Halo: MCC welcomes a new generation of players this week


Halo: The Master Chief Collection gets its big next-gen update on Tuesday, November 17 — just two days after the original Halo’s 19th anniversary. Multiplayer and Firefight are getting cross-play support; Halo 4 is coming to Steam.

If you’ve got a Series X/S or a PC, it’s a good week to revisit the FPS franchise that put Xbox on the map. We’ve got a little bit of a wait before Halo Infinite news, anyway, so why not relive the Chief’s greatest hits in their most definitive versions to date?

Sure, the version of the MCC that launched six years ago, in November of 2014, was rough. Halo fans spent hours or days installing the game of their dreams, took time off work, and scheduled Xbox meet-ups with old friends — only to find that multiplayer matchmaking was utterly broken. As were our hearts. It was such a brutal letdown that, in retrospect, it no longer feels real.

To their credit, however, the folks at 343 Industries have worked their asses off over the last several years, and the results are better than anyone who played that early MCC build could’ve ever imagined.

Read more:Everything you need to know about Halo 4

Between Saber Interactive’s incredible Halo 2: Anniversary, the H2A multiplayer from Certain Affinity, ODST, Reach, and more quality-of-life improvements than I could possibly list in a single article — Halo: MCC is Microsoft’s proverbial phoenix.

Whether it’s been a while since you replayed Bungie’s original trilogy, or you missed out on Halo 4 eight years ago, or you’re looking to see what the fuss was about with Halo multiplayer all those years ago, this is the week to give Halo: MCC another look.

According to Microsoft, the new Series X/S version boasts a field-of-view slider, lightning-fast loading times, and 120 frames per second.

You’re gonna need a weapon.

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