Quick Look: Halo: The Master Chief Collection

UNSC: Un-Necessary Squad Crap! Please! If they want to implement some real combat they should copy Advanced Squadfighter!

That's weird. What I remember of those videos is that the PS3 footage always looked too bright and washed-out in comparison. Indeed, it was because their capture wasn't configured properly, but it wasn't to do with black crush. That was always an Xbox issue.

was really hoping Microsoft would finally release this for the PC. Tuff titty.

What's all this obsession with Ebony dating sites in the comments about?!

Man, I wish this came out on PC. Hearing that Halo 3 warthog music made me want to play Halo 3 again. Halo 3, what a game.

Are you guys clipping the RGB range when capturing?

Pew pew pew pew.

ah man, bungie what happened to you

@csl316 said:

Ah, I love Jeff. He can be cynical sometimes, and I feel like in the last couple months he's been getting increasingly so to the point where it feels like he's actually relishing being able to point out the flaws in stuff, like when Halo 4 was dropping frames while loading: "Yeah wow those loads do a number of the frame rate!" But I still love the guy.

I think at least part of it isn't Jeff's fault; it's that the games in the last year or more have been getting kind of bad, honestly. Technical problems, design problems, uninspired, microtransactions, etc. Games have been getting kinda shitty, and I'm getting tired of it myself, but it's Jeff's job to play all of these games and talk about how they've been getting shitty, so I can only imagine it's been wearing down on him. Guy deserves a vacation.

It's a real shame about the multiplayer being kind of fucked, though I was reading on the halo forums it seems to be getting better. Despite that it's still a fantastic package I blew through halo 2 and 3 over my weekend and now I'm on to 4. I forgot halo 4 has a pretty great late title card.

This is a game that just came out and it takes them 15 minutes, not including the initial load, to get into a game. I can get into a game of Unreal Tournament 3 in a minute (there are people playing), probably running on a server in some clown college closet nobody knows about. What the heck happened to multiplayer?

Weird. This collection still looks really awesome, but the problems they encountered and talked about in this QL were just...weird. The issues just seem like such trivial shit. If all of that had been ironed out this would have been one of the best packages on the market, as it is it will probably take up to a month to patch it back to what it was intended to be.

Yeah, son. I've never owned an Xbox and always kinda had to be dragged along to play Halo with my friends, but Halo Reach is legitimately an awesome game. The abilities they added, like Armor Lock, were awesome and did wonders to get me to actually have fun, which is why it's extra a bummer that the general consensus I've seen from Halo people is that Reach isn't great specifically because of the abilities. Oh well.

I was just about to watch that one. Well, dang. I love Jeff but yeah, he's a hard man to impress sometimes.

Maybe he does need to take a break, because he is seeming pretty unwilling to break out of his comfort zone lately. He was shitting on Binding of Isaac before it even started. He would not let go of the fact that you cant shoot diagonally even though this is a deliberate design choice. He would note that its about getting good, interesting items as he just rushed through the rooms looking for the exit to the next level. Its a good thing Far Cry 4 is coming out to hopefully wash Jeff's salty vagine.

@andheez: The problem is you can tell what review Jeff will give a game before he even plays it. Just based on discussions during the lead up to release.

It's like he already made up his mind.

Halo is strange, since he said he even liked past games. But based on his latest discussions, he just wants to talk flaws or things he disagrees with.

Jeff is great, don't get me wrong. But sometimes his critiques either seem predetermined or just don't make sense based on what he decides to talk about.

If this is about the "grand scheme of gaming", shouldn't he realize that Halo CE transcends whatever opinion he had before it came out? A PC version came out and hundreds of people play online, 11 years later. I think it's okay to admit that it's special no matter what games/gaming systems you played before it.

He actually does say "there's nothing that plays like Halo" etc. but then he always goes back to the pointless story.

I wish they tried splitscreen on Halo 4 since it's supposed to be almost unplayable (meaning common sub-15 fps).

Well, to be fair, that's a really dumb design decision. I've been avoiding Binding of Isaac on PC for years despite having three free copies of it, then after the Quick Look I decided I'd finally give it a shot now that I have a fourth free copy in the PS4 version. Got some pretty awesome power-ups that made getting to the fourth level a breeze, then I died and immediately deleted it. I didn't like the art style before and I especially don't like it now, and yeah, Jeff's totally right, not being able to shoot in any direction is just the worst.

So on that game, I give his cynicism a pass.

I feel like more than 50% of this quicklook was spent in menus.

@whatisdelicious: I disagree, I think it's a pretty cool design decision that forces the player to think differently. I cant stand bullet hells but I love BoI.

As someone else pointed out, the problem is the games! Destiny was a let down, Shadow of Mordor was great but pretty short with not a whole lot of replay value, AC: Unity is broken, Master Chief Collection is broken, Call of Duty is actually good but it doesn't use dedicated servers which is just garbage - even Battlefield 4, another broken ass game, has dedicated servers. Dragon Age is apparently good but for a lot of people it's a huge time-dump which they can't afford or they don't care for that type of game. A bunch of games are getting delayed.

