Halo The Master Chief Collection

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 Halo’s multiplayer design, history and impact. However, I will only focus on the campaign which I played through solo from the perspective of playing the game for the first time today, and disregarding both nostalgia and impact of the games.
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 CE and 2 includes both original and remastered versions, while the rest include only original visuals and sound.
Every game in the master chief collection does lighting poorly in some manner. The dark and light interplay is especially bad. There are many levels that are both too bright and too dark at the same time. Explosions and muzzle flashes often create an effect where they remove the light from the game and creates an darkness that should not be there.
Sound is very hit and miss in most of the games in the master chief collection. The gun sounds are usually pretty good. The environments frequently lack background sound, lightning does not have thunder, and a storm does not have wind and so forth. Several of the soundtracks that are played in the background does not fit the theme or setting at all to the point that you actively pay attention to how odd the choice of music is. At other times the soundtrack nails the setting.
I am interested in the gameplay design and the narrative of Halo. The gameplay of Halo is analysed to death, but I still want to share my thoughts on how the game works and what makes the gameplay work. The narrative is shockingly badly executed considering the amount of lore available to the developers, and I will dive into what went wrong with the execution of the narrative. I will deal with these overarching elements before I talk about a few things that stood out in each of the Halo games.

The Power Fantasy

I would argue that one of the main selling points of Halo is the power fantasy. How powerful the player is in comparison to your weaker allies, and how the enemies fall under your onslaught. This power fantasy is told through cut-scenes and big fantastical sequences in the gameplay. The attempt to create these moments that enable a power fantasy is a huge driving force behind the design decisions and narrative in the games.
Unfortunately I don’t think that the games manage to deliver a satisfying power fantasy most of the time. This is down to two things: the age of the visuals and audio, and the poor and incoherent narratives.
Halo 2 and 4 are the only Halo games that does not suffer due to aged visuals and audio. Their visual and audio quality is high enough that they manage to pull of most of their power fantasy sequences. Every other game feels underwhelming due to aged visuals, and the power fantasy suffers greatly as it relies on a good presentation.

When the narrative falls apart in front of you the power fantasy also falls apart. It feels artificial and not awesome anymore. The best example here is probably Halo 2 when Master Chief returns the nuke to the covenant after Cortana tells you that you don’t want to know how close it was to blowing up. That nuke was not close to going off, but Cortana implies that it is. That sort of sets a bad backdrop to the entire cut-scene that exists only to be a power fantasy. The entire collection is filled with these sort of nonsensical plot-lines that makes no sense and only exist to look cool.
Vehicles have aged more than anything else in the games, and it is no longer fun or awesome to drive them. You don’t feel powerful in the scorpion tank, you feel like it is a chore to get to the next good section with your guns. The more time you spend in vehicles the worse I think the game is. The game clearly uses these sections to create a sense of power for the player, and from my own experience I can tell you that it used to work. 15 years ago the vehicles were amazing, but they have aged too much in both mechanics and visuals to serve the same function that they used to do.

The Gameplay

Halo’s gameplay is not focused on aiming and traditional weapon mechanics, but rather on game knowledge and positioning. While the weapons are perfectly functional and does not feel bad to use, they do lack the impact and skill ceiling of a more classic shooting experience.
The game is over when you lose all of your health, after you have lost all of your shielding. You lose health and shield by taking damage from enemy melee or ranged attacks. Halo uses several types of enemies with different strengths and weaknesses. Ignoring their strengths punishes you by damaging you, and using their weaknesses allows you to overcome them easier. The following list will discuss the main mechanics and types of enemies and how they work to check the different player skills that are relevant.

