>Unless they pack the release with micro transactions

That seems doubtful, simply because the Xbone MCC didn't have any of that.

I'm still holding out hope that they stick it on that "play anywhere" thing so I don't have to buy it again.

What's so special about Halo?

>>22748
It is the spiritual successor of Unreal Tournament, at least in my eyes.

>>22749
I've played a lot of UT and a little Halo but I can't say I agree.

>>22749>>22750
Please continue. I've just completed UT99's CTF challenge, yet another time.

>>22750
Halo 2 got me back into FPS on PC after burning myself out with CS:S and I couldn't help thinking "God, this reminds me of how much fun I had with UT back in the day!" due to the community, intensity, competitiveness of matches and the absolutely disgusting frags it let you do if you were skilled.

That's as much as I'd thought about it in years, to be honest, as I've not played UT since 2004 and I didn't bother buying a 360 or Bone.

>>22749
Does it have instagib CTF?

>>22748

It ushered in the current era of shooters and was a fresh setting with the big open worlds and vehicles and things.

Also most importantly Halo was pretty much the best console multiplayer shooter released, then Halo 2 kicked it up a notch. The only other series with comparably customisable and fully featured multiplayer that I can think of was Timesplitters, which is a very different shooter.

>>22753
Sort of, actually. No shields and rifle starts is a single headshot to get a kill.

>>22748
The visuals are very memorable and unique*, from the colourful guns and enemies to the beautiful sky boxes, you've got a quality campaign (at least until 4) and the multiplayer is probably the most fleshed out I've known in an FPS. Obviously it's all a matter of taste, but I also prefer the pace of the gunfights over Quake or Counter Strike, which were always 2fast4me even before I hit the e-sports retirement age I'm at now. But going back to how diverse the multiplayer can be, you could probably edit player speeds, health and weapon damage to have a Quake-like custom game mode quite easily, or just race ATVs, or get chased by an unkillable zombie ghost. Basically it can be anything you like, hopefully doubly so once it's on PC.

*Yes, I am aware they cribbed plenty of ideas also.

I played the first Halo recently for the first time since it came out, and I was surprised by how open it was. It has the reputation for the dumbing down of FPS games, but even early missions don't hold your hand with excessive way points like modern games have.

>>22748

The one thing it probably did better than anything else is AI. It feels believable for reactions in a war zone, each type of creature has it's own personality that comes through. I don't recall anything doing as good of job of it before or since.

>>22756>>22757>>22758

All of this. I remember the Halo series being the first games in a long, long time that really made me want to play through them on every difficulty and get all the achievements and all that. There's nothing that brings four hopeless nerds together like spending days or weeks trying to get the LASO achievements. The AI really helped with that, it wasn't just "more" enemies running at you, they were actively more aggressive.

More than anything else, the appeal of Halo to me was that I grew up with it. It's a game I could play in my room on my little 14" telly, I didn't have to borrow the family PC and sit in the living room and all of that, it was mine. Even if the games were shite I'd probably still have that feeling, but they also happened to be very good.

Halo is also the reason a lot of my online life exists, I have friends I made on Xbox live before it was even called Xbox live, that I still talk to today. I have friends from the Rooster Teeth and Machinima communities, both companies that simply wouldn't exist without Halo. It was a Big Deal for console gaming back then and that won't be forgotten easily by someone my age.

Halo CE being on PC, and able to run directly from a flash drive was excellent craic too. We used to just play each other in it in school/college computer labs when nobody was looking.

>>22752
> "God, this reminds me of how much fun I had with UT back in the day!"
Same, that's why I've been replaying UT99 recently. Got to the DM-Phoboss, getting massively wrecked there.
I also have the GOTY edition which sadly has some decent DM maps replaced by some other ones that I like less.

Sort of want to play UT2004 again too. I have my reservations though, as I remember the 2004 was pretty intense too and somehow differently intense. For example, in UT99 the November Sub Pen CTF map had the most vicious combat situations right in the middle. In 2004, the middle seemed to be rather dead. There were more 'tension pockets' across the map, the overall pressure just wasn't there.
It also felt a bit more Quake-ish in general to me.

