Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Halo 2: Anniversary. Halo 3. Halo 4. There's a lot of Halo in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and I'm not just talking about the four lengthy campaigns, Forge mode, and all that online multiplayer. When you play The Master Chief Collection, you get a strong sense of a larger, cohesive whole. Sure, these games are direct sequels to each other, but there's more here than just continuity of story and evolution of mechanics. As you hop from game to game, playing as Master Chief in his many incarnations, a timeline coalesces not just of the games themselves, but their place in video game history, their place in popular culture, and their place in your life.
My memories of playing Halo are inextricable from the time in my life in which each game came out, and playing through The Master Chief Collection has often felt like a stroll through an impeccably ordered photo album. All four campaigns are arranged neatly with all missions unlocked, free for you to pick and choose right from the start. The multiplayer is similarly arranged, but alas, that portion of the digital copy of the game I was provided with for review purposes was only patched in recently. Until I can put significant time into online play and mess around with Forge (also recently added), the full review will have to wait. This review in progress will focus only on the four campaigns and how they are presented in The Master Chief Collection.
Let's start with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Released just three years ago, this remastering of the game that started it all has aged a bit itself, but it still holds up really well. The story of humanity's first encounter with a halo ring is still an intriguing one, laced with quiet moments of awe and spiked with dramatic encounters. This young Master Chief lacks the speed and urgency of his most recent self, and his gliding jog and floating jump require a certain amount of recalibration for those accustomed to more modern shooters. But once you get the cadence of combat dialed in, the tension and satisfaction of battle are still potent.
Halo CE is where we first met Master Chief's signature trio of guns, grenades, and melee attacks, and deciding when and how to employ these in combat is still an entertaining endeavor that changes significantly as you ratchet up the difficulty. The tactics of the Covenant and the Flood enemies, the varying spaces in which you engage your foes, and the vehicles that are sometimes at your disposal all contribute to a campaign with enough variety and momentum to spur you onward through to the awesome final level (the slog of The Library level notwithstanding).
The gang's all here. As in the original Xbox 360 release, Halo CE: Anniversary features both the original visuals and audio as well as remastered visuals and audio, and you can switch between them with the press of a button. Unlike in that version, the switch is now instantaneous, allowing you to more speedily flip between decades. It's a neat trick that never really gets old, though you'll probably want to spend the majority of your time with the lush, vibrant remastered visuals. The environmental details and color saturation are richer in the more modern view, but it's still impressive to see how well the original architectural design of many of the buildings holds up. The smooth lines and alien elegance of the Forerunner structures remain nearly unchanged, a testament to the quality of the original art design.
The anniversary treatment has also been applied to Halo 2, and The Master Chief Collection marks the first release of Halo 2: Anniversary. In addition to getting similarly remastered visuals and sound, Halo 2: Anniversary also boasts a completely redone line-up of cutscenes done by the same company that contributed to Halo 4's excellent videos, Blur Studio. These scenes are dazzling re-imaginings of the originals, done with a technical prowess and cinematographic flair that made me want to play through the whole campaign just to see each one. Unlike in Halo CE: Anniversary, you can flip between old and new during cutscenes as well, though you might want to save that for your second playthrough. There's a slight desynchronization between the two that will cause you to lose a second or two when switching, and the old scenes look so dated that they feel like more like creaky relics than interesting artifacts.
The remastered visuals of the gameplay proper are lively and detailed, and they often augment the environments with flourishes and signage that simply aren't there in the original version. The gap isn't quite as large as it is in Halo: CE, but it is still substantial and it's usually a good bet to stick with the remastered visuals and audio. Usually. The updated presentation isn't without issues, and there are instances in which the saturation of light and dark goes a bit off the deep end. If you're taking cover from aerial bombardment by the Covenant, the explosions can create a blinding effect that completely whites out your screen. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when you're sneaking through dark interiors, the blacks can get so deep that you need to either bump up the brightness on your television (there is no in-game gamma setting), or switch to the original visuals in order to discern the layout of the level. This darkness issue also can also occur in the original visuals as well, and judicious switching can be a good way to mitigate the issue.