You need to be behind cover to avoid taking damage from weapon fire. The game checks this consistently with almost every enemy type. You need to move between covers to get a clean shot at enemies while you yourself are in cover or have the ability to duck behind cover to recharge your shields. Cover is one of the primary ways the game checks if you are positioning correctly.
Enemies will throw grenades at you to flush you out of covers, forcing you to move or take heavy damage. Most regular enemies use grenades, and enemies at higher difficulties will use a lot of grenades. This checks your awareness and ability to dodge while still maintaining sufficient cover to not get destroyed by regular weapons fire.
The plasma pistol charged shoot will deal a lot of damage to your shield. It is very clearly indicated with a green light that gets brighter and brighter as it is ready to be released. This indication allows you to react to a dangerous weapon by either killing the weak enemy or getting behind a cover. Aiming can allow you to overcome it, but movement is also a possible way to deal with the weapon, regardless you need to be aware of your environment.
Enemies wielding the sword, the hammer or the shotgun are very dangerous up close. They will at higher difficulties oneshot you if they are allowed to close the distance and hit you. You need to position in such a way that they will not charge at you and stay at an appropriate range where you can kill them, but they can not kill you. Positioning is by far the most important skill these enemies check.
Long ranged enemies equipped with snipers and hit-scan weapons demand that you either shoot them with an accurate weapon or hide behind covers until you get close enough to them to deal with them. Aiming is important to deal with them if you have the correct weapons, but you can compensate by moving well to close the distance where you don’t need to aim. In the later games you can also burst fire to kill them with almost every weapon, making shooting mechanics more important.
Enemies equipped with explosive weapons such as rockets and brute shots deal a lot of damage if they hit you. These projectiles move quite slow, and do allow you to dodge them if you react fast enough. Positioning in such a way that you can kill them while they reload after having hid behind cover is the primary skill these enemies reliably check.
Halo has a grunt that will charge you with grenades or flood that will blow up if you get to close to them. You either die or take a significant amount of damage if you get too close to these enemies. Being aware of your surroundings and positioning accordingly while you deal with them is the way you beat them.
Hunters are covered in armour that makes them immune from damage. You need to hit them at certain weak-spots, and especially the major weak-spots on their back. They will shoot slow-moving projectiles you can dodge. They will charge at you if you get to close. Flanking them or using an explosive weapon is an excellent way of dealing with them. Aiming helps, but is not necessary, positioning and game knowledge is much more important.
Turret emplacements are stationary powerful weapons that demands respect, or they will kill you quickly. You overcome them by either killing the operator or using an explosive to destroy the emplacment itself. This can become easier by moving closer while moving between covers and by flanking the emplacements. Aiming helps of course, but positioning and movement is more important.
Halo includes several vehicles that will try and kill you while you are on foot. Several of them has the ability to run you over, forcing you to be aware of their movement and staying in locations where they can’t reach you. They typically do a lot of damage if you are in the line of sight, and playing behind cover is important when dealing with them; especially if you need to get closer to allow the slow rocket projectiles to kill them, or to jump onto them and plant a grenade. Movement is far more important than aiming against vehicles in most of the games.

There are probably some enemies and mechanics that I have forgotten to add to the lists, but the point is still clear. The enemy design is quite varied and focuses more on game knowledge and correct positioning instead of raw shooting mechanics. In this way the game distinguishes itself from the broader shooter genre that often is much more focused on mechanics and aiming than Halo is. You can be pretty bad at aiming and still do well in most of Halo’s campaigns if you know how the games work.

In addition to the enemy design the game also uses ammo as a very important tool to force repositioning. You need to either continuously pick up ammo for your weapon or replace your weapon with a new one; you will often take the weapon of defeated enemies. The game uses a variety of weapons that changes how the player interacts with the levels and enemies:

Assault rifles are what you will spend most of your time using. These weapons are plentiful, but rely heavily on being closer to the enemies in order to be accurate enough to deal damage.
Shotgun, swords and hammers are very powerful at melee ranges, but carries the challenge and risk of covering the distance to the enemy and being vulnerable to counter-attack while in the open.
Rifles are powerful, but don’t have pin-point accuracy. They are very good at dealing with most enemies, but the ammo is not dropped at high enough intervals to allow you to use them throughout the level. These are by far the most flexible weapons in the game, functioning at every range provided you can aim.
Snipers are very powerful if you can aim, and can kill every enemy very quickly. The only real draw-back to the weapon is that the maximum ammo is limited and finding more ammunition is often rare. It is very nice to have a weapon that rewards aiming so heavily in the game, and it is nice as a contrast and change of pace when compared to a lot of the other weapons that don’t rely on aiming. These weapons are the best at long to medium ranges where you have time to aim.
Rocket launchers are very powerful against a single high value target, but the ammunition is heavily limited. You will only use the rocket launcher when the game delivers it to you and in the adjacent areas. It is a fun weapon to use, and I wish I had more opportunities to try and hit moving targets. These weapons usually have a slow projectile speed which means that enemies will dodge the projectiles if you fire at a long range. The splash damage will damage yourself if you use them at a short range, which means that you want to be at a medium range with these weapons.
Pistols are usually only a thing if you are desperate and have nothing else.
You can use melee if you want to preserve ammunition on a powerful weapon which can be quite useful in order to get through a harder section that is coming up.

