Many were bitterly disappointed when it was announced that Halo Anniversary contained a set of Halo 1 maps created in the Reach engine, but that has been fully rectified here. The original multiplayer: The fact that multiplayer is now available on the original maps with the original game engine is the crucial piece of the puzzle that was missing in the 360 Anniversary release, and it's excellent.While sticking with the original engine may have introduced some development issues along the way, it was the right choice when it comes to delivering the real Halo experience. When you smash two warthogs together in Blood Gulch you expect them to fly off of one another in just the right way and, thankfully, that's absolutely the case here. It's Halo: From Halo 2 onwards, Bungie moved to a Havoc solution for physics simulation, but Halo CE used an in-house solution that fans adore.It's as complete a collection of Halo: Combat Evolved as one could hope for. Crucially, the classic multiplayer maps, including the full set of PC-exclusive maps, have made their way into the collection and are playable online. Assets haven't received any additional improvements over the Xbox 360 version of the game, of course, but it looks and runs much better than it did on either of Microsoft's previous consoles. Unlike Halo 2 Anniversary, both the classic and Anniversary modes have been upgraded to support full 1080p and they look smashing. Image quality: It's Halo Combat Evolved at 1080p.We still enjoyed reliving the original Halo experience, however, and most importantly the core elements of the original Halo have been carried over successfully. It seems like a straightforward enough project, but it's clear that the team has encountered a few problems along the way, resulting in a remaster that isn't all it could have been. In fact, the version of Halo included in The Master Chief Collection is actually a port of a port - Saber Interactive's Halo Anniversary for Xbox 360 converted over to the Xbox One. While we could produce complete articles on every single game in the pack, hopefully the format we've chosen for this piece lays out the plus and the minus points of each component Master Chief outing in a simple, easy-to-absorb manner.Īs the original game in the Halo franchise, Halo: Combat Evolved also comes with the most baggage - it's nearly 14 years old and has been ported several times over with varying degrees of success. However, with each game developed individually with many different studios involved, we think that every title in the collection deserves its own critique. Still, for the most part, the team at 343 has done an excellent job wrangling all of this content into something coherent, something that works. The Master Chief Collection lacks the stylish, animated loading screens of Bungie's titles and in the process, something is lost. If there's one issue with the presentation between all four games, however, it's the move to completely static loading screens. It's all backed by the unforgettable Halo soundtrack, seamlessly transitioning between tracks depending on the game highlighted by your cursor. 343 has broken up each game into campaign, competitive, and challenge menus while tucking the rest of the features away behind the extras and options menu, and it's easy to customise the game to your liking with global and per-game settings available. Failing to organise so much content could have resulted in a frustrating experience, particularly when dealing with the game's 110 multiplayer maps, but the end results are excellent. The connective tissue in all this is its central menu system. Just getting so much content immediately accessible is an accomplishment in itself. Bringing it all together into one solid package is clearly an undertaking of epic proportions - and while it's not (and probably never could be) the ultimate compilation that will please every fan, the bottom line is that the end result works very well. Perhaps more than most other remaster projects we've played, The Master Chief Collection stands as an incredibly ambitious project, consisting of multiple game engines designed across multiple generations by many different teams. Halo: The Master Chief Collection is just hitting stores now and while we've already served up some in-depth impressions, it's fair to say that the sheer scale and scope of the project means that there's still a lot of specific detail we want to share with you about the game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |