Tomorrow is the big day for a lot of long time Halo fans, especially those who played Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 on pc. For on the 3rd of December, Halo Reach will be the kick off to MCC on pc!
I consider myself a big fan of the franchise, been with it ever since I got my first Xbox bundled with Halo 2. I wasn’t there from the beginning technically, as I only played Halo: Combat Evolved after playing Halo 2. I know, I know, blasphemy! But at that time it wasn’t the big game icon as it is today. I didn’t even know Halo 2 was coming out, yet on that faithful day something told me I would be hooked on that game and the franchise itself.
I sunk countless hours into the games, trying to memorize every enemy location so I could eventually beat them on the hardest difficulty. It took me a while but the journey to my goal shaped me as a person aswell. The more I played the game the more connected I felt with the characters, the established universe. With just the first 2 games, there was little to go by besides the general threat of the alien species aliance, called the Covenant, which was bent on the destruction of Humanity. Halo 2 gave a lot more lore and after they released the first 3 books, I was hooked on the lore entirely. I still collect every book and comic to this day, but sadly most still waits to be read. The games however, I’ve played them all except for Halo Wars 2 ( it’s on my to do list ). Though I did enjoy the rts variant of the universe through Halo Wars, my main passion was, is and will always be the first person shooters within the franchise. It still gives you more of a sense of being there when you walk around the various levels and settings.
So am I excited for the release of Halo Reach? Absolutely, definitely, 100% yes sir! Okay that might be a bit cringeworthy, but it gets the point across. Halo Reach was a bit of a mixed bag of feelings for me when itfirst came out. It introduces armor abilities and after playing Halo 1-3 for so many hours, I felt like it didn’t feel like Halo anymore at first. Yes, Halo 3 had some new mechanics aswell in the for of equipment, but it was still seperate from your characters mobility. Reach tried to spice things up and succeeded, but I could help but wonder why they needed to be their own thing, you could have just the jetpack ability and not the armor lock one aswell for example. Game wise, I know it is because of balancing issues. Still my instinct was wonder ‘ why isn’t this just build into the suits that the Spartans use? ‘. Again, gameplay and balancing choices decided how they would implement it all. But I got over it quickly once I started the game and got further and further in the story. Now it’s been a long time since I last played Reach, so I’m curious how good I’ll still be.
I also remember the countless hours of fun I had with my friends and one friend specifically, who’s as big of a fan as I am. We spend a lot of time trying to beat the levels in all kinds of way, from trying to beat them as fast as we could, to doing it with just a specific weapon and of course trying to find exploits. Halo CE and Halo 2 were the best games for finding exploits. I might be seeing everything through the lenses of nostalgia when Halo Reach finally releases, but I don’t care. I know I will have a lot of fun once more. That is, if the game releases stable enough. The MCC on Xbox didn’t really have to best of launches. Personally, I had just one complaint about it and that was that I couldn’t count on checkpoints being actually saved in Halo 2 when playing on Legendary difficulty. Meaning, the checkpoints did work while playing the levels, so when I died I would just begin from the last checkpoint. If I would close down the game, it meant having to restart from the beginning of a level, regardless of how far into it I might have been. I can assure you, those were long days to complete the game on that difficulty. That’s the only downside I experienced as I didn’t touch the multiplayer, but from what I’ve heard and read, that’s where most of the bugs and player aggrevations were.
Of course there have been beta tests, called Flights, to asses the state of the game. Some are worried that after the last Flight, some things still need polishing because it might impact the launch of MCC on pc negatively. To that I say 2 things:
- Every game will have it’s issues so give it time to get patched. This doesn’t mean we should expect a unfinished game, but I really doubt that will be the case. They learned from the Xbox version, so besides maybe a glitch or two here and there, we have nothing to worry about. Even if it would be a glitchfest, let them know in the forums in a civilized manner and let them patch things up.
- When a game launches, even if it’s 100% perfect in it’s coding and has no bugs or glitches, there’s always the chance it might not have as big of a following. Of course this is a big franchise, but still it’s a somewhat ‘old’ one too. Give it time to grow it’s new community, show the strenghts of it. Don’t start thinking it’s doomed because there’s only a player base of 10 000 instead of a million.
All in all I’m mostly happy that pc players finally get to play beyond Halo 2. It creates a new influx of players to the already established community. One that has been divided over a lot of decisions made throughout the Halo games, but also one that welcomes anyone new. In the end we just want to share our passion with like minded people just like any other fanbase. And as long as we take the opportunity to play together, against each other, I think we are in for a wild ride. See you guys online!
To all the Halo fans out there,
“Wake me, when you need me.”