The different weapons have as mentioned different ranges they work best at. Halo’s weapons are in addition frequently in-accurate and requires you to be at a certain minimum distance to be effective. These mechanics means that being at the correct range when considering both your own equipment and weapon, but also what you are up against is far more important than being good at aiming. Game-knowledge and movement is how you win or lose the game, aiming is helpful, but will rarely be more important than game-knowledge, movement and awarness.

The Narrative

Halo is a game that has an immense potential as a narrative driven game. Every game has an interesting idea, but it is always executed awfully. The Halo universe could have been really interesting, but it is squandered. It leaves me frustrated and angry more than anything else; it is so clear that there was a possibility for greatness in the narratives that are told.

One of my biggest gripes with Halo’s narrative across all games is how poorly everything is set-up. The background of Halo’s universe is never told, no history is told, no rules are established that can ground the story. Why are things happening the way they are happening? It is very hard to get a grasp on what Halo is if you have not researched the universe prior to reading about it. Finding terminals of lore helps somewhat, but they are few and far between and up to luck to find. Even after having played through six games I don’t understand most of Halo’s lore. The plot-lines are extremely simple, and it is fairly easy to get an overarching idea of what is happening, but the substance is not there. What this leads to is that the Halo universe feels shallow because no effort has been made in order to establish the deeper lore and rules of the universe. Without a proper background to a story, it is not possible to tell a good narrative. There are a lot of questions I have that I think the game should have answered while I played, instead of forcing me to go look up the answer online:

Is the forerunners a known entity, or are they unknown? How much of their history and impact on the galaxy is known? Presumably very little considering no one knows about the flood, but yet the story moves along like everyone knows about them.
How many planets and worlds does humanity control, how big is the civilisation when compared to the covenant?
How does teleportation work? Why can someone teleport sometimes and sometimes not? What are the limits?
Why are humans of all life forms considered the reclaimers? I would like a reason apart from it is convenient for story reasons. This links back into the history of the Forerunners and general universe lore that should really have been explained.

Another big issue I have with every Halo game is what seems like constant gigantic plot-holes. Everything from breaking laws of physics, teleportation of people into cut-scenes they can’t be in, to massive failures of logic, to stupidity on a planetary scale. Now, there might exists a reason outside of the games, or I might have missed them even though I was looking. However, that in itself is a sign of poor narrative execution.

In Halo 2 the planetary defence platforms lacks any sort of missile or small fighter / boarding party defence. Is there seriously NO weapons attached that are capable of shooting down fighters? Seriously? All they have to do is fire a nuke at the station and it is gone, because it has zero defences? The whole boarding party the covenant did was redundant. At the very least show me them trying to defend themselves, even if the Covenant has superior technology and would have made it through the defences regardless, but even then you need to justify why you would spend so much resources on the defense stations in the first place.
In Halo 4, during the mammoth section Pelicans have the targeting (aka firing) device of the mammoth. Then they try fly closer to the gigantic structure to get into range to fire missiles that clearly will be useless. Why is the tank not able to fire by itself? In what world do you decouple a weapon and its firing mechanic like this? Why does the flying Pelicans move close to the literal anti-air weapon of doom that is GIGANTIC? The answer is: Master Chief needs to look cool and have the targeting laser. It is set-up so poorly it is ridiculous. Just give Master Chief the targeting mechanic to begin with.

The overall quality of writing is frequently bad and cringe, especially when it comes to the voice lines. There are so many lines that are written by the 14 year old gamer, instead of actually representing the military life or death situation. Even accounting for grim humour or optimism in the face of death these voice-lines are often really shit. The voice-lines are also frequently poorly voice acted.

