No, not how you want to play Halo. On November 11, 2014, 343 Industries (previously of Bungie) released Halo: The Master Chief Collection for Xbox One. The game includes updated versions of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4. You can play each campaign as well as multiplayer matchmaking in each game with some really cool looking updated maps! I was excited. My friends were excited. Any fan of Halo was excited.

“WHO WANTS TO PLAY THROUGH ALL THE CAMPAIGNS WITH ME?” we all said. And what a nostalgic adventure it would be, crashing down onto Halo as the Master Chief. Feels like the first time. But as my friends and I attempted to play this game together, we noticed a few issues. It was impossible to group ourselves into a party to join a matchmaking game. It was also impossible to get into a matchmaking game when you’re playing alone.

Well, we can still play the campaigns until 343 fixes the issues. I mean, a huge game like this is bound to have a few bugs at release. Since Halo: CE and Halo 2 only have two player campaign co-op, and there were four of us, we skipped ahead to the Halo 3 campaign. We somehow managed to group together in a party and launched the game. The opening cutscene plays with Cortana explaining why the Chief is so incredibly awesome as the fireball that is the Chief hurls towards Earth. I notice the fireball is taking an awfully long time to come down.

“No, not this too,” I thought, “something on this game has to be playable.”

After the painfully long cutscene complete with frames-per-second drops, mismatched audio, and just obnoxious freezes, we thought we could finally play the game. If you call this playing the game, sure.

Reddit – /u/johnjr08

The only thing left was to play the campaigns on our own. But that’s not what makes Halo great. Playing capture the flag with my friends on the multiplayer map Zanzibar is what makes Halo great. Playing our favorite custom game of Assault, called Gang Violence, is what makes Halo great. So we stopped playing, and we haven’t played since.

I saw that 343 patched the game on January 19. It claims to improve matchmaking. But there is still an outcry in the /r/Halo community for 343 to fix the game. In fact, things are still such cluster#@!* that the next patch will be available to play as a beta test. I thought open betas usually happened before games were released. And we’re supposed to be getting excited about their next release, Halo 5: Guardians? Wait…Guardians? Like these Guardians?

Ohhh you mean these Guardians:

You mean there’s different Guardians???

Well I guess they look kind of different. They’re all the same color, at least. I do like things with Guardians in them. But this time around I’m going to hold onto my wallet until 343 Industries proves they can have a functional game at launch.