Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC is not an Epic Store exclusive

That is a great post. I thought you were going to link to Tom’s defense of the library, but I like that even better!

But I’ll link to Tom’s defense of the library, it’s great too.

Library is amazing. Especially in context to its era.

That’s an amazing post. Maybe when I replay it down the line I’ll understand its greatness, but so far its charms completely elude me despite reading at least two well-reasoned, passionate defences of the level, including one by Mr. Chick. It was repetitive, unchallenging and bland.

I keep thinking that I really need to play the Master Chief Collection but I can’t muster up the gumption. It sits in my library (ha!) just looming at me. It’s like the video game equivalent of cleaning out the garage, I don’t know if I can face such a monumental task.

Yeah, I felt that way throughout the Xbox One era. I got the Master Chief collection early on, and kept meaning to get to it, but never did.

But I feel like this time next week when it comes out for Series X, I’m really going to do it this time. Join me dive!

Big kudos for playing on the correct difficulty by the way. As you probably realized while playing it, a lot of the systems that work and work well in the game are somewhat unnecessary on lower difficulties. Heroic is the first difficulty tier on which you really have to use all the tools at your disposal at any given moment, and that’s where the game truly shines.

Hmmm … I might very well, but I feel like I need a little structure here. Something like our weekly Star Trek episode watch, to make sure I’m keeping pace and making progress. Maybe if I shoot for one level per week or so, I can make slow but steady progress? There’s gotta be a way to work this.

It definitely makes a huge difference. I believe that’s why I bounced off the games when checking them out with my buddies back in the day. When I finish all the campaigns I might give Legendary a try but it seems like a considerable step up in terms of punishment. I’ve heard that Halo 2 is especially brutal. Not looking forward to facing-off against those rocket launcher flood, haha.

I’m only on the second mission, but so far the music in ODST is especially fabulous, which is really saying something for this series.

Looks like Halo 4 PC is out on GamePass now…

Nice. And on Xbox Series S|X with enhancements too.

I hope it hasn’t grown huge in the intervening years since I last played it and that I can install it on the Series X with a reasonable hard drive footprint.

Played first mission. I was looking forward to it because I must have listened to its soundtrack hundred times back when the game came out. And finally I get to play it. It looks quite awesome in 4K maxed, incredible that it came out on same console as Halo 3, which looks ancient in comparison.

The first levels looked amazing back on 360.

Easily could’ve passed for this gen until things like Arkham Knight came out.

I’m really looking forward to revisiting those in 4K HDR on my X. I might even finish the game this time!

Some hours in to Halo 4, Alistair discovered the Sprint key…

But there was no coverage in his area.

I continued my Halo CE highest difficulty playthrough of the campaign last night.

Hooooly shit this is hard. And yet, oh so fucking satisfying. I had forgotten just how precise you have to be with your movement and aiming and use grenades constantly and melee constantly, along with your guns. I love it. So good.

Edit: I’m playing on Series X btw. I still switch back and forth between the old Halo graphics and the redone 360 graphics. I still can’t decide which I like better. Most of the time I leave it on the improved 360 graphics, but some things I still think look better in the original look.

Just finished 4 and the jungly bits, the desert bits, the exosuit and fighter plane bits are all pretty good still, but all those featureless alien platforms housing 3 Xs to be destroyed were just depressing :)

Roll on Infinite. Although in hindsight, having these guys work on that rather than remastering old titles might have made more sense.

Finished ODST in one sitting this afternoon. Really enjoyed the ways it departed from the previous games, with some nice hub-style exploration and a moody, noirish tone. You could tell it was made by a smaller team (was this once intended to be H3 DLC?), so I appreciate that they took some big risks.

Tried the first few missions of Halo 4 on legendary and its just not doing it for me. I feel like the difficultly is a bit borked. Enemies aren’t especially challenging but they feel very bullet-spongey and take forever to take down. There’s a bit too much banter between Chief and the now-inexplicably-scantily clad Cortana and quite a few buttons to press. Still, it’s early going. Great looking game for the tail-end of the generation, but feels a bit more traditionally sci-fi than I expected from the series. Might return to it later.

The Flight 7 update restored the missing bump mapping and transparency effects from the original Xbox release of CE which were lost when Gearbox ported the game to PC. The also replaced the beta model of Captain Keyes, so now he looks like he’s supposed to. The Jackal’s shields are now functioning correctly and changing shade when damaged and the fog effects now resemble Bungie’s OG vision. So cool to see this level of support!

Before and after:



Nice!

Also it gives me an excuse to post this.

That moment after he dies and you see the leaderboard.

First place 20 kills.

Second place. 3.