Edit: I used to have this review hold my full reviews of each Halo game, but I hit the character limit after trying to include 2's. Therefore, full reviews can be found on the specific DLC's store page. Here I'll talk about MCC in general and include a brief summary of my feelings towards each halo.

Halo Reach: My favorite. It's the first one I played, but damn. The story is great, the gameplay is good, and the multiplayer is great. Also has Firefight for people who want a multiplayer PvE option.

Halo CEA: A weak recommendation. It's worth playing if you want to see the first Halo game, but the gameplay is mixed. Some levels are great, some are really not. Some of the bigger levels don't work well due to Halo CE's weapon pool. The only ranged options are Magnum and Sniper, and ammo is scarce for both (notably on later levels like Two Betrayals). Story is a bit weak, but it has a fun twist out of the left-field. The multiplayer entirely revolves around the Magnum's insane TTK. I don't like it, but anyone who likes fast TTK games like CS may enjoy it. The 8v8 maps are also way too big.

Halo 2A: A very solid Halo title. Story is improved through by splitting the story with a Covenant character, providing more insight. Also makes characters more memorable through one-liners. Gameplay focuses more on CQC, and introduces BR, making it significantly better than CE.

Halo 3: A great conclusion to the original trilogy. Story shifts to more dramatic tone. It loses the split nature of 2's story, but it closes everything out pretty well. Plenty of emotional moments that may hit hard if it's your first playthough (and unspoiled, of course). Gameplay takes H2 as a base and expands it, including much more weapons, armor abilities, and some bigger environments. Nothing to complain about multiplayer-wise, it's solid.

Halo 3 ODST: Experiments with Halo's gameplay formula by featuring roaming "street" missions in between the "regular" missions. The street missions are completely different than anything else in the series. They're semi-open world, take place at night, and are atmospheric and lonely. I love them, and would highly recommend this game based on these missions alone. Gameplay in other regards is similar to Halo 3. Only issue I have is that the regular levels' comedic tone undercuts the dramatic mood built up during the street missions. This was also the first Halo game with firefight, and it's notably harder than Reach's firefight. Especially now that they've added Sentinels and Flood.

Halo 4: The black sheep of the collection; the first game made by 343 Industries rather than Bungie. I give 343 credit for putting their own spin on the series rather than making a Halo 3 pt 2, but I don't like the result. There are multiple differences in tone and gameplay such that the game fundamentally feel different than the original trilogy (+ side games). The story has as lot more emphasis on emotion (namely Cortana's struggle with A.I. Alzheimers). On a scale of challenging to annoying, the Prometheans lean a fair bit to annoying. The multiplayer changes feel more like other modern shooters (i.e. CoD) and less like Halo. Examples of these changes include: sprinting being a permanent ability, killstreaks, and custom loadouts for multiplayer. I don't recommend this game unless you A: like CoD (or similar games), or B: you really want to see a different take on Halo.

MCC itself:
There have been no egregious porting problems that I've encountered. Some of the more major problems have (eventually) been fixed. Updates are now slow, but they do come. The introduction of challenges and Forge makes this game much better now than it was at launch. I would highly recommend this game. There only 2 major issues I can think of. There's a lot of latency when playing co-op since it's peer to peer. If the host and/or the players have a bad connections, coop games won't be fun. Also, tabbing out of the game at any point has a chance of making the game window 'disappear', forcing you to go into task manager to stop it and restart. The fix for this is to go into windows multitasking settings and set "show all open windows when I press alt+tab" to "on all desktops".

A minor nitpick, the fact that campaign playlists exist but you can't make your own is very annoying. Even worse, most of the playlists are set to Normal difficulty, making them a bore for any Heroic or Veteran players.


The addition of custom multiplayer adds a variety of wacky casual custom game modes & maps for (now) all of the Halo games. This ranges from Invasion maps taking up the entirety of Forge World to "Castle Wars" where people fight in a narrow battlefield with only swords. It can be a lot of fun but as with any custom content, the quality varies wildly. Reach is the most popular, followed by Halo 3 and Halo CE. This is most likely because of how expansive Reach's forge is compared to Halo 3's. To contrast, the few CE games you see are mostly vanilla matches (ex. CTF on Blood Gulch). Hopefully now that Halo 4 was just added, we'll get to see even more cool ♥♥♥♥.

