In this bitchfest: I'm likely going to be echoing complaints/criticisms about the MCC, and Reach in particular, that have been floating around for years and years now, so bear that in mind if I sound like a broken record.

Firstly, I’m going to run over some of the pros and cons with the MCC itself as a platform/launchpad for the other games in the series.

Pros:

• Getting Reach, ODST, and Halo 3 on PC

This is wonderful, but I for one am not going to forgive all of 343’s blunders because of this.

• The mild convenience of a single game to play Halo CE through Reach on with friends

• Relatively decent price-point for 5 games and a joke

Considering Halos CE through Reach and 343’s first fanfiction all together from the bargain bin at your local Gamestop would run about the same if not a little cheaper just by virtue of being used, this is pretty good

• An ability to run the game without the Anti-Cheat on for the express purpose of mods

This is wonderful as well, but this being a PC release, people would’ve found a way to mod the game even if 343 went full Rockstar on us, so eh.

• Settings for modern systems and graphics cards, decent audio menus, and clean UI

This is still pretty good even if totally customized M&KB/Controller binds aren’t implemented yet.

• More support & games to come

This is a tentative ‘pro’ as 343 could always just drop support on the game, or, more likely, make the games within worse with each update – which I will elucidate on below with Reach.

Cons:

• Only Reach is available on the platform as of writing this

• Servers & Netcode

For the networking of the platform as a whole, not just Reach, this is kinda awful. To be fair, they’ve addressed this on Waypoint and are talking about making the server support, at least, better and make it clearer what servers players are on and so forth.

• Progression issues with the network structure

This may or may not be a big deal to you, but the game’s progression for everything outside of Reach’s matchmaking XP run off of Halo Waypoint’s tracking of your Xbox Live Profile, which tracks through Windows’ onboard telemetry hosts among all the other spyware that Windows 10 comes with via Cortana (how fitting) before any of that aforementioned progression gets to Steam’s servers.

This means that profile icons, nameplates, portraits, achievements, and all the other minutia that isn’t your matchmaking XP and armor unlocks aren’t available to you at all if you don’t let Microsoft have access to your files. I haven’t asked around, but I can’t imagine any Linux users are having much fun with this either.

• Cross-Platform meme

As far as I’ve seen, this was an apocryphal claim that may still have been floating around from when the MCC itself was just on the Xbone, so I might’ve heard wrong when I was led to believe that the MCC on Steam would also be able to play with MCC copies on other distribution platforms. That said, as far as I’ve witnessed as of yet, you can’t play the MCC with people who got it through the Microsoft Store on their PC’s if you have a Steam copy and vice versa.

I used my old gamertag from my XBL days and I still have ancient XBL friends still on my friendslist that appear in the menus but I can’t really communicate with them if they’re not running the Steam MCC. I’ve tested this with friend requests I’ve sent via the UI don’t go through at all if they’re sent to Microsoft Store and buyers and vice versa. Also, there is currently no real interface between the Microsoft LIVE UI and the Steamworks UI and Steam can’t seem to track recent players accurately in the MCC.

That about covers the major ups and downs of the MCC as a platform on Steam that I’ve noticed so far at least. However, those aren’t bad enough for me to personally give this game my disapproval to new players – I reserve that condemnation for how 343 has and continues to handle Reach. As my comments on Reach run overlong, the rest of the review is posted here: https://www.minds.com/HeroesAgainstTyrannicalEvil/blog/halo-the-master-chief-collection-on-steam-review-as-of-1-1-2-1059297211381846016