difficulty alone when you want to play a game that focuses on positioning correctly. The second way is to play co-op with a friend and just have something to do while you hang-out. The third way is to play the game due to historic, nostalgic and game design reasons. If you don’t want to play Halo in any of these ways, or for any of these reasons I would suggest not playing the game as they do not have a lot to offer. Halo is NOT a precision shooter or a fast paced arena shooter. It is a shooter about careful positioning and spacial awareness.
I am very aware that I will miss details and nuances to the gameplay and AI behaviour of the games. However, I do not believe that this changes my overall opinion of the games significantly. These reviews or even the critique is not concerned with the detailed implementation of these systems, but rather the overarching design.
Halo CE (Halo 1) Anniversary Edition (Played with updated graphics and sounds)
Halo CE was released in 2001, and is the first game in the Halo franchise. You feel that age in the UI design, the gameplay and technical implementation. The game is not very long at about 6 hours, and yet it lasts twice as long as it should have. It re-uses assets and levels to a large extent. The level are not very good, and can be very confusing and easy to get lost in.
The first person shooter aspect of the game allows you to use a handful of weapons and a couple of types of grenades. The shooting mechanics are extremely basic which boils down to point gun at enemy and empty magazine at them and repeat. Then you pick up a new weapon when you run out of ammo. The gameplay in Halo CE is nothing special today, and is no reason to play the game. The gameplay is in my opinion the worst amongst the games included in the collection.
Yet, the narrative in Halo CE is probably among the best in the collection. The story is pretty simple and short, but makes somewhat sense. It is not a reason to play the game, but considering the travesty that is the narrative of the other games, the narrative of Halo 1 seems functional at the very least.
The sound design surprised me pleasantly in Halo CE, and is probably the best sound design of any of the games in the collection. The weapons sounds great with crisp reload and firing sounds. The enemy and friendly soldier’s voice-acting is decent with some good voice-lines. The ambient sound and soundtracks is however what makes the sound design stand out, it is very well put together. The soundtrack amplifies the narrative significantly, and makes some of the sections in Halo CE some of the most memorable in the entire collection for me.
Halo CE lacks gameplay elements sorely, but the narrative execution is at the very least cohesive, and the sound design is great. This game felt like a prologue when I played it, but the next games in the series never delivers on what is built up, and as such I feel like the entire narrative experience falls away to nothing. The game is fine if you just want to shoot at stuff brainlessly for a few hours, but there is no real substance to offer in Halo CE apart from history and nostalgia. This is of course to be expected of a game that is 23 years old.
Halo 2 Anniversary Edition (played with updated graphics and sounds)
Halo 2 (2004) is a massive upgrade in almost every sense from Halo CE. The game’s combat is significantly better and more complex. The visuals are a vast improvement, and especially the cut-scenes. The narrative is better told and executed, albeit it still has massive flaws. Halo 2 (Anniversary Edition) is easily the best game in the master chief collection.
Halo 2 is the game where the gameplay goes from a repetitive slog to excellent and varied. You have access to more weapons and weapons with a higher accuracy. You also get to dual wield certain weapons that adds a lot of impact and heightens the importance of positioning even more. While the combat is good, it lacks the possibility to precision shot with any weapon and an impactful recoil. Both of these things are in my opinion required to create a good shooting experience. When your opponent is outside your weapons effective range you have to pray that the spread RNG is good instead of tap firing for a single accurate shot. The core gameplay loop is still excellent, and focuses on movement and game-knowledge above shooting mechanics. Halo 2 adds a significant amount to the gameplay loop introduced by Halo CE.
The overall graphical fidelity is improved to a significant degree when compared to Halo 1 Anniversary Edition. The overall visuals are a vast improvement and sells the world to a much greater extent. The audio is pretty good, but I had an issue where it seemed to be muffled and poorly mixed before it magically fixed itself. I could not replicate this sound issue, but it did sour my initial experience significantly.
If there is one thing that stands out in Halo 2 it is its cut-scenes and the scenes leading up to and following them. These cut-scenes are of a high quality, and is what I am remembering after finishing the entire collection. While the narrative never goes beyond basic and fine, the cut-scenes are very good. They makes me feel genuine sadness that the series never manage to utilise the world and lore they have access to properly.
Halo 3 (2007)
I have a lot of good memories playing this game as a teen, however I think the game is a significant downgrade compared to Halo 2; I don’t think the campaign in Halo 3 has aged well. There are two primary reasons for this, the first reason is that Halo 3 executes its narrative extremely poorly and completely fails to end the story in a satisfying manner. The second reason is that Halo 3 uses many more vehicle sections in its campaign compared to Halo 2.
The presentation of Halo 3 is worse than Halo 2 Anniversary Edition, and while that is not surprising it is an important difference when the gameplay is so very similar. The presentation of Halo 3 does what it needs to do, but nothing more either.
Halo 3 fumbles its narrative execution. It has a decent idea and concept, but it is incomprehensibly poorly executed. The entire plot feels like an excuse to go from point to point while shooting stuff. The story is executed so poorly that I end up being angry at how badly it is done, which pulls me out of the gameplay loop. The story is actively making the gameplay worse. Having a story that would just have you press buttons at different locations for no reason would have been preferable to the disaster that is Halo 3’s story.
