I finished the game, it was alright - neither an extraordinary experience nor an abomination as some Halo fans tried to paint it as throughout the years. Gameplay was solid, level design quality varied depending on the theme, pretty great sound effects, kind of generic music though it did have some neat tracks here and there.

Still don’t care about the Forerunner storyline. I enjoyed bits and pieces (talking about the plan with Dr. Tillson during Composer was really well done) but as a whole the campaign wasn’t that interesting for me. I did like Cortana’s arc - it was pretty emotional and just well done in general. A tasteful ending to her adventures with Chief (yes, I’m aware of Halo 5, no I don’t count it since I won’t be playing it).

Dunno if anyone remembers but when writing about Halo 2 I mentioned how I really like its art style. While some of the classic stuff still looks good (except for the new Pelicans) I don’t vibe with Forerunner designs at all in this game. I mean… architecture is fiiine and the natural segments were cools but enemies? I didn’t particularly care for them.

My reaction to Forerunner weapons is even harsher than towards Covenant ones - I just don’t like them. Human tech was always my favourite part of these games and Halo 4 did not change that. I especially love the DMR, it sounds and feels fantastic. It ended up being my favourite weapon in the game and I’d be more than happy to play the whole thing using just that.

All in all, I was a bit worried about this game but it turned out better than expected. Definitely not my favourite but solid enough to not regret playing it.

Oh, audio quality of secret videos is not great. Does anyone know if it was like this in the original release or did something go wrong when porting to MCC?

This is it, the end of Master Chief Collection. It was an enjoyable ride - not as great as I hoped it would be but that wasn’t really a probable goal considering the years of hype I witnessed about the series. All of the games in the collection are solid to great, they just aren’t up my alley as much as I hoped they’d be. Nothing wrong with that though, just a personal preference.

I mentioned this before but this playthrough made me realise that my favourite way of experiencing Halo’s universe is through the books rather than the games (except for Reach and, to lesser extent, ODST). They tend to focus on different vibes and tone which work very well with my tastes.

I’m glad I got to play this, if only to have an informed opinion on a series which helped to shape the medium into what it is today.

After playing through entirety of MCC in such short amount of time I thought I could use a change of pace for a bit. I don’t play many point & clicks these days, especially the really old ones, so Sam & Max felt like a perfect choice for that.

First things I noticed were the tone of the game and characterisation of our protagonists. Heck, writing in general turned out way different than expected - not in a bad way mind you, I simply didn’t expect the main duo to be such a menace or to hear multiple F-bombs in the middle of a conversation (even censored ones).

Puzzles aren’t too bad however there were a few times where I needed to use the hint book as a crutch. It’ll take a couple more games before I adjust my brain to playing completely raw but even doing it like this is enjoyable and that’s what matters. I also don’t see the point in feeling bad about doing so in general - while S&M isn’t the worst in this respect, I’m fully aware of the moon logic used in some of these games and I’d rather have fun than tear my hair out trying to figure out some of the more ridiculous solutions.

Game works pretty great using ScummVM. I did have to tinker with it a bit to make saves work correctly (game crashed when I tried to load them) but other than that I had zero issues. Lets hope it stays that way.

Got some additional thoughts after finishing the game. First things first, I forgot to mention how good the game looks, I really love the pixel art work on display here. Same with music to be honest.
Voice acting was great, even if I didn’t always care for the direction they went with. It did what it wanted to really well.

As for the rest of the game, some of the later segments were pretty rough - both in terms of what needed to be done but also things like finding the map transitions hitboxes.
Story was alright, enjoyable enough to play but never managed to fully grab my attention. Humour was also a bit of a mixed bad - some of it was great, some felt a bit outdated and some just wasn’t my cup of tea. Nothing I’d outright hate at least.

All in all, a fun distraction after my non stop shooting spree. Probably won’t be coming back to it but it did its job. It also did kinda fit the bill with my pew pew marathon thanks to the shooting gallery during credits. Looks like I need to choose something less modern for my next playthrough.

