Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. Reviews

Halo: The Master Chief Collection review

Halo's Master Chief Collection delivers a nostalgic thrill for every level of fandom

By
TMCC Halo CE Anniversary screenshot 1
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
MSRP $60.00
Score Details
“Packed with content and freshly remastered, Halo: The Master Chief Collection is the definitive celebration of a series and its fans.”
Pros
  • Superb remastering of all four games
  • New Halo 2 cutscenes are fantastic
  • Multitude of options for tackling all four Halo games however you like
Cons
  • Not a definitive collection without Reach and ODST
  • Spartan Ops fans have to wait for post-release content update

Halo 2 established teabagging – the practice of thrusting one’s crotch into a downed opponent’s stupid, dead face – as a video-game art form. People like to talk about Bungie’s 2002 effort as a key catalyst for both Xbox Live and online console gaming as a whole, but really, it’s teabagging – and everything teabagging represents – that best captures Halo 2‘s legacy, and best justifies the gargantuan content pile-on that is Halo: The Master Chief Collection. 

The Xbox One re-release is hardly definitive. Halos Reach and ODST sit out, as do outliers like Halo Wars and Halo: Spartan Assault. Bungie’s logo is conspicuously absent from the initial load screens, even though three of the collection’s four games come from the studio. Halo: The Master Chief Collection isn’t here to honor a legacy; rather, it’s a celebration of the green-armored Spartan’s adventures.

There’s a thrill here for every flavor of Halo fandom.

Here, there is an opportunity to relive the unhinged thrill of taking down a pair of Scarabs in one of Halo 3‘s joyously open battle arenas. You get to shift uncomfortably in your chair all over again as Halo 2‘s Gravemind reveals itself. Sprint through Combat Evolved‘s Library as the Flood pour in and tread lightly through the jungles of Halo 4‘s distant Forerunner world while Promethean defenders materialize out of the shadows. It’s all here. 

More than that, though, The Master Chief Collection is a testament to the cult of fandom that Halo-lovers established around the series. Every map from every included game and their add-on packs is available in the multiplayer mode, and each runs in its originating game’s engine. The pistol is just as dirty in Halo: Combat Evolved as you remember. Grenade/rocket jumping remains a viable strategy in Halo 2. Each game is still broken in all the right ways. 

If you’re looking for dry product specs: All four games are presented in high-definition, freshly remastered for their first-time arrival on Xbox One. They also run at an impressively smooth 60 frames per second, in campaign and multiplayer both. Not that you’d expect anything less from a collection of games that were originally released for older hardware. 

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary looks much the same as it did in its 2011 re-release, with remastered textures layered on top of the old ones. Halo 3 and Halo 4 are improved as well, though it’s less a full-fledged re-do and more a case where graphics and effects sliders seem to have been turned up. Both games look better and run more smoothly than they did on Xbox 360, that’s all that matters. 

Halo 2 is the real star here, however. It’s gotten the same sort of “Anniversary” treatment that Combat Evolved did, further bolstered with the addition of completely reworked CG cutscenes from Blur Studios. While it’s a cosmetic enhancement that doesn’t have any sort of tangible impact on your play, the beautiful sequences breathe fresh life into Halo 2‘s plot.

The Master Chief Collection is a testament to the cult of fandom that Halo-lovers established around the series.

For all that’s familiar here, 343 deserves credit for creating a fans-first presentation package. It’s much more than just a new main menu that leads to each separated game. For one, all four games huddle under the same umbrella. You can just play content from one Halo or another, but numerous playlists – for campaign and multiplayer both – straddle all four games. 

The key here is flexibility. There’s nothing to unlock, no hoops to jump through before you can relive your favorite Halo moments. Missions, difficulty-tweaking Skulls, all of it is unlocked from moment one. Want to take on every game’s final escape mission in a single gauntlet? That’s an option. So is a straight runthrough of all four games in the series, beginning to end. 