Halo 3 uses a lot of vehicle sections, both where you have a vehicle and where you are on foot and have to kill vehicles. Vehicles are with the exception of the narration Halo’s worst aspect. They have not aged or been ported well, and are overall dull, uninteresting and more often than not frustrating at higher difficulties. These sections were really cool back in the day, and I have good memories of them, but today they are not good anymore. They lack the complexity to make the gameplay interesting, and they lack the presentation and narrative punch to make the power fantasy compelling. This significant focus on vehicles is what kills my enjoyment, and drags the game heavily down alongside its awful narrative.
What Halo 3 does better than its predecessor is its level design and sequences without vehicles. Halo 3’s level design is probably the best in the collection and the levels offera lot of flexibility in how you approach them. It is a shame that there were so few pure shooting levels, and so many vehicle sections.
Halo 3: ODST (2009)
Halo 3: ODST is my least favourite Halo game in the collection. When you take damage your screen will tint a reddish colour and black lines will streak across it. The way that recoil is implemented in the game is jarring as well. The entire experience is ruined by these awful visual elements.
The game introduces recoil, but it does it in a way that uses a camera that moves significantly up and down that feels very jarring. The recoil on the scorpion tank is for example ridiculous as your entire screen instantly snaps a couple of degrees upwards. It is not good for my motion sickness at all. The game also removes the ability to dual wield, which sucks from a gameplay standpoint.
Halo 3: ODST uses the story told in Halo 3 as a backdrop for its own narrative. You focus on a squad of humans alongside their own story. The narrative is forgettable, but functional unlike Halo 3. The visuals are similar to Halo 3, but the level design is not as good.
Overall I think the game adds a lot of visual garbage to the experience while removing gameplay elements that would have made the game better. The narrative and presentation are functional, but is no reason to play the game. The developers tries to tell a different kind of story, but they forget that they don’t know how to tell a good story. This different focus comes at the cost of gameplay, which makes the game overall worse than its predecessors.
Halo Reach (2010)
Halo Reach uses a lot of vehicles in an attempt to create a power fantasy. This might very well have worked when the game released, however as the time has passed the vehicles feel flat and boring for the most part. The overall focus on vehicles makes the game more tedious and boring than what it should have been, and is one of the major weaknesses of the game.
The first person shooting gameplay is as in every other Halo game good, albeit the level design is not as good as Halo 3. The shooting mechanics are an improvement over the previous games with proper recoil and the ability to burst fire for high accuracy on certain weapons. However the raw shooting mechanics are still not up to the standard of modern shooters.
The story follows a Spartan squad that does not include master chief. It tells the story of the fall of reach, in other words the prologue to Halo CE. This could have been an excellent opportunity to add lore and world building to the Halo franchises through a game, but the game fails at adding any depth to the Halo universe. The story is coherent, and better than Halo 3, but you don’t care about the narrative to a significant extent.
My overall impression of Halo Reach is that it is the most average of all of the games in this collection. It does nothing well, but nothing bad either, everything is just average and generic.
Halo 4 (2012)
Halo 4 is the first game in the master chief collection that has shooting mechanics I would classify as modern, and is a large improvement over the previous games in this aspect. The game’s level design is not as good as the previous titles, but the overall gameplay loop is still great most of the time. Halo 4 uses far less vehicle sections, and the vehicle sections the game includes are much better than previous games.
Halo 4 has among the best visuals and audio of any of the games in the master chief collection. The game has some spectacular sequences that looks great.
The major problem of Halo 4 is its narrative, which is somehow worse than Halo 3. The typical problems that haunt Halo’s narratives are very much present here. The game is awful at setting up its protagonist and background. The game has several sequences where it is void of all logic, and it is so obvious that the only reason that stuff happens is because it looks cool. The overall story is badly executed, and it does not even have a very good concept or idea unlike the previous Halo games. Having said this, there are a few cool moments in the story. The overall narrative is a disaster which actively pulls me out of the gameplay.
Halo 4 is still worth playing through as the gameplay is solid, but you need to completely ignore the narrative in order to enjoy the game.
Overview
I am happy to have played through the Halo series as I have played a fair bit of them with friends when I was younger. I liked getting the complete story and experience of Halo, and I liked getting to know the games as a piece of gaming history.
If you have not played Halo before, I would argue that Halo 2 gives a very good overview and sense of what Halo is. It is by a pretty large margin the best game in the master chief collection. Halo 4 is a competent shooting game, that is fun from a gameplay perspective, but sucks from a story perspective. The other games are not bad, but they are note-ably worse than Halo 2 and 4. The only reason to play them is either because you are bored and have nothing to do, nostalgia reasons or an interest in game history.
A critique can be found here (spoilers ahead).
| Playtime | 40 Hours total |
| Game release date | 11 November 2014 (Collection, see game sections for the individual games) |
| Review release date | 01 September 2024 |
| Light sensitivity | Some issues with gamma (brightness / darkness interplay) for every game, but Halo 3: ODST stands negatively out here. |
| Sound sensitivity | No issues |
| Motion sickness | Halo 3: ODST induced motion sickness for me, no signifcant issues with the other games. |
| Steam | Metacritic – Metascore (85) |