Despite a lot of games coming out right now, it isn't a fun time for games. I myself am becoming doubtful and highly sceptical about every game that comes out. It just feels like developers are literally being forced to make games like companies make cheap toys. Fast and efficient but the product is shoddy and garbage.

Can't wait for the GTA5 re-release but dammit I just know the online is going to be broken as hell again and I won't be surprised if there are huge performance issues, especially with the first person mode which is a big reason a lot of people are buying the game (including me).

@flakmunkey: Eh, personally, I've always felt like it's not really that interesting of a design choice in top-down shooters; it just makes you move a little bit in the way of danger to fire, which slows down the action more than anything else. I've always preferred when you and the enemies are both just extra agile.

But honestly, I was speaking in hyperbole so obviously, yes, it's a valid design decision and it's cool if other people are into that.

Awesome! I'd be interested to know what you think. It's hard for me to evaluate these games (especially the earlier ones) without rose-colored glasses.

I like that Cortana is a woman who is essentially naked. Why wouldn't an AI from far in the future, working for a military in which women serve equally, be near naked? I mean, why wouldn't it?

They should have included all the Halos, like ODST, this is supposed to be a collection, not a selection.

I think Destiny feels about as close to Halo as a non-Halo game can get. it's faster, yes, it has sprint, but the aiming and shooting feels very close.

Also, the entire time they spent in the Halo 1 race, I knew exactly what Drew was talking about, and I had a giant grin on my face the whole time. Nostalgia of a 12 and 13 year old me playing splitscreen and LAN for HOURS.

Edit: Jesus, this is full featured. If I had a One and matchmaking was working, I'd buy this in a heartbeat. Now I want to start replaying the originals.

Warthogs bounce and now Drew is happy so I am happy. Also 60fps Halo looks pretty cool.

lol at Jeff complaining about default Halo controls. Default Halo controls pretty much became the standard for FPS shooters until ADS was popularized. And anybody with a decent handle on Halo's mechanics would know that grenade on left trigger makes more sense than most other possible configurations, particularly on an original Xbox controller.

The Zoom and Shoot control scheme was specifically designed to accommodate CoD/BF players. You can't really complain about that control scheme not working well for the mechanics of the game.

I agree, that's why games like Link to the Past are objectively bad... the second I realized I could not slash and such in 8 directions, I threw my cartridge in the garbage. I went back to the lovely diagonals of Super Metroid and Earthbound.

Wow that Eric Pope notification, mad distracting

Put. this. on. PC. I'll take it without multiplayer. I dont give a crap! but if it was in there...

Actually you can do a FULL 360 DEGREES spin attack in LttP, which is why it's the greatest game ever.

How car horns work

It sounds like whoever that guy from Microsoft was, his attitude really got under Jeff's skin and he's never let that go. I can't help but hear some actual spite in his voice when he talks about it, and almost always does when Halo comes up.

Civil but lengthy rant commencing.

Strange thing is, I never played shooters on anything besides PCs until Halo CE came out, and I still consider it the best feeling shooter series I've played. It irks me when he just says "shooters on the PC" without citing an example. It's almost as if he's creating this composite of every PC shooter pre-November 2001 in his mind, because Halo CE knocked my socks off, and I played the classic PC shooters back then (though Dark Forces: Jedi Knight with the Spork mod was my bread and butter).

Take for example: shooters often used to have "that vehicle level" which was usually sub-par (and many still do) where you are forced into a vehicle and have to complete a very specific task with said vehicle. Usually if that part was removed, no one would miss it, and they often got called out for that in reviews.

But I can't even imagine a Halo game without the vehicles, they are completely inseparable from the fundamental design of the series. It's almost inaccurate to limit Halo's genre to the FPS considering so many of my favorite gameplay moments have been in vehicles (which were virtually always optional).

Look, I loved Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, but the tactical options, AI, level design, and fiction of Halo are just in a whole other league (in that Halo took some care with its fiction while Quake and Unreal seemed disinterested and dismissive of their own, all just an excuse to have laser guns and aliens, not a problem but I like having fiction I can actually pay attention to).

What else would he be comparing to it? Half-life? I loved it to death, but the gunplay wasn't exactly the best in class even at the time, there were good reasons Half-life 2 didn't "feel" like the first game, nor did any of the weapons "feel" similar. In comparison, Halo CE still feels like it has ambitiously designed shooting-mechanics after 13 years. The sequels changed things, certainly, but they still retained that solid foundation of Halo CE's combat loop and Golden Triangle (melee, weapon, grenades). Half-life 2 and the Episodes basically just concerned themselves with fiction legacy and retaining the crowbar (for iconography not utility), while everything else gameplay-wise was essentially dumped completely.