And that’s on top of all the extra stuff. New for Halo 2 is Forge support, allowing players to jump in and modify some of the favorite terrains from the decade-old game. Halo 4‘s Spartan Ops co-op missions are absent at launch, but they’ll be added in an update. There’s also video content, like the episodic Halo: Nightfall series and, of course, guaranteed access to December 2014’s Halo 5 Guardians beta test. 

There’s a thrill here for every flavor of Halo fandom. The Master Chief Collection is more than just a gap-filler to keep Xbox One users occupied while they wait one more year for Halo 5 Guardians. It’s a monument to what the developers and the community have built together. Fan-service seeps through every pore. This isn’t an epilogue, it’s an introduction. 

TMCC UI screenshot 3
Image used with permission by copyright holder

We’re back now to teabagging. Ten years ago, Halo 2 established the rules and social mores that many console multiplayer games still abide by today. It was the first of its kind, an important step toward fostering a dialogue between creator and fans. More than just a perversely celebratory exultation, teabagging carried a message to Bungie: We’re playing your game our way. And Bungie responded. 

Here we are now, a whole decade after those first, tentative steps into online console gaming were taken. And everything’s just the way you remember it, every unintended flaw preserved. Halo: The Master Chief Collection isn’t quite definitive on the content side, but it fires on every level as a celebration of the fan impulses that made the series what it is today. 

This game was reviewed on an Xbox One using a code provided by Microsoft.

Highs

  • Superb remastering of all four games
  • New Halo 2 cutscenes are fantastic
  • Multitude of options for tackling all four Halo games however you like

Lows

  • Not a definitive collection without Reach and ODST
  • Spartan Ops fans have to wait for post-release content update

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Adam Rosenberg
Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…
The best Halo Infinite Easter eggs
A master chief plushie.

For over a decade, the Halo games have had a great sense of humor despite the incredibly dark and serious tones of the games' actual plots. This series began in the age where secrets, cheats, and unlockables were the norm in most games, especially FPS titles. Since then, the series has become almost known as much for the funny dialogue, secret cutscenes and endings, and hidden skulls as it is for their tight shooting and arena-style multiplayer. After the first game became such a smash hit, the series would also start packing in plenty of Easter eggs and references for players to find, a tradition that 343 was not willing to let die for Halo Infinite.

Now set in an open world environment, Halo Infinite opened itself up for Easter egg hunters to go crazy scouring every corner of the map for Easter eggs. Since the game's launch, a ton of secrets, both big and small, have been uncovered in the depths of Zeta Halo. Some are just tiny little jokes or references, while others are fourth-wall-breaking and self-referential, but almost all of them are hidden so well it would be unreasonable for one person to find them all. If you're curious as to what the best Halo Infinite Easter eggs are you might have missed, here's a rundown of our favorites.

Read more
DXRacer Craft review: It ain’t pretty, but it sure is comfy
a shot of the DXRacer Craft Custom gaming chair

With DXRacer's new Craft line of "custom" gaming chairs, the first obstacle you'll have to overcome is sticker shock. It's got a high price tag, even in the shockingly expensive world of halfway decent office furniture. If you want your lumbar supported, and you do, you generally have to put some extra cash on the table.

DXRacer Craft Series User Guide

Read more
Horizon Forbidden West collectibles guide
Aloy looks over a gorgeous open world in Horizon Forbidden West.

We didn't know what to expect when Guerrilla Games, previously known for its work on the FPS Killzone franchise, announced that its next game would be an open-world, third-person action RPG. The fact that it was set in a post-apocalyptic world where robotic dinosaurs faced off against primitive humans wielding bows and spears was enough to get people interested, though, and the resulting game, Horizon Zero Dawn, was a smash hit. There were a few rough edges, but it had just about everything players wanted in a new open-world experience.

The success of that first game almost made it a certainty that a sequel would come around to improve on all those new ideas. Horizon Forbidden West does just that, expanding on basically every aspect and mechanic of the first game to a massive degree. That includes the amount and types of collectibles hidden in this new, forbidden land. Aloy has plenty of new tools to help scour the Forbidden West, but you will still need our guide to know what types of collectibles you're after, as well as what they do, in Horizon Forbidden West.

Read more