Tuesday, July 14th 2020
Halo 3 Now Available on PC via The Master Chief Collection
343 Industries today released a new update to its The Master Chief Collection, which includes all FPS Halo Games from Halo Reach through Halo 4 (which, in turn, covered two Xbox console releases in the original Xbox and Xbox 360). The new game, like Halo Reach, Halo: combat Evolved Anniversary, and Halo 2 Anniversary, has been ported to PC with most features one would expect. Performance-wise, the game runs pretty well, with an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti achieving 150+ FPS on 4K and maximum quality settings - which is to be expected considering the games' original September 2007 release, and the fact that like Halo Reach, it hasn't been remastered.
It's time to finish the fight (again). In the meantime, check after the break for some 4K screenshots of the game, which still holds up pretty well with a simple resolution increase.
Source:
DSO Gaming
It's time to finish the fight (again). In the meantime, check after the break for some 4K screenshots of the game, which still holds up pretty well with a simple resolution increase.
12 Comments on Halo 3 Now Available on PC via The Master Chief Collection
I suspect I'll be doing some kind of Halo marathon once 4's out and added to TMCC
I played 1 and some of 2, but quit after a few hours in total disgust at how awful the port was - buggy freezes and CTDs, missing features, not even true to the XBox version, crushed colour output range (16-235, not 0-255), three years late, infected with the problematic GFWL platform and DRM, locked behind a Windows Vista wall at a time when Vista was NOT in a recommendable state and those are just the specific things to the PC release. In addition to those realease-specific things it also had all of the usual console-port problems including (but not limited to) terrible performance, input lag, lack of options/customisation, godawful mouse support, auto-aim, and arbitrary limits to framerate....
I'm amazed I have any fondness for Halo at all but I did get to play the first one twice - once on a real Xbox and once again on a PC that brute-forced its way through the abysmally-performing port to PC - and it was a great game for its day.
Then I got into the meat of the game in the middle, WOW, I know why people like Halo. Halo Reach just gets better and better all the way to the ending.
343 ruined H4 ending, art style is fine but with Halo 5 they destroyed the series with the wahmen Cortana and other crappy elements into story they also downgraded the ESRB rating to T, to make it more MP game. I don't know how Halo Infinite (soft reboot ?) will be, if it has Flood, it must have the M rating back and no platforming or bs, but rumors are like it will be open world (disaster). Plus so far nothing on Steam (win32) platform, only Xbox game pass and UWP BS DRM.
Chronologial in-universe timeline order is [Wars], Reach, 1/[Fireteam Raven], 2/[first part of Spartan Strike], ODST, 3, [Spartan Assault] 4, [second part of Spartan Strike], (5), [Wars 2], (Infinite)
In brackets are games not included in MCC. Non-FPS games in square brackets, thse are also not in MCC. Yeah, full m&k support for everything and it works brilliantly. You'd never think these games were ported, except for Reach and Halo 2 when you enable unlimited framerates and go above ~60. True, Reach is quite slow in the beginning, but gets a lot better over time. And at launch there were a lot of bugs that since than have been getting slowly fixed, including the patch to the awful launch-state audio with this update.
And man, wait until you get to Halo 3, that game is just so much damn fun right from the start and the entire way through. If you can gather 3 friends too it's so much fun on coop.
I will say, the difficulty of the Cortana level on legendary is unimaginable. Legendary on the original H3 didn't feel quite this difficult, for some reason. The damage dealt by and accuracy of the Stalker flood forms are fucking unreal; as soon as there are more than a handful of them transformed into their ranged forms and nowhere to hide, it sometimes can get nigh impossible to progress.
But I haven't found Halo 3 on PC to be any more difficult than the 360 original. In fact I think it's easier with the better mouse controls. I found myself breezing through most of the levels on legendary, Cortana was of course difficult but not as difficult as I remembered it to be. Contrast that to Halo 2 which was just terribly difficult, and I still haven't beaten Cairo Station on PC lol
I'll just drop some self-promotion here and say that I've completed all FPS Halo Games on Legendary, solo. Cortana likely was the toughest level to get through on that difficulty out of all the Halo games, but Halo 2 really was the worst of the worst to get through.
For anyone having difficulties, the noob combo (overcharged plasma + semi-auto weapon) is your absolute best friend. As is movement. Never stop moving unless you're facing the Flood stalkers or going through Halo 2 xD
I'm really glad this is available for PC as well and can't wait to duke it out on Halo 3, but especially, to see how Halo 4 looks. As my favorite game in the series (and for me, the one with the best art style) I'm really giddy. Opinions may vary. I just really do think Halo 4 was the series' pinnacle.