I'm asking in earnestness here: what pre-November 2001 PC first-person-shooter is Jeff thinking about when he casually dismisses Halo CE's impact? Popularization of regenerating shields, dedicated grenade button/trigger, and making the melee attack actually a serious option in combat; add in Halo 2's elimination of health-packs and most FPS series have adopted these design decisions (aside from Half-life, but then that series hasn't had a new release in the last 7 YEARS).

It wasn't even that Halo did any one of these things FIRST, but it did them so WELL and so successfully that others wanted to emulate that design philosophy, to varying degrees.

Heck, people say Resident Evil 4 revolutionized third-person shooters and all it did was pan the camera slightly to the right of the character, narrowed the FOV when aiming, and required a button press to run.

The real question is, can you get two people into a dumpster on halo 2 and make it fly?

@hashbrowns: I was with you until these two statements:

"Popularization of regenerating shields" - yes, Halo did this. And it's been nothing but detrimental to the FPS genre, so this is actually a black mark on Halo's name. People took the wrong lesson from this into other FPS designs, and now regenerative health has been the biggest cause of FPS moment-to-moment pacing issues.

and then this:

"Heck, people say Resident Evil 4 revolutionized third-person shooters and all it did was pan the camera slightly to the right of the character, narrowed the FOV when aiming, and required a button press to run." - that's waaaay over-simplifying what RE4 did for the genre. I think you have good points in your post here (and agree with a lot of them), but throwing something like that out at the end won't do you any favors.

@timepants: Yeah but you have to charge that up though...by then the weird snake boss has hit me and taken away my hearts...now Link to the Past leave me heart broken because it is a bad game.

Anyway this looks fantastic aside from the server issues, hopefully that gets sorted soon because this is definitely something I will be getting whenever I pick up an Xbone. Man that 60FPS is gorgeous, and I love Drew's nostalgia of it all. They really killed it on those Halo 2 cinematics too.

Not sure if you've heard or not, but they are considering an ODST and Reach collection next.

With this one, they've said they wanted to focus on Master Chief's journey so that's why there is no Reach or ODST (or Halo Wars, like anyone wants Halo Wars :P). With Halo 5: Guardians on the way next year, it makes sense to try and tickle that nostalgia gland us Halo fans have during this holiday season and get us salivating over Halo again with a package like this.

After the Master Chief Collection was announced, it seems that a lot of folks have been hitting up the makers of Halo asking this same question about Reach.

I know there are many among the Halo faithful who disliked Reach and the things it brought to the table, but I loved it. I liked the Armor Abilities, I really liked getting to build my own Spartan who stuck with me through every mode, and it had a strong story to boot. Plus, even though it wasn't perfect, there were so many great chaotic moments in the multiplayer that I ended up loving that aspect of the package as well. Usually I play mostly campaign and Firefight type modes and only dabble in the multiplayer, but with Reach I played it like crazy.

So after all the requests, Dan Ayoub says that they are looking at doing a Reach update as well now. Hopefully this will come to pass because I'd love it if they could get all the games playable on one console. Right now, at this moment, it's not a big deal to fire up the 360 if I want to play one of the older Halo games. But a year from now, maybe two, I probably won't even have the thing hooked up anymore. It'd be nice to see all the Halo games, all the Dead Rising games, maybe all the Fable games get collected using this kind of attention to detail that the Master Chief Collection has shown.

Anyway, good luck on picking a new console. I picked up both at launch last year, but the Xbox has gotten a lot more play than the PS4. It may not be the most powerful and that is a shame, but as of right now it's got more games that are more fun to play (at least for the kinds of games I like). That is always up for change though, especially with The Order on the way (fingers crossed on that one).

To this day I continue to not understand why the moved the cross-hair too far down the screen.

I never got into Halo. I had a PC and everyone I knew had a PC. It was like "Oh you got a shooter. That's cute. Good for you" but this really makes me want to go back and play through these games. I'd like to do it co-op tho but I don't know if I know anyone with a XONE that I could play it with. Perhaps a second controller and local co-op it with someone. I'll have to put it on the back burner tho because there are a lot of games going on right now.

I enjoy @Jeff's saltiness about everything. Keep it coming, duder.

@james_hayward: Yeah, it probably is. I hear people talk that way a lot about CoD too.

ODST was the only Halo game I was ever interested in, and they didn't put it in this collection.

I believe it has to do with keeping the viewmodel perspective looking normal in regards to how the shooting mechanics work in Halo (bullets actually shoot from your head, not your gun, and in order to make everything look like it lines up properly they have to put the guns at a certain angle and the off-center crosshair reflects that.)

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember someone from Bungie saying something to that effect on a podcast in the early Halo 3 days.

thank you for explaining it, I still think its stupid

i'll defiantly pick this up in 2 years when i can get an xbone for a song

What a fucking shambles of a quick look.

those halo two cutscenes look a million times better now, the old ones looked like ass