In Halo 2 Cortana has a comment that a lake on a Halo ring is not naturally formed due to some reasons to do with volcanos. While we are on the literal artificial world that is Halo. Of course it is not naturally formed, it is per definition artifical.
In Halo 3 humans have voice lines like “Look I am shooting dead guys” and “You stole my kill”. These voice lines are the definition of cringe, and should not exist while the world is about the end.

While I dislike a lot of things about Halo’s narratives, the games also have several good aspects. Most of which are in the game’s details and in the background. Overall there are several things that most of the games are good at:

Commentary of soldiers sometimes really hit. In Halo 3 there is a sequence after the flood hits earth where a soldier kills his entire squad because he thinks they are infected, even though they are not. “I could see it crawling under their skin, I had no choice”. That is such a good way to showcase the fear the flood causes. These background characters and voice-lines can be impactful, but they are often easy to miss.
The covenant has a huge personality in-game. The way that the brutes berserk. The way that grunts flee in terror when their leader dies is great; the contrast to the Elites being more calm and collected. The writing and voice-acting is usually on point here.
I enjoyed the way that the flood were handled in gameplay. They feel like a flood that is coming for you that forces the player to dump ammunition into them they run out, and the still keep coming. Running away is often the only option. The way that the flood will borrow into your dead allies and reanimate them is a terrifying detail.
Details like the Needler having more and more needles being removed as it empties is a fantastic detail.

The narratives of Halo are at its best average, and at its worst terrible. Generally speaking the games makes a lot of basic storytelling errors in conjunction with poor writing and voice-acting. The narrative structures and implementations are objectively bad, regardless of how you as a player mesh with the story that is being told. I have no doubt in my mind that I could have written an additional 7000 words about how Halo’s narrative is awful, but I don’t see the point in doing so, and hope that the general points and examples are good enough to get the point across.

Halo CE

The gameplay in Halo CE is functional, but very repetitive. It is the kind of game you can enjoy if you play it for a half an hour or an mission and then quit for a couple of days. The level design is especially problematic as the assets are aggressively copied and reused to create a maze of corridors that sucks to navigate. In combination with the limited weapon variety it creates a very stale and boring gameplay that only takes time to overcome. This does not help when you are sent back quite far if you somehow die; you will at some point die to a random dude hiding behind a corner with a rocket launcher or a vehicle or turret barely touching you causing instant death.

The flood were introduced in an excellent manner, having the marine shoot at you and rant about monsters when you enter the room is a really good way to set up the terror that is the flood. The clip you see from the helmet of one of the marines is an fantastic way to reveal the flood. While the gameplay and level that follows sort of suck, the way the story is set up is excellent. The reveal of what Halo is, and what its purpose is hits home. It continues to add and showcase how threatening the flood really is.

Sound design is something Halo CE does better than any of the other Halo games in this collection. The weapons sound fantastic, but what really stood out is how the soundtracks nail the setting every single time. Especially memorable is the sequence after you escape the facility and into the jungle that is infested by flood. It sells the horror and terror so well based on soundtrack alone. This sound design combined with the narrative details is what makes Halo CE worth playing.
Overall I enjoyed parts of Halo CE, but the game was double the length it should have been. If it was much shorter I could have appreciated the storytelling better and ignored the gameplay easier. I would also like to shout out how terrible the engine room is in terms of platforming and how bad the ending Warthog level is to drive.

Halo 2

Halo 2 is the best game of the master chief collection by a large margin. It is the strongest in terms of visuals, narrative and amongst the best if not the best in terms of gameplay. However Halo 2 still struggles with all of the weaknesses discussed in the sections about narrative, power fantasy and gameplay, but to a lesser extent than every other game.
The gameplay in Halo 2 is where the great Halo gameplay loop truly becomes good. You have access to a lot more weapons compared to Halo CE, and the ability to dual wield certain weapons. This rewards you for positioning well as you can absolutely destroy enemies with two guns firing at once at a close range.