I’m slowly progressing with my themed playthrough. While I wasn’t “cheating” during gameplay I haven’t fully committed to the new approach (no cyberware, no hacking) and still kept the default parts “just in case”. Well, no more - I finally sold all of the remaining gear and left only the basic eyes (can’t remove them, unfortunately) and the tiger claw tattoo (I’m only using it as a… well, tattoo and a background detail for my character).

I’m in the middle of act 2. I’m done with Aldecaldo’s and most of Evelyn’s side of things, still waiting for Takemura to finish playing recon for the parade floats (first time I’m not doing it with him). I was a bit surprised because it looks like my different approach started to change things in the story - I’ve noticed V taking small cues from Johnny in a few places despite the fact I tried to act in a way that doesn’t give him control. I might have to work harder to avoid that going forward.

Other than that things go pretty smoothly, even if I need to be reminded sometimes that I’m way more fragile this time around. Even then, it’s more manageable than I though it would be (until I get to some of the Phantom Liberty missions that is). I hope I can keep this up until the end.

This might sound like I’m joking but I finally had my first noticeable issues with the game during this playthrough.

• Sometimes enemies are able to spot me through the walls temporarily. It’s pretty inconsistent and gets fixed rather quickly but I never had this problem before.
• During the final Delamain quest game wouldn’t load the level properly on checkpoint reload and dropped me in a building where half of the models wouldn’t render. This led to occlusion freaking out and whole parts of the level phasing in and out pretty aggressively, even when not moving. I’m stubborn enough I tried to finish the mission anyway but things got bad enough my head was starting to hurt after a while (and I’m not particularly sensitive to such things). Thankfully reload from the menu fixed that.

Some things that caught my attention:

• Devs forgot (?) to normalise the movement vector when moving with turrets, running forward is slower than running forward and to the side. I found it funny for some reason.
• There’s no flashlight issue I had with H2A! Granted these are two different games but I’m glad that’s not a problem here.
• Voice acting can be a bit hit or miss. Most of it is really solid but some of the lines I’ve heard are not great.
• Cortana getting all chunni was not on my bingo card but I’ll take it.
• The Flood is finally how I imagined it. It’s not a huge challenge but the whole section with it feels much better than in previous games. The bloom however… oh man, the bloom.
• What do you mean “Earth is all we have left”?! Did covenant somehow managed to destroy every single human world? When did that happen? I though it was only some (maybe most) of them.
• It really feels like human ships (especially Pelicans) have a higher chance of being shot down than reaching their target. Kinda unfortunate, really.
• Some in-game cutscenes look weird in ultra-wide, like they’re cut off vertically.
• I really could not care less about Gravemind. It’s the weakest part of the game for me.
• The game was way more fun on Heroic than H2.

This is it for the original trilogy. All in all I’m a little underwhelmed - not because the games were bad, far from it. It’s just… after hearing so much about H1-3 it’s impossible not to build up some steep expectations towards those games and, as I mentioned last week, I tend to be way more demanding from stuff hyped to such degree.
Finally, there’s simply the case of my own bias. In case of Halo I simply prefer the sombre/bittersweet/tragic/whateveryoucallit tone of Reach and the few books I read. Action Halo is cool but it doesn’t speak to me the way those other entries do.

With whining out of the way let me say that the journey through these games was a pretty enjoyable one. I had my criticism towards some of the gameplay segments and the difficulty of H2 but neither of those soured my time with these titles in a significant way. All 5 entries I played so far hold up better than expected.

Next (and last) stop: Halo 4.

Just started this one so here are my initial impressions:

• I appreciate Covenant going back to alien speak, makes them more… well, alien.
• Going back to fighting Covenant, if only partially, makes sense from the story perspective but it’s still a bit of an underwhelming decision.
• I really like how the guns feel and sound, really punchy. Grenades on the other hand feel way worse.
• Music sounds more generic this time. It’s not all bad but it’s noticeable.

Lets see how the rest of the game fares.

Well, I forgot I even had this thing installed so that pretty much sums up my interest in the game. I gave it a shot but it’s just not for me apparently. Oh well.