Following up on the recent release of their first Xbox ONE title, the epic first person shooter Destiny, Bungie are about to have a few of their previous games released as a part of the mighty bundle that is Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The pack includes a remastered version of Halo 2 for the tenth anniversary of the fan favourite, along with Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 3 and Halo 4, so they’re piling a whole lot into one little disk for the release on the 11th of November 2014.
However, one of the most important aspects of the game’s release has got to be the fact that you’ll also get access to the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta when it descends, so you’ll also be able to be in the first wave of gamers to test out the upcoming sequel ahead of its full release in autumn 2015. The next game in the franchise is being developed by 343 Industries, who took over from Bungie from 2011 onwards to produce Halo 4. The beta will be open to players from the 29th December 2014 until the 18th January 2015, so you’ll be nine or ten months ahead of the curve and it’ll give you something new to look forward to during the comedown from Chrimbix.
If that isn’t enough, the game also includes Halo: Nightfall, a new series of digital videos directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzen and produced by Ridley Scott. It tracks the back story of Agent Jameson Locke, who is being played by actor Mike Colter (Men In Black 3), who is set to play a big part in the Halo universe going forward and will be a key character in Halo 5: Guardians.
Storyline
As there are four games in one chronicling the entire storyline of The Master Chief, it’s going to be difficult to sum it up in one short, super-powered sentence, but here goes. Essentially, for anyone that hasn’t played the games yet, they centre around a futuristic intergalactic battle between the surviving human colonies and an alliance of religiously fanatical aliens known as The Covenant, and Master Chief John 117 is humanity’s best hope of survival as it’s most prolific Spartan super-soldier.
The Covenant worship an ancient race known as the Forerunners, who were wiped out by a parasite known as the Flood, and have deemed the human race as heretics. As in life, so in gaming, they wage a holy war upon humanity to wipe them out completely in the name of their gods. In and amongst all of the intergalactic clashes is a series of super-structures called Halos that combine to make the Halo Array, which has the capability to destroy all sentient life (it means self aware, init) throughout the Milky Way Galaxy (it’s the galaxy we live in, for anyone that doesn’t already know).
For newbie gamers, this all probably sounds a lot like the overarching storyline for Destiny too, and in all fairness there are some pretty significant similarities. However, this was one of the original breakout sci-fi first person shoot-em-ups and large swathes of the gaming legacy has been bundled into the The Master Chief Collection.
Gameplay
All of the games that feature on Halo: The Master Chief Collection are built around a similarly genius first person shooter (FPS) gameplay system, set in a futuristic intergalactic battle of epic proportions. All of the games feature very cool FPS action with solid movement, weaponry and a wide range of vehicles including armored jeeps, tanks, hovercraft and aircraft to roam around in, firing plasma rifles and cannons to destroy all comers.
The game’s heads-up display (HUD) includes a motion tracking sensor, similar to the one in Destiny, which allows you to see players on your team, enemies that are either moving or firing and any vehicles within a short distance from you. Again, similar to Destiny, you have an energy shield that depletes as you get hit and restores after a short period of not taking damage, which gives you a bit more breathing room to get into the game than if you just went down with every shot sustained.
The collection starts out with the original game in the series, Halo: Combat Evolved, which was first released on the 15th November 2001. The title included in the Xbox ONE exclusive is the Anniversary edition that was set in high-resolution and remastered for the Xbox 360 in 2011, which makes it a much more impressive proposition than if it was just a straight recreation of the old game.
It’s followed up by a new remaster of Halo 2 as an anniversary edition, bringing it right up to date with next gen gaming. The gameplay hasn’t changed significantly from the original game, so you’ll have the wonder of duel weaponry, if you don’t mind losing melee and grenade throwing capabilities and you’ll be able to scramble onto enemy vehicles if they get too close, and they’re not going too fast.
Halo 3 is an exact port of the 2007 Xbox 360 game, which introduced support weapons and equipment to the series to add a bit more variation and complexity to the ferocity of the gameplay action. It also brought with it an expanded vehicle roster that includes a whole host of weird, wacky and mentally fun Covenant vehicles to take down, including the beastly Scarab, a walking tank with massive plasma cannons.
The last game on the collection is Halo 4, which is the latest traditional game in the series, released just two years ago on the Xbox 360 and developed by 343 Industries. The big introduction for the game was a new type of enemy for Master Chief to face, called Promethians, fighting alongside the Covenant. These are pretty brutal warriors of the Forerunner empire and they come in three main classes; the leader Knights, who are the hardest of the lot, pack fighting Crawlers and the strategic support of Watchers, who can shield and revive their fallen allies.
Each of the four games have a significant campaign to battle your way through as well as all of the multiplayer action that has been instilled into the series since it began. In total, there are 45 campaign missions to swath through and all of the additional content for each of the games has been thrown in for good measure, including all of the DLC maps, game modes and Halo: Spartan Ops missions.
In terms of the multi-player maps, there are a total of 100 to range around on and with remastered versions of six of the Halo 2: Anniversary maps, there’s a fair amount of variety to choose from. The game also includes what they’re calling the Master Menu, which lets you choose from everything on offer like a kid in a sweet shop. You can also use this to build curated setlists to build up your own progression of campaign missions and multiplayer modes.
Graphics
In all fairness, you definitely shouldn’t expect true new generation gaming graphics from Halo: The Master Chief Collections, but equally that doesn’t mean that you should be despondent either. The reality is that every one of the games included on the pack will be getting an upgrade visually in one way or another, making this the ultimate Halo experience to-date.
Firstly, all four games will run at Xbox One visual fidelity and 60 frames per second to bridge the gap a little, and that’s added to by the graphical remastering of the second installment in the series, along with all new, super-detailed cut scenes. As a result, all of the games will look a whole lot better than their predecessors and you’ve only got to take a look at the screenshot above to see how Halo 2 compares between the original graphics and the newly remastered visuals.
You’ll get to make the same comparison in the game directly too as they’ve included a feature that will allow you to instantly swap between the remastered graphics and original game. It’s a feature that was included on the remaster of Combat Evolved, so it’ll be available there too, so you can see the difference yourself between the 2001 original and the updated 2011 360 edition of the game.
Check out the audio demo below for the Halo 2: Anniversary edition to see for yourself how the graphics compare to the likes of Titanfall and Destiny. It’s pretty clear that they’re not quite in the same league, but they do constitute a significant step up in terms of look and feel compared to the original game that was released ten years ago.
First impressions
There’s so much gaming crammed under the hood of the title that Halo fans are probably going to be spoiled for choice, although some of them are also going to be on the opposite ends of the spectrum, wanting something new, not a repeat of the games they’ve already decimated more than a few times. However, for us, we’re probably going to struggle to find room for much more first person shooter action this autumn with Destiny already manopolising time like it’s got its own Tardis and the likes of Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Farcry 4 out around the same time.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the game also grants you access to Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta, The Master Chief Collection would be all to easy to confine to the “too many games, not enough time” side of the checkout divide. For nostalgic fan gamers and curious newbies that didn’t get play the games the first time around, this is a big slice of Halo pie. Every single one of the four games has recieved rave reviews in the past, so you can be sure that you’ll be getting a whole lot of quality gameplay, but a lot will rest on how good some of its rivals turn out to be.
