Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Oh, Halo. While you’ll always have a fan in me, those early days of The Master Chief Collection were friggin’ rough. In 2014, I was hypnotized by the idea of every numbered Halo game, and all of its multiplayer, packaged into a single experience. Were it so easy.

MCC would be the second time Halo subjected me to exploring a library of misery. Constant server and matchmaking issues made multiplayer an awful experience. And for older games, like Halo 2, that multiplayer was a buggy, glitchy mess even when it did work. Single-player experiences were somewhat of a reprieve from that, but the games still crashed frequently on the Xbone.

Flashforward to the 2020s and The Master Chief Collection isn’t just one of the best Halo experiences today, it’s the best place to play Halo, period (well, until Infinite gets its friggin’ act together too). On top of a well-maintained PC release that’s introduced all sorts of never-before-seen features like graphical adjustments, more games have been added over the years, in the form of Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST. ODST, in fact, received a Flood-themed firefight mode that wasn’t even in the original; Halo 3 even got new maps too. It’s also served as an excellent platform for exciting new mod experiences

It took a few years, but Halo: The Master Chief Collection has now become everything it promised to be, and then some.