The quality of Halo 2’s cut-scenes are a world above what any of the other games in this collection can offer. I loved almost every single one of these cut-scenes. My only complaint is that they set-up things that are never answered, or leave you wanting more that you never get.
The cut-scenes where the flood are involved are truly terrifying, and is by far the most disturbing the flood ever gets. The way that Gravemind looks, the way he uses the dead prophet and the sentinel to talk is magnificently done. The cut-scene when the prophet leaves the other prophet to die at the hands of the flood as it is burrowing into him is fantastic as well.
The first couple of cut-scene of Master Chief being celebrated as a hero, and the commander of the Covenant being condemned a traitor is very good. I love how the cut-scene goes back and forth to show the contrast. I love how the Covenant society is showcased at a basic level. This single cut-scene makes me want to know so much more about the Covenant, but the game never delves deeper into it. The cut-scenes remains very well produced, but ultimately sits on top of a shallow universe as far as the game is concerned.

I find a lot of the plot points to be poorly connected. I never care about anything the game tries to make me care about. I did not catch why only humans were Reclaimers and not all biological life, and the game does a piss poor job at communicating that distinction. This makes it seem like there exists a planet sized plot-hole when the Brutes drags along a human to activate the ring instead of activating the Halo by themselves.
The game is like every Halo game great at using background and details in-game to enhance the poor plot-lines and story. You see that the Elites and Brutes fight each other in game, and that creates an impactful narrative beat. The problem for me is that I know nothing about either the Elite or Brutes, or their civilisations, and I don’t know how they tie together into the Covenant as a whole. It is simply not enough set-up for me to care at all about the conflict between them. The game does a decent job at making me curious about the flood and its history, however the franchise never goes anywhere with it.
The introductory level in Halo 2 is great. I love how you are guided around the space station which showcases the scale of a single station. Seeing equally big space stations outside the window while you fight is a magnificent sight. I enjoyed the level design and the transition from inside the space station to the outside a lot, and this is likely among my favourite Halo levels I have played in this collection. Even considering the gigantic plot-holes previously mentioned.
I thought it was a nice switch-up to allow you to play as the Arbiter to give a Covenant perspective. The game uses these perspective shifts quite well to tell its story.
Halo 2 has its fair amount of problems even when excluding the narrative from the mix. Moving objects are the most overpowered weapon in this game, and I have had two hunters kill themselves because they ran into boxes that began to move that then killed them instantly; the hunter essentially committed suicide because of a slight movement of boxes. The vehicles and turrets also has the same issues where any movement is an instant kill.
The game has a tendency to suddenly kill you out of nowhere occasionally. The use of ambushes are frequent enough that they will kill you when you are not aware of them. In the anniversary edition the cloaked enemies are more like invisible enemies that sometimes just kills you instantly because you are not aware of them, and you can’t see or hear them. Then you have a lot of minor stuff like the game having a hard time detecting which weapon you want to pick up, and picking up the wrong one. This is a common problem throughout the franchise.
Halo 2 is overall a good game with a very solid gameplay experience with great visuals and fantastic cut-scenes. It is ultimately let down by bad set-ups in its narrative, poor vehicles and, occasional dodgy sound design with a lot of minor issues that drag you out of the experience.

Halo 3

Halo 3 focuses significantly more on the power fantasy compared to Halo 2, and utilises vehicles to achieve this fantasy. The problem is that the vehicle sections are not very good most of the time, and feel pretty bland and boring. The vehicle sections lack the complexity to feel like I am the one doing the damage; instead if feels like the game is handing me the victory on a silver platter, it does not feel empowering. A good example is the double scarab section when you have an aircraft. It is very easy to kill both of them without even exiting the aircraft; the scarabs can never hit you due to projectile speeds, but you can hit them. In order to sell the power fantasy you need good presentation, and the graphics in Halo 3 is simply too aged for me to be immersed into it for the purpose of a power fantasy.

The flood in Halo 3 is a major down-grade compared to the previous games. The Cortana mission embodies the problems Halo 3 has with it is flood. The enemy is not an overwhelming and endless wave of enemies that you have to flee from, but an enemy that you have to make your way through in a tedious slog. The flood that uses the covenant rifles are especially bad as they have invincibility when they are not shooting. That means that if you don’t have a proper ranged weapon to fight back you need to creep forward between covers to get into range. The cortana mission is not difficult at all, it is just a tedious grind. This is probably amongst my least favourite Halo missions in the entire collection.

