Tweet
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. 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. 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.Just getting so much content immediately accessible is an accomplishment in itself. The connective tissue in all this is its central menu system. 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. 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.
It's all backed by the unforgettable Halo soundtrack, seamlessly transitioning between tracks depending on the game highlighted by your cursor. If there's one issue with the presentation between all four games, however, it's the move to completely static loading screens. The Master Chief Collection lacks the stylish, animated loading screens of Bungie's titles and in the process, something is lost. 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.
Read more…
More...