Edit: I used to have this review hold my full reviews of each Halo game, but I hit the character limit after trying to include 2's. Therefore, full reviews can be found on the specific DLC's store page. Here I'll talk about MCC in general and include a brief summary of my feelings towards each halo. Halo Reach: My favorite. It's the first one I played, but damn. The story is great, the gameplay is good, and the multiplayer is great. Also has Firefight for people who want a multiplayer PvE option. Halo CEA: A weak recommendation. It's worth playing if you want to see the first Halo game, but the gameplay is mixed. Some levels are great, some are really not. Some of the bigger levels don't work well due to Halo CE's weapon pool. The only ranged options are Magnum and Sniper, and ammo is scarce for both (notably on later levels like Two Betrayals). Story is a bit weak, but it has a fun twist out of the left-field. The multiplayer entirely revolves around the Magnum's insane TTK. I don't like it, but anyone who likes fast TTK games like CS may enjoy it. The 8v8 maps are also way too big. Halo 2A: A very solid Halo title. Story is improved through by splitting the story with a Covenant character, providing more insight. Also makes characters more memorable through one-liners. Gameplay focuses more on CQC, and introduces BR, making it significantly better than CE. Halo 3: A great conclusion to the original trilogy. Story shifts to more dramatic tone. It loses the split nature of 2's story, but it closes everything out pretty well. Plenty of emotional moments that may hit hard if it's your first playthough (and unspoiled, of course). Gameplay takes H2 as a base and expands it, including much more weapons, armor abilities, and some bigger environments. Nothing to complain about multiplayer-wise, it's solid. Halo 3 ODST: Experiments with Halo's gameplay formula by featuring roaming "street" missions in between the "regular" missions. The street missions are completely different than anything else in the series. They're semi-open world, take place at night, and are atmospheric and lonely. I love them, and would highly recommend this game based on these missions alone. Gameplay in other regards is similar to Halo 3. Only issue I have is that the regular levels' comedic tone undercuts the dramatic mood built up during the street missions. This was also the first Halo game with firefight, and it's notably harder than Reach's firefight. Especially now that they've added Sentinels and Flood. Halo 4: The black sheep of the collection; the first game made by 343 Industries rather than Bungie. I give 343 credit for putting their own spin on the series rather than making a Halo 3 pt 2, but I don't like the result. There are multiple differences in tone and gameplay such that the game fundamentally feel different than the original trilogy (+ side games). The story has as lot more emphasis on emotion (namely Cortana's struggle with A.I. Alzheimers). On a scale of challenging to annoying, the Prometheans lean a fair bit to annoying. The multiplayer changes feel more like other modern shooters (i.e. CoD) and less like Halo. Examples of these changes include: sprinting being a permanent ability, killstreaks, and custom loadouts for multiplayer. I don't recommend this game unless you A: like CoD (or similar games), or B: you really want to see a different take on Halo. MCC itself: There have been no egregious porting problems that I've encountered. Some of the more major problems have (eventually) been fixed. Updates are now slow, but they do come. The introduction of challenges and Forge makes this game much better now than it was at launch. I would highly recommend this game. There only 2 major issues I can think of. There's a lot of latency when playing co-op since it's peer to peer. If the host and/or the players have a bad connections, coop games won't be fun. Also, tabbing out of the game at any point has a chance of making the game window 'disappear', forcing you to go into task manager to stop it and restart. The fix for this is to go into windows multitasking settings and set "show all open windows when I press alt+tab" to "on all desktops". A minor nitpick, the fact that campaign playlists exist but you can't make your own is very annoying. Even worse, most of the playlists are set to Normal difficulty, making them a bore for any Heroic or Veteran players. The addition of custom multiplayer adds a variety of wacky casual custom game modes & maps for (now) all of the Halo games. This ranges from Invasion maps taking up the entirety of Forge World to "Castle Wars" where people fight in a narrow battlefield with only swords. It can be a lot of fun but as with any custom content, the quality varies wildly. Reach is the most popular, followed by Halo 3 and Halo CE. This is most likely because of how expansive Reach's forge is compared to Halo 3's. To contrast, the few CE games you see are mostly vanilla matches (ex. CTF on Blood Gulch). Hopefully now that Halo 4 was just added, we'll get to see even more cool shit.