With the release of Halo 2: Anniversary Edition for the PC version of Halo: The Master Chief Collection this month, we're halfway through all of the games that make up Microsoft's ultimate Halo compendium. At face value, $40 for six campaigns that could take upwards of 40 hours to finish is a shockingly good deal. Add-in multiplayer and it seems like a no-brainer purchase.
That's not the full story, though.
Each release that developer 343 Industries has put out on PC has been plagued with some kind of issue. Whether or not those issues are a dealbreaker for you, one thing remains clear: The Master Chief Collection for PC is not good enough.
For almost two decades now, Halo has been Microsoft's premier franchise. Without even having a face, the Master Chief has become Microsoft's mascot and ushers in each new era of the Xbox console with style... even if his debut was belated on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Microsoft always takes the time to make sure these games are technological showpieces.
Why, then, is The Master Chief Collection such a mixed bag on PC? Is it because the Xbox One port is also kind of shoddy? Ever since its release in 2014 (a year after the Xbox One's launch), 343 Industries has not been able to deliver the definitive Halo experience on Microsoft's current-gen platform. With PC, it seems to be repeating a lot of the same mistakes.
When Halo: Reach launched in late December, its PC port was riddled with a ton of inconsistencies. The controls might have been smooth, but strange framepacing issues and muddled audio made it a less than stellar way to experience the game. It didn't help that there were netcode problems that made co-op a nightmare. Five months after its release, these issues still haven't been fixed.
Fast forward to Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary in March and we're met with similar problems. The audio is bugged when using "Classic" mode, there are strange graphical oddities that weren't present in the Xbox original, uncapped framerates drastically reduce your weapon accuracy, and co-op play is still laggy. What makes this particular version worse is that the 2003 PC port exhibited a lot of these same issues. We waited 17 years for a proper release and seemingly nothing was changed.
Now enter Halo 2: Anniversary and it's a lot of the same problems. Audio in "classic" mode isn't mastered properly, there are netcode problems with co-op play, and classic multiplayer exhibited a new bug that directly affected gameplay. This last problem was recently fixed, but why did it exist in the first place?
Far be it from me to say that game development is easy. One doesn't simply paste pre-existing code into a new engine and call it a day. 343 Industries is likely working under tight time constraints and with a limited budget to get these PC ports out before Halo Infinite later this year. It still doesn't excuse how lackluster everything has been.
For a franchise that has been at the forefront of Microsoft's gaming division for two-thirds of my life, you'd think any re-releases would get top priority. It doesn't help that even on Xbox One, The Master Chief Collection still has a bunch of issues. Reach launched without much of a hitch, but then a newer patch has introduced weird stuttering and hitching to Halo 2: Anniversary. The framerates in each game are also less than stellar, something that you'd think the extra power of the One X would solve.
If I were more involved with the series, I'd likely be fairly upset with how 343 has handled things. The staggered release schedule on PC was meant to improve the quality of each port, but nothing thus far has launched in an acceptable fashion. You can certainly play and complete these games, by why are new and existing issues a part of the equation?
I know Microsoft wants Halo on PC in 2020, but it should strongly consider taking more time to nail The Master Chief Collection. If Halo 3 comes out and has the same problems we're currently seeing, I'm only left to assume that it doesn't care about its own IP.