The narrative of Halo 3 is at its best when in the background, when the game lets the details and background characters do the work. In the second mission a soldier refuses to open the door for another soldier because he does not want to let him and his brute buddies in. Both grunts and soldiers have a fair bit of good commentary that makes the world feel a bit lived in. The unfortunate effect of this is that you will miss a lot of these background interactions, and a lot of story and set-up because of it.
The overarching narrative is executed badly. Nothing is ever set-up. The game jumps from section to section without connecting them in a coherent manner. Things will happen because they look cool and not because they make sense. It is a very long time since I have been this angry at a video game for fucking up the potential of its own story and universe so colossally as I have been with Halo 3. It is very clear that Bungie did not give a shit about doing the narrative of the Halo universe justice; they only cared about the gameplay and shiny explosions when creating the game.
Halo 3 has excellent first person shooter gameplay design, and some of the best level design of the games included in the collection. The combat encounters are remarkably well done in how they intermix the level with the type of enemies and the density of enemies. The first couple of missions where you don’t use vehicles are extremely well designed, and is still something you can go back to and learn from today. This gameplay is the only reason to play Halo 3 today.

Halo 3 ODST

Halo 3 ODST follows a squad of normal soldiers instead of the superhuman Spartans. This is a great change of perspective that could form a more human perspective of the Halo universe. The narrative is structured as a mystery that is revealed in flashbacks. While this story structure creates a coherent plot, I don’t think it is very good. I don’t think the human story of the world or the human stories of the squad members are told very well, and I think like every other Halo game that the story is wasted potential. The concept of telling the story of the alien invasion in Halo 3 from a human perspective is good, but it never goes anywhere interesting. I would have much preferred a complete squad doing an actual military objective that would hold the covenant back instead of the mystery story that is told.

You find voice recordings scattered around in terminals when you transverse the city. These voice recordings are really well executed, and stands in shocking contrast to the rest of the collection. They made me exited to know what was happening and made me want to find the next one. The sound mixing in the clips are superb. This is by far my favourite aspect of Halo 3 ODST.
The visuals in Halo 3 ODST are awful, one of the main offenders being the brightness / darkness gamma. The game uses night-vision instead of a torchlight, the night-vision does not work very well inside tight cramped buildings with limited light. This is a recipe for motion sickness, and forces anyone that struggles with that out of the buildings. The gamma setting is impossible to set correctly with the game either being pitch black or all white, the warthog level is especially atrocious when it comes to brightness. Then there is the ridiculous black striped and red blur overlay you get on your screen once you take any amount of damage. This overlay almost destroys any hope this game has of being good by itself.

The core gameplay loop is still good, and while the vehicle sections still suck there are some reasonable good levels in the game. However the lack of dual wielding really hurts the gameplay experience, and even though there is a narrative reason in that normal soldiers can’t use both I don’t care. The narrative is not the franchise’s strength, it is its weakness. Halo 3 ODST is likely my least favourite Halo game, and the only good thing about it is its voice recordings.

Halo Reach

Halo Reach is the prequel to Halo CE and tells the story of the fall of Reach. This is an excellent opportunity to really fill the massive gap the previous games left in terms of lore. There are so many ways they could have added lore and world building which you would assume is the point of doing a prequel. The idea of the game and narrative is great, but yet again Halo shows that it is completely incapable of telling a narrative in any meaningful way. Halo Reach’s narrative is generic, and is only a backdrop for the gameplay and power fantasy.

The power fantasy is very important in Halo Reach, and the game has a lot of sequences that try to make the player feel powerful. Shooting from a Pelican with an explosive turret makes the player feel powerful. The space scene where you board the carrier is really cool. The space fighting in a star-ship was likely pretty awesome at release. The final sequence of shooting down Phantoms as you cover the retreat and launch of the Pillar of Autumn makes you feel like a god. These sequences are good enough, but I don’t think they manage to reach the heights they aim for. Both due to a narrative that is generic, but also due to graphics that are simply a bit aged at this point.

The core gameplay loop as a shooter is well designed like most Halo games, and it is implemented well enough. The game has the same annoying vehicle sections and problems as the previous Halo titles. The game has added better recoil, and the shooting feels better in Halo Reach compared to earlier games. On the other hand the level design is a down-grade compared to earlier games.
My overall impression of Halo Reach is that it does everything fine, it is the most average quality game of the Master Chief Collection. Nothing stands significantly out, and it is overall a decent way to spend some hours. It is simply a very average game.