Lookin' sharp, gents. On the audio side, the updated orchestration is a standout, filling out the soundtrack with an aural richness that heightens the emotional timbre of your adventure. Many of the weapon sounds have been similarly beefed up, but not all of these changes are for the better. The distinctive rolling clatter of the submachine gun has been replaced with a brasher, more metallic sound that lacks the charm of the original, while the sniper rifle's bombastic, echoing report has been slimmed down to a duller, briefer blast. You may feel differently, depending on your memories of Halo 2's decade-old sounds, but regardless of your preference, there is no way to choose audio and visual option independently. Remastered visuals are always accompanied by remastered sounds, and both are generally the better choice.
The campaign of Halo 2 has attracted some criticism over the years, splitting the narrative as it does between Master Chief and the Arbiter and ending on a less-than-satisfactory conclusion. The highs and lows of yesteryear remain largely unchanged, and the dual protagonist adventure still delivers enough excitement to make it worth playing, even if it isn't the most compelling campaign in the package. The thing that made Halo 2 such a phenomenon was its online multiplayer (no, it wasn't dual wielding), and as I mentioned above, I haven't had enough time with it yet to speak confidently about its quality.
Halo 3's campaign, however, remains one of the best in the series, and the one in which I think Bungie really nailed what Halo was about. Halo 3's campaign flowed between diverse areas in a pleasing cadence, and made vehicles available on levels that were enjoyable to play on foot as well. The traditional array of combat tools was augmented with deployable equipment and a host of new gear, all of which gave the player a variety of ways to approach a given combat scenario. This flexibility was present in previous campaigns as well, but it wasn't until Halo 3 that it really hit the sweet spot of replayability.
Playing solo, playing cooperatively, playing on a harder difficulty level, and playing with difficulty modifiers enabled all feel like significantly different endeavors in Halo 3. When you change these parameters, you're not just going to be doing the same thing you did solo on normal difficulty, only better. You're going to attempt daring stunts because you feel confident, you're going to experiment with different approaches when you're feeling overwhelmed, and these approaches are going to vary widely. Halo 3 cultivates this flexibility and creates these moments in which the game feels like a playground. It delights, it punishes, it motivates you to do better, and those are some of the best things a video game can do.
In the context of the original Halo trilogy, playing Halo 4 reinforces how much it feels like a new era for the series. The 2012 release shifts gears in a number of ways: Master Chief can now sprint for the first time, new enemies and villains are introduced, and the characterization of the Chief himself takes a turn. No longer the lone supersoldier upon which the fate of all humanity hangs, Chief is questioned, doubted, and treated with something less than utter reverence. That narrative twist is as much a signal of the new era as anything, and it's delivered with the best characterization, dialogue, and cinematography that the series has seen to date.
The action of Halo 4's campaign is still exciting, thanks largely in part to the through lines of combat design that have helped keep the series lively for so long. The armor abilities first introduced in Halo: Reach add another asset to the Chief's arsenal, and the new Promethean enemies bring a few new twists into combat, like the aggravating tendency to shield their allies. Though you can sense that Halo 4 is a last-gen game in it's visual fidelity, it is still an attractive, often beautiful game, especially in those Blur Studio-fueled cutscenes.
Among Blur's contributions to The Master Chief Collection is also at least one new scene, placed at the beginning of Halo 2: Anniversary, that features Agent Locke, the new protagonist for the second game in the trilogy that Halo 4 kicked off, Halo 5: Guardians. This, along with some Locke-voiced terminal videos accessible throughout the Halo 2: Anniversary campaign, show a forward-looking side to this nostalgic collection. The Master Chief Collection is aiming to not merely take you on a walk down memory lane, but to get you excited for where the Halo journey is going.
Next week I'll be chiming back in with my full review of The Master Chief Collection, once I've played a whole bunch of multiplayer and messed around a bit with Forge (including the new forge-able Halo 2 levels). Be sure to check out the video review and gameplay clips for a look at these games in action, and let me know how you think it's shaping up in the comments below.
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