efore military shooting affairs were all the rage, Microsoft penned all of its hopes on a series, one that eventually become the flagship brand that defined it—a space marine fantasy filled with as many guns, aliens, and bits of action that could fit on to the disc; Halo set the first-person shooting genre on fire.
That was then though, and like it or not, the shooter landscape has long moved on from the prime of Bungie’s galactic odyssey, and even in spite of 343’s development of Halo 5; the relevance of the franchise is arguably still up in the air as far as mainstream shooting appeal is concerned.
Enter the Master Chief Collection, an ambitious collection that containing upgraded revisions of the four main titles, complete with online integration that allows for a combination of the various elements and nuances of from each entry to experiment and customize with.
Indeed, questioning the value offered within this arrangement of games itself, is a hard-pressed argument to counter; but considering the jump to better hardware and age of these particular games being hyped here—the expectations are respectively loftier the second time around.
So it’s sad to say that when it comes down to it—The Master Chief Collection barely justifies it’s worth beyond being anything more than a budget bundle with a savvy price tag—the reality is that it’s simply a glorified revision of games that scantly improve upon the originals that we’ve all played to death years ago.
Let’s get down to earth for a second folks; this review is only in the interest of the efforts of the 343’s attention to the collection and the upgrades or scaling involved to improve these games; not the games themselves—they’ve aged wonderfully, and have had some of their personal tweaks to acclimate them for the present day anyway. So with that being said, let’s touch upon the enhancements and the builds for each title within the collection; they’re fairly sparse in the grand scheme of the upgrade, and just plain awkward most of the time.
The reoccurring issue at hand with this compilation is just how inconsistently it delivers as a whole. Where to start? Let us go ahead and start with the unbalanced frame rate of the initial two entries of the legendary Spartan’s chapters.
Without a moment’s notice, the animation of the action on screen can go anywhere from momentum that moves like butter sliding across the surface of a sizzling frying pan to an awkwardly stuttering mess like the crease in the pages of a flip-book that ruins the dynamism of the scene being thumbed into life. All discrepancies aside though, even when the game is performing steadily at 60 frames per second, the upgrade doesn’t actually UPGRADE the game at its core—quite the opposite actually.
The animation of the action on screen glides at unnatural pace that the dynamics of these games were never meant operate at, making response time between input and subsequent movements and actions feel jarringly clumsy as a result. Even when played in the original forms, the framerate is still at sixty, and is somehow even 
more dizzying; with no way to drop it back down to 30. Granted, while the argument on 60FPS versus 30FPS for an older shooter is admittedly a bit more subjective than I would have liked, but the critique of the delivery still stands—the performance is incongruous, and stutters in and out a majority of the time.
All pissing and moaning aside though, the new coat of polish that’s been applied by the more versatile paint brush of the Xbox One’s horsepower undeniably smoothes out some of the disappointment in this modern transition. The improved texture mapping and lighting implemented in this version is night and day in comparison, significantly more apparent within Halo 2 and 3, especially during those confusing Arbiter segments within the sophomore entry.
The playlist feature is a nice touch as well, and easily stands as the collection’s brightest highlight. The playlist setup essentially allows players to break down and assemble notable missions from each entry, and will even allow you to mix and shuffle between all of John-117’s greatest exploits to save humanity. The freedom of personalization offered here not only caters to the passionate creativity of rabid Halo fans, but can also act as an easier means of digesting the classic titles for new comers—and being able to share them on Xbox Live only adds to appeal with every list you download or share.
A neat touch of fan service does come in the form of the Halo Channel, and the innovate manner of its integration with the games, though it isn’t without a huge flaw when it comes to the execution.
To elaborate, The Halo channel adds additional scenes and exposition to the rich lore of the Halo universe; these bits of content are randomly triggered via access from one of a number of terminals and interfaces that’re scattered about the worlds of the four campaigns. The channel itself though, isn’t a component that’s built into the collection though, but an actual stand-alone app that’s accessed on the dashboard, meaning…you guessed it—anytime it is accessed, you’re taken all the way out of the game, and to the Xbox One dashboard. This results in a bumbling swing-around of load times and screen wipes that are anything but seamless, more like ineffectual at best.
The multiplayer, yeah…the decision to delay this review from being published earlier has solely been made because of this alone, and after waiting this long, it just couldn’t be helped—the improvements that have been made are still paltry. The odds of getting to connect to a match is still comparative to that of a penny-slot jackpot win, and even when you do, the matchmaking involved is anything but accurate to say the least.
There’s no denying it; The Master Chief Collection is still a wonderfully affordable avenue for both fans and new comers to experience at its core, it’s the lazy arrangement that hardly adds anything new to these familiar ventures, heavily relying on the merit of its legacy alone. It’s a fun way to play, and currently the most convenient way, but I’d be hard pressed to say that it’s the best way to play.