Halo 4

Halo 4 is the game in the collection that has the best raw shooting mechanics. Both the covenant and the human weapons are great, they look great, sound great, have a good balance and feel great to use. The light weapons on the other hand are pretty lacklustre, and are not well implemented. The only functional light weapons are the light-rifle, the light-shotgun and sometimes the light-rocket-launcher. Generally speaking the light weapons fire projectiles that are too slow, do too little damage and with a low maximum ammo capacity. The spread and projectile speed on the light assault rifle is for example an absolute joke, while you can burst fire with the human and covenant versions, you cannot do so with the light version. This creates a boring and repetitive gameplay loop where you can’t really chose that many weapons in the sections where the Didact’s Promethean (light forces) are the main enemy.

The Promethean enemy design frequently requires precision in order to deal with them properly, and this becomes an issue when you only have bad in-accurate light-weapons to use. The hounds are fine when you have a precision to hit their heads, but are pretty annoying when you can’t hit the head due to your weapons. The knights tank a lot of damage while dealing a lot of damage, which is fine if you have weapons that can kill them. The repair drones are close to impossible to hit with anything but a long range weapon, and mostly serve as a way to extend the encounter. The encounters in the Promethean sections feel poorly designed due to the combination of available weapons, enemy design and level design. The encounters are frequently very underwhelming.
The encounters when you have access to covenant and human weapons are vastly superior as these weapons are polished over the course of many games and they all work. Fighting against the covenant with these weapons are the highlight of the shooting experience for me. It is a shame that they were not included more, and that so much space was given to the new and shiny enemies.
The first mission in Halo 4 encompasses all of Halo 4’s biggest strength, and few of its weaknesses. The covenant shooting gameplay is crisp and clean. The environments both inside and outside the ship are fantastic. The details included such as the floating bodies in the vacuum of space, or the muffled sounds adds so much life to the mission. This mission nails the Halo power fantasy.

The vehicle sections in Halo 4 is one the biggest difference from previous Halo games, and also one of the most welcome changes. It is a major reason why I enjoyed Halo 4 more than most of the other Halo games in the collection. The vehicle sections include several new vehicles you can control such as the Mantis and the Pelican which feels much more fun and satisfying to use than the Scorpion tank and Warthog especially. The focus on the vehicle sequences are also significantly more focused and lasts for a much shorter time. The focus of these sections are just to give you a brief feeling of power and variety and lets you back to the first person shooting gameplay quite quickly. I appreciated this greatly.
Halo 4’s narrative suffers from the usual Halo shit. It is incredible bad at setting up the background, it is bad at creating a cohesive story, it is bad at pacing, generally speaking it is bad at executing a story in almost every aspect. As much as I dislike the story, the story idea with both the Didact awakening and Cortana’s madness works in theory. It just needs to be executed and set-up. You don’t know anything about Cortana and how she is functions, so that she suddenly goes mad feels cheap. The story is really an excuse to have some cool visuals, some cool cut-scenes and some cool combat sequences. See the initial narrative section for more examples of bullshit narrative decisions that makes no sense.
While most of the narrative sucks, there were a couple of points I did like. I like the scientist being upset about master chief wanting to blow up the composer. I liked Cortana’s reaction to the people being disintegrated compared to master chiefs no reaction. It serves as a powerful contrast, and the story could use a bit more humanity. I think having Cortana serve as that bit of humanity is a good story choice, but it should have been set-up in a different way and likely required set-up from previous games.
Halo 4 as an overall experience should only be played for its presentation and gameplay elements. It is a competent game overall if you can forgive some of the more annoying sections and a poor narrative.

The Master Chief Collection Concluding Thoughts
The Master Chief Collection is overall a pretty good collection of first person shooer campagins when you only consider the gameplay aspect. There are a lot of hours of enjoyment to be had while playing these games based on gameplay alone. There are some very cool sequences and scenes in the games, but the overall narrative quality of the campaign is lacklustre and frankly disapointing. Nostalgia and game history reasons is why I would play most of the games, but I thought Halo 2 was quite an enjoyable experience.