Thanks for the comments. Perhaps I'll find some time to try it if it really comes to PC.

Having beaten Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 3 ODST in the last month, I feel like Halo is a flawed franchise. It seems for every fun mission there's a tedious one to balance it out. Like in Halo 1, the first mission you encounter the Flood is amazing, very tense. Then you have the library mission which is just on onslaught of enemies in a boring location. In ODST, the mission where you defend the ONI facility is cool, but then you have the shitty Banshee mission. I appreciate they're trying to keep things fresh, but all the missions I've had to fly shit have been dreadful.

>>25302
Were you using mouse and keyboard or a controller? I only ask because I found the keyboard occasionally awkward to use, but I was never sure if it was because of the years and years I'd played these games with an Xbox controller making my muscle memory useless or not.

>>25305
Controller. It took a while to find the right button mapping, and even then stuff doesn't work like a "modern" FPS. No aiming down sights when you pull left trigger, ADS being something that has been ingrained in me over the last 5 or 6 years so it took some adaption.

In case anyone missed it, the Halo Infinite multiplayer is now available for free on Xbox consoles and PC. They're saying it's a beta, but all progression carries into the full game. Looks like if you actually want to unlock stuff, you'll need to shell out a tenner for the battle pass, which is quite wanky. Also unlocking new tiers of the battle pass seems incredibly slow compared to CoD for example.

>>25308
That's probably the death knell for the MCC multiplayer then.

Finished Reach, good ending, a good swan song for Bungie's work on Halo. I can see why they moved on and made Destiny, but the problem with the Destiny games is they're soulless grindy shit. On to Halo 4, everyone says the 343 games are shit, so I am very excited to see if this is the case.

>>25318
Halo 4 is a weird beast. They got to work on the least important parts of making a good game by embellishing extra detail on models while also making it run at 60 fps. This wasn't just because Bungie were stuck on 360 while 343 got to play with the One. Halo 4 was a technical showpiece on the 360 and having it run up-ressed on a One was a sight to behold.

Where they faltered however was in level design, new enemies and weapons that didn't improve anything and a story which assumed that you'd read all the extended universe books. Halo 5 did improve things but it has been baby steps.

All that aside the concensus is that they knocked it out of the park for Infinite so I'll be checking that out when the story mode is released.

>>25319
>a story which assumed that you'd read all the extended universe books
Just finished 4, and this point resonated with me. Felt very sloppy narratively, though the action was good. Some of the new weapons like the light rifle and suppressor were satisfying to use, but the boltshot was perhaps the worst weapon in all of Halo. New enemies looked neat, at this stage I'm sick of fighting Covenant so it was a very welcome addition. Not as good as ODST or Reach, but better than the rest (but is that unfair, to judge to the same standard games from many years before Halo 4?). I can finally uninstall MCC off my Xbox and free up 140 GB.

I have to say, I'm loving Halo Infinite. I can't play it for too long because these days I get a bit frustrated at how poor I am at FPS, but it has this stripped back simplicity that is really appealing in an age of bloated, cluttered game environments. My only gripe is performance is not exactly where I'd expect given my PC, but it's not awful.

5 was a mixed bag. Great gameplay, not so great story. Actually that's unfair, the story was interesting, but the ending felt rushed and unsatisfying. Like there should have been an extra 30% length to see it through to a good conclusion. We'll see if Infinite finishes this fight.

Played a couple of hours of Infinite's campaign. Actual fighting is good, the hookshot thing lets you zip around and it's very fun. The open world I'm unsure about. Very much the Ubisoft radio towers sort of thing, clear out an outpost to reveal side missions and collectibles in that area. It's not terrible, but it's not interesting to explore. I'd rather have an extra 5 or so, tightly designed, linear levels; rather than hunting down audiologs in a generic grassy landscape with the odd enemy ambush.