News 343 Industries announces Halo PC ports plan

Well there goes one of the reasons to get an Xbone...

 

These any good? Never had an Xbox.

 

I'm going to be honest, I really don't care a jot for Halo. I also would have thought than anyone who was desperate to play these games would have done so already on Xbox?

 

That is because it got a "definitive" edition in 2017 on PC:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/459220/Halo_Wars_Definitive_Edition/

 

IMO, yes.

The popular opinion is the story took a nosedive with 343 replacing Bungie (basically Halo 4 onwards), but frankly the story is so convoluted I'm not sure that's really a big deal.

I've played the SP campaigns of the entire MCC thus far (So 1-4, ODST) at least three times, on top of the countless times I played the original trilogy over the years. I'd say there's a pretty healthy level of replay-ability. There's also a lot of easter eggs in there. What with the Firefly crew being random conversations in .. I want to say 3, and a few of them being actual characters in ODST with a very good chemistry that really, IMO, makes the game.

If you like well made FPS games with a reasonable challenge in different difficulties with good level of balance, then yeah. It's worth a punt.

I imagine the multiplayer on PC is going to be alive for at least a few weeks.

Tbh, I'm just stoked to get Reach as part of the collection on Xbone. Looking forward to replaying that again.

 

My bad, it being mentioned along the not on pc Halo 5 tripped me up.

 

No need to buy a cheap second hand XBone now, Halo MCC was my ONLY reason considering to buy XBone. I'll just wait for these on PC Best news I've heard all week!

I've played Halo Combat Evolve at friend's Xbox 1 (aka classic). Bought Halo on PC, was quite active on Halo CE on PC. I played through most of Halo 2 campaign in the A-level common room using friend's Xbox on launchday, skipping a few classes. Upgraded my PC to Vista for Halo 2, and I'm now still waiting to finish the fight.....

One thing really annoying though, was the off centre crosshair on Halo 2. It is lower than centre, making you always look slightly up. I keep falling off ledges on Halo 2. Hope PC port will have customisable POV and crosshair position.

 

So many hours spent co-op'ing Legendary with my good mate Tom... Hands struggling to keep hold of those enormous OG Xbox controllers by time you've done 5-6 hours straight.

 

Halo Reach on Steam? ON STEAM!>?
This makes me excited, here's hoping for online co-op and or firefight.

I've always thought that Reach was an outstanding game, ODST and Combat Evolved also.
Halo 2 and 3 are quite good,4 and 5 are very ehhh, they both suffer from the problem of the most interesting enemies to fight (The Covenant) no longer being central to the plot.

 

This is great news, as my LAN guys still play Halo CE as it's a blast with our own odd taste in setups. We've also been playing the unofficial Halo 3 port too more recently.
I assume they'll be higher res like the XBox updates.

 

It's progressive release: Buy Now! and you just get Reach, and then the later games one by one in chronological order some nebulous amounts of time in the future. I only really have nostalgia for Halo CE, so I'll probably wait until that has been released and bugfixed before buying it.

 

Here’s to hoping it doesn’t suffer from the game crippling bugs that the Xbone version had.

That said, looking forward to becoming terrible at a game that I’ve always been pretty decent at. All those years playing on a controller made me somewhat of an invalid with a mouse and keyboard it seems.

Happy to see them all on there though, couldn’t care less for Reach as it was Bungie dropping the series on its head before handing it over.

 

Alright Maki, you'll have to elaborate on that one.

 

this is a must buy, 343 ind have kept on improving this since its release. on my xbone its one the most played games by my kids. even if you played some of the games pre-MCC its worth going over again as the improvments made make it worth it. theres also ODST and the sublime reach as well

 

I played Halo: Combat Evolved with the PC release, but while I found it largely enjoyable, I found the copy 'n' paste corridors and rooms highly tedious. Various set pieces were amazing, but there was too much repetition. If the later games solved that, I'm sure I'll enjoy them more.

Looking forward to it, even if I don't buy it until it's on sale.

 

Reach was a glorified test bed for ideas that Bungie wanted to put into Destiny if you ask me. Not only did they decide to alienate the lore fans, who saw the iconic Fall of Reach event turned up on its head, but they introduced many of the mechanics and gameplay failings that helped destroy the multiplayer scene. I will never know why they decided to upturn the established events in the campaign so heavily and for seemingly no reason. The Spartan IIIs, the battle itself, Halsey etc. were all a mess, the 2D characters didn't help either. Gameplay wise, map voting and loadouts ruined much of the multiplayer, leading to a stale experience, which was exacerbated by a terrible pool of maps at launch. Relying on a single Forge canvas also had the additional side effect of making all the newly fan-made maps feel very samey and dull.

The actual gameplay mechanics too such as bloom etc. damaged the competitive scene a lot, which had be flourishing in Halo 2 and 3. Now I've never been one for competitive gaming much but it was still a shame to see how little was done to foster top level competitive play.

 

Even though Reach is one of my favourites I have to agree with you on all of that. I think the canon thing is that Microsoft commisions books, comics etc, then doesn't tell anyone what's in them and doesn't do any vetting between projects.

As far as Halo's multiplayer goes, aside from Grifball and Firefight I've always thought it was pretty terrible unlessy you had a private lobby. Public lobbies in every version seem to be slow and unbalanced.