Halo: The Master Chief Collection Review

Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is one of the most recognisable characters in gaming and is the de-facto mascot for Xbox. His games were some of the big-ticket items for the consoles and as someone who recently changed from PlayStation to Xbox, Halo: The Master Chief Collection offered my first experience with the franchise.

The Master Chief Collection comes with Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, 3, and 4, and anyone with Game Pass can play Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. I don’t have Game Pass or play multiplayer games, so I got Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach as extras. This collection does give a newbie to the series a broad scope: the games go from the Fall of Reach (Halo: Reach), to the post-war chaos after the defeat of The Flood (Halo 4). Even if players only play the main four games they get a lot of bang for their buck.

The games had simple origins since Halo: Combat Evolved was about the Pillar of Autumn crashing into a Halo ring and Master Chief and the Artificial Intelligence, Cortana needing to stop the Covenant from using an ancient weapon and accidentally unleash an alien parasite called The Flood. The game was contented to the world of the Halo ring, set up the premise and factions of the Halo franchise, and had a solid mystery. It had a strong mix of action and horror and felt like a cross of the Alien franchise, especially Aliens and Lovecraftian horror since the sci-fi military action, a long-dead civilisation, and a resurrected evil. The games built up the world with Halo 2 showing more of the power struggles within the Covenant and allowed players to spend half the game as The Arbiter, a Covenant soldier who must perform dangerous missions for the Prophets. Halo 4 added more ancient races and civilisation who want to destroy humanity.

The first three Halo games worked as a trilogy. The first game set everything up, the second game was the darker expansion, and the third one concluded everything. Despite Halo 3 being the conclusion to Master Chief’s story and ending the major threats to humanity, Halo 4 seem to be made because Microsoft wanted to keep the gravy train going and the developers had to pull something out of their arses by introducing an ancient alien race that hated humanity. Reach had a simpler story since it was about a team of Spartans fighting against the Covenant invasion of Reach and the UNSC were fighting a losing battle. Halo 3: ODST was a spin-off of Halo 3 and it focused on a team of special forces soldiers that get scattered across New Mombasa.

The four main games did have a personal throughline, the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana. In the first game, Master Chief had to protect her, at the end of the second game Master Chief and Cortana were separated so in Halo 3 the supersoldier sets out to rescue her. By the fourth game, Master Chief revealed some emotion since he grew increasingly concerned for Cortana because she outlived her intended lifespan and became more unstable during the game.

Experienced gamers can perform gaming archaeology with the Halo games. The first Halo game came out after the glory days of ‘90s PC first-person shooters (i.e. Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem) and they influenced those games because of the sci-fi setting, fast movement, and types of guns available. At the same time Halo: Combat brought in tropes to the FPS genre, like regenerative health and the two-weapon loadout. The Call of Duty games followed in Halo’s footsteps since soldiers could hide behind cover and magically heal and players were stuck with the same guns. At least in five of the Halo games, there was a story reason why the main character could heal because they were wearing power armour and the two-gun loadout gave players options on how to play the game. Players could be given options, like a battle rifle, sniper rifle, or shotgun. Sometimes the games force a player into a choice like leaving a rocket launcher because something big and powerful was on the horizon. Halo 2, 3, and 4 took away health packs since they weren’t seen as necessary and they only returned in Halo 3: OSDT and Halo: Reach.

The gaming archaeology can extend to the Halo games themselves. Halo: Combat Evolved was a fun game with some teething troubles due to some of the level design. The level “The Library” was notorious because it was easy to get lost and there was one section where Master Chief got locked into a tight space and fought off waves of Flood. It was a section that required determination and dumb luck to survive. The game was also saved on level design during the second half since Master Chief had to traverse some of the same levels in reverse whilst fighting off the Covenant and the Flood. Halo 2 had a notable little feature where Master Chief and The Arbiter could arm themselves with two guns at the same time and have double the firepower, but its use never appeared in any other games. It was a usual feature, especially when fighting flying enemies. Halo 3: ODST had a hub world where The Rookie had to walk the war-torn streets of New Mombasa and find items left by his squad. This was the worst feature of the games since it was easy to get lost.

The games themselves allowed players to do some archaeology whilst playing. Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 were remastered and given a graphical upgrade and players could switch from the upgraded graphics and the classic graphics. Since I didn’t have a nostalgic bond to Halo I generally stuck to the updated graphics. It was notable that Halo 3 didn’t get a graphical upgrade.

The key aspect of these games was the gameplay. Halo: Combat Evolved was seen as one of the games that popularised the FPS genre onto consoles and it worked well with the controller. The shooting and movements were fluid and there was a great amount of variation in the games. As well as using lots of guns the player can drive various vehicles like the Warthog, Scorpion, Ghost, and Banshee and they all have their qualities. Scorpions were slow but they made up for that with their firepower, Ghost could speed around and shoot lasers whilst Banshee could fly and allowed for some dogfight. The Covenant did have the better vehicles on the battlefield but I did love the Scorpion. There were also special levels like in Halo Reach where the player could operate a spacecraft and a giant anti-aircraft cannon. Compared to the Call of Duty games, the Halo games allowed players to pick and choose how they operated the vehicles, which were integrated into the levels. It wasn’t a case where there would be say a tank level and you don’t get a chance to use it again.

When playing the games I developed my own strategies and preferences. I particularly enjoyed sniper levels and I got a thrill when I threw a plasma grenade and it got stuck on an enemy. It was fun to watch them panic. The Needler was the weakest weapon and I barely used them. There was a great sense of immersion during the battle sequences since it felt like you were part of a squad in the middle of a firefight. It helped that the AI soldiers did feel useful and were able to kill opponents. Some characters had plot armour: it was particularly notable in Halo: Reach.

I played the game on normal difficulty and I still died a lot. It might be a sign of my lack of abilities as a gamer. There were moments of frustration, but it didn’t drive me to rage and quit because I got hooked and determined to beat these sections. This was a good sign since I wanted to play more and got a sense of satisfaction when these difficult moments were beaten.

The Master Chief Collection was a great way to get into the Halo franchise for both its world and gameplay. They were a fun set of shooters and even a single player like myself clocked in 3 days, 5 hours, and 17 minutes of gameplay.

Below are my rankings of the games in the Master Chief Collection, but even my lowest-rank game is a positive experience.

6. Halo 3: ODST
5. Halo 4
4. Halo: Combat Evolved
3. Halo 2
2. Halo 3
1. Halo: Reach