Halo: The Master Chief Collection (Xbox One)

This game is a marvel, it really is.I am aware that initially, it had issues with online multiplayer and various other things, but given the task they were given, I cant say im surprised that it wasnt 100% when it came out. But that seems to be the norm these days, not just with this game, but most games in general will recieve a day one patch or have game breaking bugs out of the box, or glitches etc.These are no longer problems, and certainly at least when I purchased it, there were none. So what is this?It is all four Halo games featuring Master Chief.Halo 1: Combat Evolved Anniversary (this game is also on the 360),Halo 2 Anniversary (Halo 2 was never released on the 360. However, it was playable using Backwards Compatibility. It also has a PC port which added the ability to earn achievments, although whether this is still possible is anyones guess),Halo 3Halo 4.Halo 3 ODST is available to download at an extremely cheap price, and it intergrates itself into the collection.Also included is every multiplayer map from every game, and the ability to cross between any of them and do any game kind you want, will make people happy, and also adds a new way to play older maps.Halo 1 is the most difficult game in the collection in my opinion. On the normal difficulty I couldnt even manage and had to draft in my partner to play it in co-op with me. Halo 1 is generally considered that hardest of them all and the fact that I couldnt get very far on my own is a testament to that, or im just not very good at FPS games, which is the case anyway, but I managed to complete 2, 3, 4 and 5 on my own, so I wouldnt say I was that bad. You have the ability in this game to switch between the original graphics and the remastered ones, which makes for some interesting comparisons at timesHalo 2 was redone for this collection. I dont know if that was the plan at first, but this collection is where it has ended up. It has had remade cutscenes which look incredible including a new ones at the begining and end to integrate spartan locke into the series. The re-done visuals also look stunning and the ability to switch between the old and the new, as in Halo 1 Anniversary, remains. Some of the multiplayer maps have also been remade.Halo 3 is pretty much the Halo 3 people know and love, with a few improvements here and there, such as resolution, lighting etc. The same can be said of Halo 4 and probably ODST.With the exception of Halo 1 which was mostly a pain in the bum, playing the rest were incredibly fun, and it was nice to go through them and try to remember everything I had done the first time around, such as finding skulls, finding the terminals in Halo 3, etc.Sadly, I havnt really bothered that much with the multiplayer side of this game. Mostly because I feel like I've done all that, in fact I did it to death in Halo 3. I prefer Halo for the stories, always have done. So that is why I played them all.

Finally, Amazon actually deliver games on release day rather than the usual day after release that I'm accustomed to.Aside from the fast delivery, this as all we know is the release of all the Halo's related to the MC (1, 2, 3, 4) and excludes all halo titles that don't have the MC as the main protagonist (Reach and Halo 3: ODST). The Menu is well done and allows to seamlessly jump to any Halo campaign missions from the four games. The multiplayer playlists are pretty straight forward if a bit jumbled, you get told which version of Halo game each playlist uses via the cover icons towards the side but if you want to play say Big team slayer, you can't specifically choose which Halo multiplayer version you want to use, its just simply all the four titles cobbled up together. Its something 343 should work on in my opinion. There's a Halo 5 beta section on the menu which is greyed out for now come this December when the beta releases.Halo 2 Anniversary is the biggest highlight to the the bundle. The in-game visuals have been revamped and look stunning, the in-game sound has been completely changed, guns feel like they have extra punch, the classic halo background symphony during missions are a lot clearer as you can clearly hear the difference by toggling between the anniversary and original. Blur did a really good job with the cut scenes, very breathtakingly realistic, I mean Tartarus looks AWESOME. There's a bit of an issue with Miranda Keyes' voice not 'matching' her face but that's due to Julie Benz's sub par voice acting (who could forget??), something blur could do nothing about.Halo Nightfall is a welcoming edition to the game. It comes in episodes with the first one being around 30 minutes long and the others yet to be released. Similar to the forward unto dawn web series that was released, without putting spoilers, it puts you into the perspective of Agent Locke that we'll all be playing as in Halo 5 and takes place around after the events of Halo 3. Cant really say more for this part without ruining the story for anyone that doesn't want to be spoiled.Downsides, well aside from the small quirk i mentioned for matchmaking, the initial installation of the game is a bit of a pain, just takes too long to install (took me a whole day to install). It seems the installation tries to download the update and install the game disc at the same time. Now I have fibre optic broadband running at roughly 70+ megabits per second so I'd like to think their servers are overloaded. It's not a big problem, you get to play the game when its at least 18% done, but the resulting installation causes the game to act up by constant freezes to the campaign. That being said, the freeze continues even after the update, something a future update could fix i guess. Going back to matchmaking, i can rarely find a game no matter what playlist i pick, waiting a good 10 to 15 minutes to find a few players is just too long, it's a problem 343 seems to be aware of at least.Aside from the few temporary problems arising as of now, the bundle is as good as it gets, Halo 2 Anniversary looks absolutely gorgeous, 3 and 4 run absolutely smooth, almost surreal how the extra frames and no jaggies make a difference to the game play experience. They honestly couldn't have done better with the bundle itself.